I brake. My headlights flood the vehicle and for one stupid second I think it's a breakdown—someone stuck on the ice, someone who needs a push. Then the doors open.
Three men. The older one steps into my headlight beam first, and my stomach drops through the floor of the car because I know that face. The man who sat in my waiting room and watched me work through the glass. The man from the clearing.
The one who called Garrett Number Seven.
The younger guy flanks him—the bouncer from Christmas Eve, the one who flinched when Garrett stepped forward in the clearing. A third man stays by the SUV. I don't recognise him. He's big enough that it doesn't matter.
I reach for my phone. The older man is at my window before I can dial.
He doesn't break the glass. He taps it with one knuckle, polite, like he's asking for directions.
"I wouldn't do that, Miss Castell." His voice carries through the window, pleasant and conversational. "We're not here to hurt you. I just need you to step out of the car."
My hand closes around the phone in my lap. My thumb finds the screen.
"If you call someone, this gets more complicated than it needs to be." He tilts his head toward the SUV. "We're going to take a short drive to the cabin. You'll be home in minutes. I just need to have a conversation with my old friend, and he's more likely to listen if you're standing next to me."
Leverage. I'm leverage.
The realisation lands cold and clinical. They don't want me. They want Garrett. I'm the pressure point they're pressing to get him to comply.
I could lock the doors. I could throw the car in reverse and try to back down a mile of narrow forest road in the dark. The third man is already behind my car. I see him in the rearview, his shape blocking the road I came from.
I turn the engine off and I get out.
The older man steps back to give me room. The courtesy of a man who's done this before and knows that calm people cooperate faster than scared ones.
"Phone," he says.
"No."
He studies me for two seconds. Then he nods, like he expected me to say no.
"Fine, you can keep it, but you won't need it."
The younger man opens the rear door of the SUV. I climb in. The seat smells like rental car and cigarette smoke. The third man gets in beside me—close but not touching, a body meant to block the door, not to threaten. The older man takes the passenger seat. The younger one drives.
Four minutes. That's how far the cabin is from where they stopped me. I count the seconds, because counting keeps the fear from settling into my hands where it'll show.
The clearing opens up. The cabin sits dark—no porch light, no smoke, no music. The same dead quiet I expected from a man who hasn't moved in two days.
The SUV stops. The older man gets out and walks to the porch. He climbs the steps like he owns them and knocks on the door, three sharp raps that echo across the frozen clearing.
Nothing.
He knocks again. "Garrett. Or do you still prefer Number Seven?"
The door opens.
Garrett fills the frame the way he fills every frame—shoulders wider than the doorway, horns scraping the header, his body blocking the light from inside. He's still in the clothes I last saw him in. His face is hollow, two days of not eating carved into the angles of his jaw and the shadows under his eyes.
Then he sees me.
The younger man has my arm. A hand above my elbow, firm enough to make the point. Garrett's focus drops to that hand and every line of his body changes. The man disappearing and the fighter stepping into his place.
"Easy." The older man raises both palms, a gesture that would be calming if it came from anyone else. "She's fine and she'll stay fine. I just need five minutes of your time."
Garrett doesn't look at the man. He looks at me. His face asks the question his mouth can't form—did they hurt you—and I shake my head once.
