Page 99 of Wild Sanctuary

“Daisy—”

“I’m not leaving, Wyatt. Someone killed my father and yours, and I’m going to find out who. A trashed cabin isn’t going to change that.”

The word “killed” lands between us like a stone in still water. I said it deliberately. I watch him absorb it. Watch the shift happen in real time—not grief, not guilt, but resolve.

The kind with teeth.

“Killed,” he repeats.

“Yes.”

“You believe that.”

“I know that. Dad drove that switchback every day for years. He knew every curve and every soft shoulder. And he was with Bill, who’d driven it even longer. Two men who knew that road in their sleep, and they went off it on the same day that you happened to get a phone call that kept you from being in the truck.” I let that sit. “That’s not an accident. That’s a plan.”

Wyatt stands and walks to the window. He puts both hands on the frame and drops his head between his arms.

I wait. I’ve learned when to push and when to let the silence do the work.

When he turns around, the man looking at me is not the one who was trying to end things five minutes ago. The guilt is still there because that’s who he is at his core, but there’s resolve beneath it now, and it makes hope flutter to life in my chest.

“Alma Cutter,” he states.

“Alma Cutter.” I repeat her name on a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

“What do you need?”

This is not the conversation I expected to be having this morning. Twenty minutes ago he was trying to push me away. Now he’s standing at the window asking me what I need as though he’s ready to tear Blackstone Creek apart board by board.

“I need you to stop trying to protect me from yourself.”

He’s quiet for a long time. I can see it working through him, the war between the man who wants to shut this down and the man who just found out his father might have been murdered.

“You’re not going back to that cabin,” he says finally. Not a question.

“Obviously.”

“You’re staying here. In the house. Where I can—” He stops and reworks. “Where it’s safe.”

“Fine.”

“And when you go to see Alma Cutter, I’m coming with you.”

“Wyatt—”

“That’s not up for discussion.”

I hold his gaze. There he is. Not the man who was trying to retreat five minutes ago. The one who runs a ranch and a family and has never backed down from anything that mattered.

“Okay.”

He nods then looks at me standing there in his shirt like the practicality just hit him. “You need clothes.”

“Everything I have is in the cabin.”

“I’ll send June down to grab what she can once the sheriff clears it.” He picks up his boots and his belt. Pauses at the door. Doesn’t look back. “I’ll make coffee.”

He walks out, and I stand there in his room in his shirt in the early morning light, and I don’t spin it. I don’t dress it up. I don’t tell myself it’s fine.