“Raines,” she agreed.
He reached behind him and grabbed a topo map off the back of the couch, spreading it across the coffee table.
“I was looking at this earlier,” he said. “Lauren mentioned that train twice a day—ten and seven. So…” He tapped three spots. “Sinclair’s here. Keller’s over here.”
His finger paused.
“But Raines? He’s practically on top of the tracks.”
Tessa leaned in, shoulder brushing his.
They both looked up at the same moment.
Neither moved.
Scout wiped his hands on a rag, then on his jeans, like he could scrub off the distance between them. “Anyway. That’s what I’ve got so far.”
The distance hit harder than she wanted to admit. But she hadn’t driven up this mountain to lose her nerve.
Sam Cooke rolled into “That’s Where It’s At.”
“Sit,” he said. “We’ll map the morning.”
She sat. He took the chair opposite. They walked through the beats—questions, timing, how to keep Sinclair away from Margot.
When the talking stopped, the room wasn’t empty. It was full—of unsaid things, unspent questions, and the weight of the night in the cabin during the blizzard that neither of them had really touchedsince Kyle Denton showed up and kissed her the next morning like nothing had changed.
He set his bottle down, voice lower. “You didn’t have to drive up here to tell me this.”
“No,” she said softly. “I didn’t.”
He stood. She rose too, almost at the same moment, as if pulled by the same current.
“I want to talk about Kyle,” she said.
He shook his head hard. “Tessa, I don’t want to talk about Kyle. I’ve had about all the Kyle Denton I can take.”
She flinched at the name, but didn’t back off. “You never let me finish.”
“That’s because it’s always the same conversation.”
“No,” she snapped. “It isn’t. And you never stay long enough to hear that.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, fingers digging in. “Fine. Say what you came here to say.”
She stepped closer, voice steady.
“It was over long before it ended. Kyle and I were done before I ever came back to Sylva for this case. After Caitlin’s case—after everything that came with it—he walked out on Thanksgiving night. And I was relieved.”
Her voice softened, but didn’t break.
“He couldn’t handle my title, my rank, my salary. Everything was a competition. And when he showed up here and kissed me the morning after the cabin—after you and I—he was trying to stake a claim he’d already lost.”
A beat.
“I felt something that night. I think you did too.”
For a long moment, he didn’t move.
