“You know what it looks like?” she said, voice tight. “It looks like I’m still doing my job while you’re worried about gossip.”
“Tess—”
“No.” Her voice cut clean. “There’s a deputy missing. A woman we swore to find. You either get in line or go back to Asheville. But grow up, Kyle. We don’t have time for this petty crap.”
She pulled free.
The way Scout looked at Kyle could have started a fire.
Burke muttered something about professionalism and cameras and climbed into the truck.
Ridge Trail—Late Afternoon
The snowmobile tore through drift and crust, engine snarling. Powder kicked up behind them in a white tail. The cold stung like needles.
Tessa leaned forward against the wind. Without thinking, she lowered her face close enough to Scout’s back to block the bite.
He felt it.
The warmth through layers.
The memory it carried.
He shifted forward a fraction, just enough to create distance.
Job first.
The ridge opened ahead, gray and buried.
He eased off the throttle. The engine died. The woods went still.
“Shooter was elevated,” he said. “Wind’s lighter along the crest.”
Tessa scanned the untouched white. “Storm rolled hard from the west. Anything light’s buried.”
“Maybe.”
They began the grid anyway.
Snow. Ice. Pine needles. Slow, deliberate sweeps. No wasted motion. No wasted words.
Their boots moved in parallel lines that never quite crossed.
Minutes dragged.
She straightened first. “We’re not going to find casings.”
He didn’t answer.
He was looking past the snow now.
Not at the surface.
At the terrain.
Thirty yards out. High ground. A narrow window between the trees.
She watched the shift happen in him — the way his posture changed when the mountain became a map instead of a landscape.
