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Ryder’s grip on the wood groans. “What happened to his belongings? The police never recovered anything at the scene. No phone, no jacket, no shoes. It always struck me as fucking odd that Noah didn’t have his phone on him when they found his body in the ditch. If they took it, where did it go?”

The air in my throat freezes. The trap snaps shut, and it’s as if an invisible wire is tightening around my neck.

I have to answer him just right.

“B-Bryan got rid of them.”

“How? Where?”

But before I can form another word, Ryder’s patience completely shatters.

He pulls his hand back and hurls a brutal, bone-shattering punch straight into the heavy wooden beam right beside my ear.

The impact explodes through the barn like a gunshot, sending a shower of splinters and ancient dust raining down on my head.

I flinch hard, my eyes snapping shut as the vibrations rattle through my skull.

“You’re lying!” he roars, his face inches from mine, his dark eyes ablaze with pure, unadulterated fury. “You’re fucking lying to me, Harmony. Noah called me from that road. He called me from his phone an hour before he died. So, don’t sit there and tell me Bryan took it before you abandoned him!”

Panic surges through my veins, violent and blinding. My heart hammers against my sternum so hard it aches.

He knows. He’s known all along because Noah had called him. Told him.

“I... I remembered some of the details wrong!” I keep my voice high, tight, and breathless as I press my back flatter against the post. “I swear to God, Ryder! You’re scaring me, I’m trying to remember⁠—!”

“Try harder!” His chest heaves against mine, the raw heat of his anger burning my skin.

The words spill out of me in a desperate, frantic torrent. “We drove off. We left him in the dark and drove half a mile down the highway. But then I asked who had his phone—because I wanted to delete the photos of Marcus and me before giving him his phone back the next day—Bryan cursed, threw his hands up, and said he forgot to grab it from his pocket when they dumped him.”

Ryder goes completely still, his heavy breathing the only sound echoing in the massive, dark space. However, his glare tells me he’s waiting for me to finish before he decides what type of punishment to dole out.

“So, we turned around and drove back to where we dropped him.

Tre jumped out of the car while we were idling on the shoulder.

Noah was sitting in the grass, trying to get a signal on his phone.

Tre punched him right in the face, knocked him flat on his back, and snatched the phone out of his hand. He told Noah that if he spoke a single word about what he found out about me and Marcus... there would be worse waiting for him than a walk in the rain,” I whisper, my eyes wide and pleading as I look up into his dark gaze.

The barn falls silent, a suffocating quiet that echoes a haunted past.

Ryder stares down at me for three agonizing seconds, searching every line of my face, drinking in the genuine terror dripping from my pores.

He steps back with excruciating slowness.

He releases his hold on the beam, taking two full paces backward into the circle of firelight.

The asphyxiating pressure on my chest lifts instantly. Cold, damp air rushes back into my lungs, and relief floods through my entire body, sweet and dizzying.

I made it. I satisfied his morbid curiosity just enough to keep his hands off my neck.

Ryder turns his back on me, his long, muscular legs gleaming under the flickers of the dying fire as he reaches down toward his discarded jeans lying in the straw.

I snatch his folding knife from the straw, slipping it down into the leather of my boot before he even notices it’s missing.

There’s zero chance of me getting anywhere near my father’s hunting knife—not with Ryder’s massive frame standing between me and the weapon.

After grabbing the knife, I glance at the barn door.