Page 110 of Tracking Safety

The man appeared older and smaller than the person who’d run through her nightmares. Yet something about him still terrified her.

He stood near a car, a driver standing beside the door, waiting for his next command.

As Vito stood there, he studied her, unhurried and satisfied, as if the fire eating up the slope behind him were someone else’s problem. As if he were untouchable.

He’d gotten this far. Maybe he was.

“Ellie.” He said her old name almost like a welcome. “You’ve cost me a great deal of time.”

Hearing her old name made her breath catch. Smoke caught in her throat a half-second later, and she coughed it out. “Vito.”

“You need to come home. We’ll talk about the rest there.” He nodded at the car. “Get in.”

If Jenna got into that vehicle, she’d never be seen alive again. She knew that without a doubt. Her kids would lose their mother—again.

She couldn’t let that happen.

Instead, she held her ground and made herself look at him—really look at him, the way she’d been too afraid to do for years.

“I heard you were sick. That you didn’t even know your own family anymore.” Heat pressed against the side of Jenna’s face, but she ignored it and kept her voice steady. “That was the story, wasn’t it? You planted those seeds so no one would see this coming.”

Something flickered behind his eyes. Satisfaction. He’d wanted her to know how thoroughly he’d fooled them all.

“A man my age is allowed to be underestimated.” His mouth curved. “It’s the only advantage left to me.”

“You came yourself. All the money, all the people you own . . . and you drove out to the mountains of Virginia yourself. For me.”

“For a loose end.” His voice cooled as his eyes narrowed. “I don’t leave them. I never have. Roderick learned that. You’ll forgive me if I see this through in person.”

Roderick. The name landed in her chest like a stone dropping into deep water. Roderick learned that. Did his words mean what she thought?

“You said Roderick’s name as if he was a thing you handled.” She studied his face. “He was a person, Vito. He had a name before he was a problem you solved.”

“He had a name when he made his choices too.” Nothing moved in his expression. “So did you.”

Behind him, the fire found the road. The glow became a wall.

Jenna’s throat went dry at the sight of it. How were they going to get out of this?

“Mr. Barone.” Sutter’s voice lost its flatness. “The road’s being engulfed. We need to move. Now.”

Vito didn’t turn around. He took in the fire the way he might take in an associate who’d disappointed him—like a problem that would correct itself if he simply waited it out.

“The road’s gone,” Jenna said, the truth of it steadying her, somehow. “That’s the only way down, and it’s already burning. You didn’t trap me here, Vito. You trapped yourself.”

For a moment Vito just looked at her. The fire didn’t know who he was. It didn’t care that he’d come himself, that he’d crossed all this way, that the woman in front of him was the loose end he’d waited so long to sever.

The fire had reduced his plan to ashes.

There would be no clean drive home. Whatever he wanted from her, he had minutes to get it. They were all trapped on the same shrinking patch of ground.

For the first time in all the years she’d known him, Vito Barone had literally run out of road.

Luke broke right along the wall of flame, hunting a seam.

There wasn’t one. The fire claimed every exit route, and the heat off it drove him back a step for every two he took.

Caleb grabbed his arm and shouted something the roar ate whole. Luke shook him off.