Page 94 of Tracking Safety

“We’ll run a box,” Wes said. “Left at the stop sign, then another left, then a third. Four turns, and we’re back where we started. Most drivers won’t make that loop. If he’s still with us at the end of it, he’s on us.”

Luke worked the turns. Left, then left again.

The sedan stayed with them through the first turn.

Then, at the second, it didn’t.

Luke watched the mirror as the gray car slowed at the intersection behind them, sat there a beat—and then turned the other way.

Luke let out a breath. “Did we lose him?”

“No.” Wes’s voice had gone hard. “We didn’t lose him. He left.”

The distinction landed like a dropped stone.

“The Barones and their lackeys already know where I’m staying,” Jenna murmured as she stared out the windshield. “That guy wasn’t trying to find out where we were going.”

“The driver was making sure we knew he could.” Wes finished the thought for her. “That’s a message, not a tail. Same as the photo. They’re telling you there’s nowhere you go they can’t reach.”

“Then why didn’t you go after him?” Luke heard the edge in his own voice and didn’t bother to hide it. “Get a plate. Run him down.”

“With Jenna in the truck? No.” Wes didn’t hesitate. “You don’t leave the person you’re protecting to chase the man hunting her. That’s how people get hurt.”

He supposed that made sense. It did make sense. He just wanted some answers, however.

“I got a partial plate,” Wes continued. “I’m calling Micah now. He can run it. Though if it’s like the last one, it’ll come back stolen out of some lot two counties over.”

Luke’s jaw clenched until it ached. “Wes, stay on us all the way back.”

“Already planned on it. I’ll loop Micah in and catch up.”

Luke ended the call and pulled the truck back toward the road that climbed home. He kept his eyes moving—the mirrors, the cross streets, the cars at the gas station as they passed—and found his hands had gone tight on the wheel again.

Neither of them said anything else.

There wasn’t anything left to say that the afternoon hadn’t already said for them.

So they drove the winding two-lane up toward Refuge Cove in silence, the gate and the gold evening light still a long way off—and the weight of being hunted riding in the cab between them the whole way.

CHAPTER 39

By the time Jenna and Luke drove back through the gate, Jenna felt every hour of the day in her bones.

The rest of the drive from town had been quiet. Luke had kept his eyes on the road and his hands at ten and two. Jenna had watched the muscle work in his jaw, and she’d known he was still back in that courthouse replaying everything he’d said and every conversation.

The kids spilled onto the porch the second the truck stopped—Cora first, then Jonah, with Liam following at his more careful pace. His mom appeared in the doorway, a dish towel over her shoulder.

She walked over to meet them as they climbed from the truck. “Naomi called. They stopped for some ice cream. But she gave me the update.”

“So you know the hearing got continued—two weeks,” Luke said.

“I do.”

But they all knew two weeks wasn’t a win. It was a stay of execution.

Jenna climbed the porch steps, and Cora wrapped both arms around her waist and held on. Jenna pressed a hand to her daughter’s hair and tried to let the warmth of her little girl thaw some of the cold the day had packed into her bones.

While she stood there holding Cora, her gaze fell on Freya.