“Yes.”
“And because it matters, you’re willing to let it take everything.”
That does make me angry.
I take one step toward him without realizing I’m doing it. “You don’t get to tell me what this costs.”
“No,” he agrees. “But I can still see when you’re bleeding for it.”
The words hang there. Ugly in their accuracy. I look away first, because the room suddenly feels too full of things I don’t want named.
The silence that follows is not comfortable, but it is honest, which might be worse. Nolan moves back toward the table, gathering his papers in efficient stacks. It is his version of retreat. Mine is reaching for my bag before I’m ready to leave and pretending I was going to do it anyway.
By the time I step outside, the sky has changed again. Clouds are building low over the tree line, thickening toward the west in a dark band that looks bruised at the edges. The air feels heavier than it did an hour ago, charged and close against my skin. Another storm. Smaller maybe. Or maybe not. The weather here changes the way people do—subtly until it’s suddenly not subtle at all.
I drive back to the farm with both hands tight on the wheel and the radio off. I don’t want noise. I want clarity, and the problem with wanting clarity is that sometimes it comes whether you’re ready or not.
By the time I turn onto the lane that cuts across Otter Creek, I know two things with a certainty that makes my chest ache. The first is that I should probably be more afraid than I am.
The second is that Holt’s house has become the only place I’ve wanted to get back to in a very long time.
Holt is outside when I pull up, standing near the back corner of his house with Rook at his feet and a hammer in one hand. His shirtsleeves are pushed back, forearms bare, hair raked back like he’s been running his hands through it too often. There’s a fresh board leaning against the siding near him and a toolbox open on the grass.
Rook spots my car and takes off immediately, skidding over the damp grass with complete disregard for dignity. He launches himself at the door before I’m fully out, tail beating hard enough to throw his whole body off balance.
“There’s my loyal man,” I murmur, crouching to catch his head between my hands.
“He has been waiting by the porch every ten minutes,” Holt says from behind him. “I assume for you, but I’m not ruling out that he’s developed a dangerous relationship with the mailman.”
I straighten and look at him. He doesn’t smile. But the corner of his mouth gives just enough to tell me he wants to. That should be reassuring. Instead, it makes me notice the strain under it. The tiredness still sitting in the lines around his eyes. The vigilance he hasn’t managed to set down since this morning.
“You’re fixing something,” I say.
He glances at the new board, then back at me. “Window latch in the spare room wasn’t catching right. Didn’t like it.”
There it is again. Not overreacting . Not paranoia. Just Holt turning concern into action because standing still would mean letting fear sit where he can see it.
I step closer. “Did Mac say anything useful?”
He sets the hammer down on the edge of the toolbox and wipes his hand over the back of his neck. “Useful isn’t the word I’d use.”
Something in my stomach tightens.
“Holt.”
He looks past me toward the darkening edge of the sky. “Kenzie’s was seen walking near the beach access road the night of the fire,” he says. “Not enough to charge anything, but enough to make the marshal interested.”
The wind shifts as he says it, lifting the loose strands of my hair and carrying the scent of rain before it gets here.
“And the photograph?” I say.
His expression hardens. “Deputy’s dusting the envelope. Mac asked around. No one at the post office remembers who dropped it.”
Of course they don’t. Kenzie would know better than to make anything easy.
Rook presses against my leg with his whole side, warm and solid and blissfully unconcerned with human complications. I scratch behind his ear absently and watch Holt’s face, the way he keeps scanning past me, beyond me, toward the field and barn and tree line as if he’s checking all of it every few seconds without being obvious about it.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say quietly.
