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Minutes pass. Stillness hangs heavy.

The engine revs. Tires spit gravel. The taillights glow like embers before they vanish into the trees.

They didn’t come to talk. They came to warn.

Inside, the air feels different, off-balance, like something shifted while I wasn’t looking. I sweep through the house, checking doors, glancing toward the windows. Nothing’s broken. Nothing’s moved. But the feeling stays.

Upstairs, I push open my bedroom door, and stop.

Nothing’s out of place. Laptop, still open. Journal. Photo.

And then I see it.

A page from my father’s Bible, laid dead center on my bed.

Stop digging.

Underlined twice. The ink still damp at the corners.

My stomach turns. Someone was here. Walked this floor. Saw my father. Touched my things, and left a message.

I collect the journal and shove it under a loose board in the closet floor, the emergency hiding spot I made weeks ago. I don’t touch the laptop. Not yet. It’s still open, still running the video of Trent Miller mid-sermon, his mouth paused mid-word. I tap the spacebar. The screen freezes on his face.

Sacrifice.

I stare at it, then close the lid slowly.

They tried to scare me.

But they made a mistake.

They let me know I’m close.

I reach for the page on the bed, fold it clean down the middle, and slide it into the desk drawer.

“You’re next,” I whisper.

The hunt continues.

And this time, I’m not the prey.

CHAPTER

FORTY-FIVE

It took me six weeks to find him and four days to confirm his schedule. On the fifth day, I’m here. The town of Harrow is frostbitten. Bones of a place. The streets are quiet, crusted in a thin sheen of old snow and fresh ice, where tire tracks run like veins through frozen slush. Smoke curls from chimneys like ghostly confessions, and every window is shut against the cold. But the church? It still stands polished and proud at the center of it all, whitewashed and smug, like winter couldn’t touch it.

It rises from the earth like denial incarnate.

I park across the street, the engine idling under me as the heater tries and fails to warm the air. The windshield fogs at the edges. My fingers twitch on the steering wheel, the leather stiff and unyielding. The ache in my bones hasn’t left since the night at Levi’s. Maybe it never will.

I kill the engine and step out.

The wind bites immediately. A deep, bone-crawling kind of cold. My breath hangs in the air, visible proof of every inhale, every exhale. Gravel crunches beneath my boots, brittle and sharp. My limbs protest the movement, but I cross the icy street, hands buried in my coat pockets, pulse thudding steady.

The church doors stand open, golden light spilling into the snow like spilled warmth. The scent of wood polish and incense filters out, familiar and cloying. A woman in a heavy floral coat stands at the threshold, her smile too wide, breath fogging in small puffs.

“Welcome,” she says. “Are you visiting today?”