Chapter 10 Wren
Wren
He kisses the back of my head like an apology before he leaves.
“You stay inside,” Hale says, voice low and precise. “Lock every door. Don’t open it for anyone but me. Text me if you need anything. Don’t go outside.”
I nod because I know the rules by now. I know the cadence of his orders. He lifts his hand at the door like he wants to touch me one more time and doesn’t, and the breath I’ve been holding for the last few days leaks out of me in a hot, stupid little sound.
“You’ll come back,” I tell him, the wish riding the edge of a question.
He slides his hand into mine in a brutal, possessive squeeze. “I always come back.”
He turns, shoulders squared, and walks to the truck. He doesn’t look back when the tailpipe coughs to life.
The driveway crunches under tires. For a beat after the sound of the truck fades, the cabin is a hard, ringing silence. I stand in the doorway until the last echo of Hale’s engine dies somewhere in the trees, then pad back inside and lock the deadbolt with fingers that feel foreign and clumsy.
Everything in me wants to run after him. To throw myself into the cab and refuse to let him go hunting ghosts without me. But he’s right—he’s the hunter. He has men calling in leads. I’m the thing he’s protecting, and tonight that has to be enough.
I try to busy myself. I wash yesterday’s dishes, fold the flannel he left on the chair, re-stack the firewood until my arms burn.
I tidy the medicine cabinet like there’s some married version of me waiting to emerge from the clutter.
I tell myself that if I make the cabin look lived-in and ordinary, maybe the world will behave and the dark will keep to the trees.
Once, I check my phone. No bars. Of course not—the towers are thin out here; Hale told me that. He said the satellite would ping him if I texted, but he took the sat phone with him. I feel naked without it, like I’m operating on instinct.
Time moves wrong when he isn’t here. Minutes stretch into elastic.
Every small sound—owl, wind, a branch scratching a window—makes my nipples tighten and my stomach go cold.
I rehearse my safety plan like a prayer: lock the doors, check the windows, stay in the room with the deadbolt, keep the light off if anyone comes near.
I light a candle anyway because the lamp’s light is too clean. Candlelight blurs the edges of everything. It makes the cabin look soft and forgiving and very, very small.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed, hands wrapped around the ceramic mug Hale insisted would warm my fingers, when it happens.
A crash, like someone tearing a wooden table across the porch.
The sound is too close to be an animal. My mug slips from my hands and shatters against the floor, hot tea spraying across the quilt.
Heat blooms up my shins and I drop to my knees because my body knows what danger sounds like before my brain does.
Adrenaline opens a path under my skin. I move without thinking—grab the flashlight from the nightstand, fling the candle into a metal tray, and slide to the bathroom.
The vanity door is already half closed from when Hale left; I shove it all the way and pull the latch.
The closet door clicks. The bathroom is small, cramped, a good hiding place.
There’s a bathtub, a shower curtain, a low window that’s bolted and frosted.
The toilet is tall and the sink cramped.
My chest hammers. My breath comes in gasps that sound too loud in the tiny room.
I lock the bathroom door. I crouch on the edge of the tub, flashlight in my lap, everything in me sharpened to a point. My phone is in my back pocket, screen dark. I pull it out like a talisman. One bar. No signal. Of course. Of course.
I whisper Hale’s name like a talisman, because I don’t know what else to do. “Hale,” I breathe, “Hale, where are you?”
No answer. Nothing but my own pulse and the hollow howl of the wind through the trees.
Then—footsteps. Heavy. Close. Deliberate. Someone stomps on the porch as if they own it, as if they’ve practiced the sound to make it sound like authority.
My mouth goes dry. I press my back flat to the cool tile and try to make myself small, to disappear into the smell of bleach and lavender soap.
I picture all the places he could be hiding; I picture my father’s hollow cheekbones and the promise Hale made.
I picture Hale’s warning look—don’t open the door.
A boot thuds against the outside of the bathroom wall. The vibration makes the mirror tremble. I suck in a breath so fast I almost choke.
