Page 64 of Tracking Safety

Something eased in her chest.

She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t smile or reach for him or let any of what she was feeling move across her face.

Instead, she looked at him and held onto the word like it was something solid.

Before.

After Jenna went back inside, Luke stood outside alone a moment.

The cold helped ground him. It always did. He stood in it a moment longer than he needed to, his hands in his pockets as he looked out at the dark property.

He’d thought Jenna was leaving. He’d been certain of it.

He’d seen the quiet way she was moving through the house, and in the span of about four seconds his entire chest had caved in. Some part of him had already put it together before his mind caught up.

And he’d been wrong.

Jenna had only been going outside for air.

He pressed the back of his neck with one hand and looked at the woods in the distance.

He’d asked how could you? before Jenna had said a single word. Before she’d had a chance to explain, he’d already decided what he was seeing—and he’d been so certain, so completely, bitterly certain, that the certainty had felt like proof.

That wasn’t fair. He knew it wasn’t fair even as it was happening, and he’d done it anyway.

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

The truth was that his anger wasn’t really about tonight. It wasn’t about footsteps in a hallway. It wasn’t about her moving quietly through the house. It was the same anger it had always been. All it had needed was a dark hallway and thirty seconds of misread evidence.

That wasn’t Jenna’s fault.

He turned that over, and the honest part of him acknowledged it plainly. She hadn’t given him a reason to think she was running. She’d told him she wasn’t leaving.

Still some part of him had needed another few seconds to believe it.

That was the part he had to reckon with.

She’d understood what he thought he was seeing, and instead of arguing, instead of getting angry at him for getting it wrong, she’d simply shown him the evidence. Like she knew she was going to have to earn his trust back one small moment at a time and had already made her peace with that.

He didn’t know whether to feel grateful for that or ashamed of himself. Probably both if he were honest.

The cold had worked its way into his jacket. He should go back inside.

But he didn’t move.

He needed to remember that tomorrow was another day of threats that had to be managed and children who needed protecting and a professional somewhere out there who might not miss a second time. His anger had a place, but it would have to wait its turn.

He looked up at the dark sky in the distance.

I can’t do this alone, God. I’ve been doing it alone, and it’s cost me things I’m still counting. I need You in all of it—in the anger and the fear.

Luke wasn’t sure he’d call his words a prayer exactly. They were more like an honest accounting, directed somewhere useful.

He stood there another moment.

As he did, his gaze drifted toward the gate.

A dark car slowly drove by the gate.