“We’ll find her,” Burke said. “We start now. You hear me? We start now. You stay sharp—she's counting on us.”
Behind them, engines rumbled up the gravel. Radios crackled. Boots hit the porch. The metallic slam of doors and the distant bark of a K-9 unit cut through the morning air.
The investigation had begun.
Scout pushed off the railing and followed Burke back inside.
He could move now.
Every oath stayed locked behind his teeth, ready to be broken if he had to. Whatever line he crossed to get her back, he’d live with it.
He just had to make sure she lived long enough for the choice to matter.
Sheriff Burke Scott
From the porch, Burke watched the yard fill—cruisers, K-9 units, tech vans jockeying for space in the gravel. The scene was all motion: orders barked, evidence bags passing hand to hand, medics loading Sara into the ambulance.
It should have felt like progress.
Instead, all he could see were the empty spaces.
Caitlin on that mountain.
Sara on that ridge.
Now Tessa—gone from a cabin that should have been safe.
Three hard hits in as many weeks.
And this time, it wasn’t just one of his deputies. Raleigh would already be on the line—an NC SBI agent taken in his county. The cavalry was coming—with oversight, questions, and no patience for how mountains swallowed evidence.
He flexed his hand once, knuckles tightening along the old scar.
A sheriff was supposed to bring his people home. Not watch them vanish on his watch—not with the state breathing down his neck and his own county looking to him to fix it.
“We’re not losing another one,” he said under his breath—more promise than prayer.
Then he squared his shoulders and headed back inside.
Raleigh could bring all the brass they wanted.
The hunt started here.
And it started now.
35
Special Agent Tessa Quinn
Consciousness crawled its way back. When her vision finally sharpened, she made sense of the lamp in the corner.
The light was angled in from above through a frosted pane, along cream walls and white beams. Skylights.
Her body felt wrong when she woke—limbs heavy, eyes gritty, head thick. A clock ticked nearby, slow and even. Then touch: the slide of something soft against her skin—cashmere, not state-issue, not hers.
She let the inventory finish before she moved. A quilt—folded. A faint smell of cedar, threaded with something sterile and sharp.
Memory surfaced: Sam Cooke on the speaker, Tallulah’s yelp, the basement stairs. The shadow. Hands.
