"He always is."
The road curves sharply, and the headlights sweep across a stand of pine trees. For a second I think I see something move between the trunks, a shadow, a shift, nothing I can name, and yet my hand flies to the door handle before I can stop it.
Trenton's eyes catch the movement. "What?"
"Nothing. Just thought I saw…" I trail off because I have no idea what it was.
He doesn't tell me it was nothing, he adjusts the rearview mirror to get a better angle on the road behind us, checks the side mirror, then resumes his scan of the road ahead.
"We're not alone on this road," he says quietly. "We have eyes front and back. If there's something between those trees, someone will see it."
I know he's right. The convoy stretches out behind us. Matthew, then Carter, then Kane and Sydney. My father up ahead, my mother beside him. Full of people who would lay down anything for us.
But the image of the deer head comes back. The clean cut. The dead eyes. The note.
Your time is running out.
"Trenton."
"Yeah."
"When you find him, don't make it quick."
He doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. His hand finds mine again on the console, and he holds it all the way to the cabin.
The road narrows to gravel, then dirt, and the trees close in on both sides until the headlights can barely cut a path through the dark. My father's brake lights flare red ahead of us, and Trenton slows, letting the convoy compress as we approach a gap in the tree line.
"There," I say, spotting the cabin through the pines.
It's smaller than I remember from Matthew's descriptions, a single-story log structure with a wraparound porch and a stone chimney that rises against the sky like a sentinel. The windows are dark except for one, where the soft glow of a lamp burns behind drawn curtains. Matthew's dad must have left it on before we arrived.
Trenton pulls the SUV to a stop in the small clearing beside the cabin. The other vehicles slot in around us, headlights sweeping across the tree trunks before they cut out one by one. The sudden darkness is the kind that presses against your skin and for a moment, I can't see anything except the shape of the cabin and the single lit window.
Matthew's truck door opens and closes. Boots meet gravel. Then his voice, low and close. "I've got the key. Let me clear it first."
I hear him move up the porch steps, the creak of wood under his weight, the scrape of something being lifted—the rail, where his father said the key would be. A pause. Then the click of a lock turning.
I look in the back seat. Charlie hasn't stirred. Her face is slack with deep sleep, her unicorn still pressed to her cheek, one small hand curled loosely around the seat belt strap. She looks so small back there. So far from everything that happened tonight.
"Morgan." Trenton's voice is quiet. "Let me carry her. You grab the bag."
I don't argue. My arms feel like they've been replaced with something that doesn't quite belong to me, trembling and weak and useless. So I nod.
Trenton moves around the car with an unhurried grace that never leaves him, even now, even here. He opens Charlie's door carefully, leaning in, and gathers her up against his chest with one smooth motion. She makes a small sound, not quite awake, not quite asleep, and her head drops against his shoulder. Her unicorn stays tucked between them.
My mother appears at my window. "Everything okay?"
"Charlie's asleep. We're getting her inside."
She nods and moves back, giving us space. I grab the small backpack from the floorboard, it's just essentials, the few things we packed in those frantic minutes after the safe room, and step out into the cold mountain air.
The cabin smells like woodsmoke and pine resin even before we reach the door. Matthew is already inside, moving through the rooms with a flashlight beam that sweeps corners and checking windows. I hear him opening and closing doors: bedroom, bathroom, the small back room that must serve as storage.
"Clear," he calls, and his voice echoes off the log walls.
Trenton carries Charlie through the doorway and into the main room. The lamp by the window casts everything in warm amber: a worn leather sofa, a stone fireplace with kindling already stacked, a braided rug on the hardwood floor. It's small. It's safe. It feels like the kind of place that has been keeping secrets for a long time.
"Bedroom's back here," Matthew says, appearing in the doorway at the rear of the cabin. "I'll get the bed ready."