“Wren!” A voice, close and jagged. Not Hale. Not Nate. Not Micah. Liam.
My stomach drops to somewhere cold and raw. Panic spikes hot and bitter. He’s inside the perimeter.
“Hello?” His tone is mock-pleasant, like it's only a neighbor on the porch. “I know you’re in there. Come out. Let’s talk.”
I don’t move. I can’t. I keep imagining the SD card in my pocket, tiny and stupid and terrible. He wants it. He’s hunted me for it. If he finds me with it…
My hands clam up on the flashlight. The metal is cold. I think of the gun on Hale’s nightstand, where he keeps it in that locked cabinet. He told me not to touch it unless I had to. If I run, I’ll get it. If I run, he’ll see me.
There’s a new sound now—kicking. A hard, practiced heel against wood. The outer door takes the first blows like a man testing skin. Then the porch rail splits under a boot. My knees want to quake out from under me.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Liam calls. “You don’t want to make this hard.”
The lock splinters.
The door buckles like a body forced open. I hear wood screaming. My breath is a ragged little animal in my throat. This is not a scene in a movie where the hero finds a way out. There is nowhere to go. The latch gives with a long, ugly crack.
The bathroom door—someone slams into the wall, so close the tiles shiver.
My mind is blank for a second, and then I’m running on pure animal instincts. I shove the medicine cabinet open, wrench out the first thing my fingers touch—an extra roll of gauze, a stub of antiseptic. This feels stupid, inadequate. But I tie the gauze around my wrist like some small sacrament.
A shadow hits the frosted glass of the bathroom window, and then a hand wraps around the edge of the door. Metal scrapes. A guttural curse. Then the lock—someone twists, and the latch snaps.
The door crashes inward with a force that makes the mirror above the sink shatter.
Glass sprinkles across my feet. The man in the doorway is there, staring.
He’s tall, not somebody I recognize. He smells like cheap cigarettes and oil.
For a heartbeat I can’t see his face—just a blur of movement and a boot coming at the tub.
He grabs me by the shoulder hard enough to bruise. “Get up,” he hisses. His fingers dig nails into my skin. Pain flares.
I fight like a wild animal. I kick, scream, claw at his face. My nails find his cheekbone and he curses, more surprise than pain. He slaps me across the face so hard it stars white and red in my vision.
“Shut up,” he says. “You’re making this messy.”
“You’re—”
He pins my arm across my back in a way that makes my shoulder pop. Pain explodes, bright and blinding. He lifts me like I’m nothing and slings me over his shoulder like a sack.
My mouth is full of his jacket, and I bite as hard as I can. He hums with the impact and jerks me harder. My phone skitters across the tiles and slams into the wall, screen spider-webbed and useless.
I try to scream for Hale. To scream for Nate, Micah, anyone. My voice is already hoarse. The world tilts. The door swings open because someone—somehow—has smashed it all the way through. Moonlight slices through the room and and I see another man, standing near the door.
It’s Liam.
He looks like a man who’s been starving and found a banquet he doesn’t intend to share. A grin slices his face. “Gotcha,” he says, and it feels like the cabin is yanked into two parts—before and after.
The other man carries me out into the night. The cold cuts my skin raw. The wood of the porch scrapes my back. Through the trees, the sky is a black smear. I feel the world tilt away from me, like a planet spinning out of orbit.
“Get her in the back,” Liam barks to his friend.
“Don’t worry,” the man says in my ear, close enough that I can feel his breath against my cheek. “We’re going to have some fun with you.”
I bite him again, and this time, there’s no gentle catch of surprise—only a growl and a tighter grip. My jaw throbs. I taste copper and defeat.
As he hauls me into the back of a truck, Liam laughs.
“I’ve been looking for you.” He searches me, pulling the SD card out of my pocket. “I’ve been looking for this.”
“You won’t get away with this,” I tell him, angry that this is happening at all.
Liam and his friend just laugh, and drive away into the night, taking me with them.