Page 71 of Tracking Safety

Micah studied the screen. “Can you pull a still on that frame?”

Caleb tapped a key. The image froze and sharpened slightly—the figure caught mid-stride, face angled down and away from the camera. It wasn’t enough for a positive ID. But the build was right to match Travis.

“It’s Travis,” Caleb announced.

“It’s consistent with Travis.” Micah straightened. “When I leave here, I’m going to head to the Hendersons to have another conversation.”

Luke looked at the frozen image on Caleb’s screen—the figure in the woods.

Enough was enough.

They just couldn’t sit by idly and let someone destroy this place.

Liam came downstairs at eleven.

Jenna was in the sitting room with Cora and Jonah, who’d both migrated from the screened porch and were now engaged in something involving rearranging couch cushions and a set of increasingly complicated rules.

Jenna heard his footsteps on the stairs—heavier than the younger two and more deliberate—and she looked up.

He stopped in the doorway.

He was tall for eight, with Luke’s coloring. Something in his expression was entirely his own—a careful, watchful quality that didn’t belong on a child’s face.

His eyes moved from Cora to Jonah to Jenna. When they reached Jenna, he didn’t look away. Instead, he stared at her the same way his father did when he was deciding something.

“Good morning,” Jenna said.

“Morning.” He moved to the kitchen without stopping.

She listened to him pour himself a glass of juice. Then he opened the pantry and closed it again. He took some cereal to the breakfast bar and ate alone. As he did, Jenna stayed where she was, reminding herself not to push.

The morning arranged itself around her in small, ordinary ways. Jonah knocked over his cushion tower and rebuilt it. Cora revised the rules in her favor. Ruby was doing some laundry, and Naomi was taking care of Grace.

Everything almost felt normal.

At least, it felt like a performance of normal.

The Lab had come in sometime during the morning. Freya. Jenna had heard the name from Ruby, along with the warning that came attached to it—she doesn’t take to people, so don’t take it personally.

She wasn’t one of the dogs Jenna had met—not Hamilton with his husky swagger, not Naomi’s golden, not Wyatt’s search and rescue dog.

This one was a chocolate Lab, her coat the deep brown of turned earth, her ears soft and folded against her head. She held herself like a dog who’d learned not to trust—a little lean, a little too still, watching the world the way a person watched it when they’d stopped expecting it to be kind.

She lay along the far wall now, head on her paws, watching the children rearrange the couch cushions. Jenna didn’t reach for her. She’d learned a long time ago what it cost to be reached for before you were ready.

So she let the dog be. She stayed where she was.

When she looked up again, Freya had moved. Not close. Just a few feet nearer than before, settled into a new spot with her eyes half-open.

Jenna didn’t make anything of it out loud. But she noticed.

Jenna folded a blanket someone had left on the armchair and set it on the back of the couch. She tried not to look at the window every thirty seconds.

She prayed without closing her eyes.

Please, Lord . . . let coming back have been the right thing. Let it not make things worse for them. Let me not have brought something here that destroys what they’ve built.

The back door opened, and Luke stepped inside.