I open the car door, slide inside, and lock it immediately. And as I pull away from the inn, the headlights cutting across the front of the house, I make one thing very clear in my own mind.
Kenzie didn’t pick a victim. She picked a fight, and she chose the wrong one.
The engine hums low beneath me as I pull onto the road, headlights cutting a narrow path through the dark. The inn disappears behind me in pieces—first the porch, then the windows, then the outline of the roof swallowed by trees.
I tell myself that’s it. That I’m done for the night. That whatever I felt back there—whatever tension settled into my chest—is just leftover adrenaline. A body still catching up to a threat that hasn’t shown itself again.
But the farther I get from the inn, the worse it feels. Like a thread pulling tight somewhere just out of reach.
I adjust my grip on the wheel, trying to shake it off, trying to focus on the road ahead, on the steady rhythm of tires against pavement, on anything that feels real and grounded. It doesn’t work. The feeling lingers.
By the time I reach the turnoff toward Holt’s property, my pulse has picked up without my permission, my senses stretched thin in a way I can’t quite explain.
I slow slightly as I take the turn. The road curves, familiar and quiet, the tree line closing in on either side. Everything looks the same. Everythingshouldfeel the same. But it doesn’t. The air feels different here. Charged.
I crest the small rise just before the property line, and for a second, I think it’s my eyes playing tricks on me. A flicker. Low and faint. Gone before I can focus on it.
I blink, leaning forward slightly, my grip tightening on the wheel. Nothing, just darkness. Just the outline of the pasture stretching beyond the trees.
I exhale slowly. Something is wrong. Instinct overrides logic before I can talk myself out of it.
I press the gas, I’m already too close to turn around.
Chapter Thirty-one – Holt
The call comes just as the light starts to shift. That strange in-between hour where the day hasn’t fully let go, but night is already pressing in at the edges. The sky hangs heavy, bruised from the earlier storm, the air thick with that same charged stillness that never quite settles after something has already gone wrong once.
I’m halfway through rinsing soot from my hands at the kitchen sink when my phone vibrates against the counter.
Hadley.
My stomach drops before I even answer.
“Holt—”
Her voice isn’t loud. It isn’t frantic. It’s controlled in a way that sends a sharp wave of unease through me immediately, because Hadley only sounds like that when she’s forcing herself to stay steady. “What happened?”
“There’s a fire.”
The words land heavy and immediate, pulling every thought into a single, sharp line.
“Where?”
“The barn. Your barn.”
Everything in me locks.
“When?”
“Just now. Lark’s…”
She doesn’t finish, she doesn’t need to, because the second she says Lark’s name, the rest fills in on its own.
I’m moving before the call ends, grabbing my keys, shoving out the door without bothering to shut it behind me. Thetruck engine roars to life beneath my hands, gravel spitting out behind me as I pull onto the drive harder than I should.
The world narrows as I drive. Every instinct sharpened down to one thing: get there.
The sky darkens faster than it should, clouds pulling low and heavy again, the air thick with the promise of another storm. The road blurs past in streaks of gray and green, the familiar stretch of Otter Creek land suddenly feeling too long, too wide, too exposed.
