Page 90 of Tracking Safety

Jenna felt the truth close around her like a fist.

Dale Harding. He may not have done the dirty work himself, but he could have definitely found people to do it.

Dale, who’d changed her tire in a parking lot her first morning back and looked at her like he already knew something she didn’t. Dale, who’d been circling Refuge Cove for months. Dale, who was fighting for Grace—and who, in less than two hours, would be sitting across a courtroom from all of them with that easy, untroubled smile.

The local trouble and the Barones weren’t two threats. They never had been. They were one machine. Richard had been the seam where they joined, and Dale was the hand that worked it.

Luke stared at Wes, his gaze intense. “You can prove this?”

“I can prove the leak traces to the prison. I can prove Dale’s been visiting.” Wes’s mouth tightened. “I can’t prove what was said in those visits. Not yet. If we move on this before it’s airtight, we tip Richard off, and he goes quiet. We lose the one thread we’ve got.”

“So we pretend to be ignorant?” Jenna asked.

“That’s exactly what we do.” Wes glanced between Jenna and Luke. “You give him no reason to think you know. You let him believe he’s still three steps ahead. It’s the only way.”

The county courthouse stood two stories of old brick with wide stone steps and tall windows. Every legal family matter in this part of the mountains eventually ran through this building. Today that meant Grace.

A week ago Luke wouldn’t have given the area a second look. Now he searched for danger in every shadow without meaning to, the same way Jenna read every room she walked into.

Naomi was here to defend her guardianship of Grace against the man trying to take her. Luke was here as a character witness. Micah was meeting them, though he’d be here in an official capacity. Wes had shown up to offer another set of eyes. And Jenna was here because Luke wanted to keep her safe.

The children were at Refuge Cove. That had been Luke’s call before dawn, and he’d never been surer of one. His mom and Wyatt had agreed to stay with them—and Grace. A guardianship hearing didn’t need a baby in the room.

They climbed the steps toward the front door, the family bunched close, with Wes at the back. Luke didn’t breathe easy until the heavy doors swung shut behind them and the noise of the square cut off.

Inside, the building was cool and dim, and it smelled of old wood and floor polish. They went through security before heading toward the courtroom.

Down the corridor, a bailiff stood outside the courtroom doors. Near him waited a woman in a gray suit with a folder tucked under her arm—the guardian ad litem, Luke guessed, the one the court had appointed to speak for Grace.

Naomi drew a breath and squared her shoulders. Caleb set a hand at the small of her back, and the two of them started toward the courtroom.

It was time for this hearing to start.

Luke prayed this went well.

CHAPTER 37

The hearing was going the way Wes had warned him it might.

Dale’s attorney had gone first, laying out a version of events that was technically true and entirely poisoned. He spoke of a property under active county scrutiny. A construction site that had drawn complaints. A pattern—a regrettable, worrying pattern—of instability.

Then, in a measured and sorrowful voice, he listed all the reasons Grace wasn’t safe with the Kings. The shooting on Main Street this week. The fact that law enforcement had been summoned to Refuge Cove multiple times.

“It simply isn’t a safe environment for a child, Your Honor.” Dale’s attorney sat down, resting his case.

Every word he’d spoken was true. That was the worst part.

Dale had petitioned for custody of Grace as her uncle—Richard’s brother and her blood relative. On paper, a blood uncle outranked a household of people who weren’t related to her at all. The Kings had no claim of blood to Grace. They only had the six months they’d spent loving her.

In the courtroom, Micah sat behind Naomi, close enough to be support and far enough to be proper. He’d come as the man dating her. But he’d also come as the sheriff, and he’d already told the court, in a short and careful statement, that the King family hadn’t caused a single disturbance. They’d simply reported crimes committed against them.

When Kori called Luke to the stand, he took the oath and answered her questions about Refuge Cove—the permits pulled, the inspections passed, the fifteen years he’d spent building structures that didn’t fail the people inside them.

He kept his voice even as he talked about the foundation depth and the electrical sign-off and the county’s own approved plans. He said the truest things he knew.

Then Dale’s attorney rose to cross-examine, and Luke felt the trap before the man opened his mouth.

“Mr. King, is it true a firearm was discharged near members of your family this week?”