Chapter 27
twenty-seven
She reached for him and found empty sheets.
Rainey’s hand hit cold cotton where Evander’s chest should have been. She opened her eyes. The guest room held the gray pre-dawn light, pale and thin through the window, and the space beside her was rumpled and warm and completely vacant.
“Evander?”
No answer. The house around her was quiet.
Tilly stood at the bedroom door, her blocky frame silhouetted against the hallway, one ear up.
She’d been lying at the foot of the bed when Rainey fell asleep.
Now she faced the door, awake and alert, her posture the same one Rainey had watched her hold all week on the mountain when something outside demanded attention.
Rainey sat up. The quilt fell away from her bare shoulders. She reached for the flannel shirt Evander had pulled off her hours ago and dragged it on, buttoning it with fingers that didn’t want to cooperate.
The note sat on the pillow where his head should have been.
Nessie’s stationery. A cheerful cartoon coffee cup in the corner, absurd against the four lines of his handwriting.
Stay with River. Trust Brandt. I’m leaving Tilly with you. She’ll take care of you until I come back.
She read it three times. The words didn’t change.
Tilly waited at the door, watching her, not moving.
Rainey crumpled the paper in her fist. The sound of it — that small, definitive crunch — lit something in her chest that went from cold to hot in the space of a breath.
He’d left.
He’d fucked her until she couldn’t see straight, held her while she fell asleep, and then walked out the door before dawn because he’d decided — again — that his judgment about what kept people safe was better than anyone else’s.
She threw the crumpled note. It hit the wall and bounced into the corner.
Tilly didn’t flinch.
Rainey stood up. The anger moved through her body like something with its own pulse, warming her skin, tightening her hands.
She pulled on jeans from the pile Mariah had left, found socks, shoved her feet into boots.
The guitar sat in its case by the wall. The notebook lay open on the nightstand where she’d left it before falling asleep, the page still showing the crossed-out lyric.
Past the last good road, past where the signal dies.
She’d drawn a line through it yesterday while sitting on the porch with Evander three feet away. The new line sat underneath, half-formed, something about belonging she hadn’t finished because finishing it meant committing to the idea that the cabin wasn’t just somewhere to hide.
She closed the notebook. Hard. Couldn’t look at it.
He’d been lying beside her while she worked on a song about staying. He’d been listening to her rewrite a song about escape into a song about belonging, and the whole time he’d been packing a bag in his head.
Tilly whined softly at the door.
Rainey grabbed her jacket from the chair. Checked the pockets: phone, the spare key to her car that Brandt had returned, a hair tie. Not much. She didn’t need much.
She looked at Tilly. The dog stood square in the doorway, her dark eyes fixed on Rainey’s face with an intensity that felt like accusation. He left me too.
“Come on,” Rainey said.
Tilly moved.
The house was silent. No one else awake at this hour, or if they were, they were staying quiet about it.
Rainey moved through the hallway, down the stairs, past the kitchen where Johanna’s coffee pot had just started its morning gurgle.
The front door opened without a sound. She stepped onto the porch into air so cold it burned her lungs.
The yard sat empty. Gray light, no color yet, the mountains a dark mass against the eastern sky. No movement from the bunkhouse. No lights in the barn except the single security bulb over the main door.
She crossed the yard toward the equipment shed where Walker kept the ranch vehicles. Her breath plumed white. Tilly moved at her heel, close, her shoulder brushing Rainey’s calf with every step.
She’d take the UTV. Keys would be in it or hanging nearby. She knew the route to Evander’s cabin — not perfectly, but well enough from his descriptions. Up the east ridge, follow the game trail, cut northwest where the pines thinned. Three hours if she pushed.
She could catch him before he reached the tree line.
The equipment shed door stood half-open. Rainey reached for it.
“Hey.”
She turned. Gemma stood at the corner of the barn, wrapped in a fleece jacket, her blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She had a travel mug in one hand and the easy, alert posture of someone who’d been up for a while.
“You’re out early,” Gemma said.
Rainey didn’t answer immediately. Her hand stayed on the shed door. Tilly pressed against her leg, watching Gemma with the steady attention Rainey had come to recognize as the dog’s baseline setting for strangers.
“Evander left,” Rainey said. No point hiding it.
Gemma’s expression softened. “I know. I heard his truck.”
“Truck? He doesn’t have a truck here.”
“One of the ranch ones.” Gemma took a sip from her mug. “He took it about twenty minutes ago. Headed east.”
Rainey stared at her. “You saw him leave.”
“I was already up. Couldn’t sleep.” Gemma shrugged. “River snores like a chainsaw. Sometimes I just… wander.”
It tracked. River did snore.
“I’m going after him,” Rainey said.
Gemma didn’t look surprised. She nodded like she’d expected it. “You know the way to his place?”
“Enough.”
“There’s a back route. Cuts the ridge lower, comes up behind the cabin from the south. Shaves off at least forty minutes.” Gemma set her mug on the barn rail. “I can show you. I’ve been out that way with River a couple times. He likes to ride the eastern trails.”
Rainey hesitated. The anger in her chest was still hot, still pushing her toward motion, but something in Gemma’s offer gave her pause.
“Why would you help me?” Rainey asked.
Gemma’s smile came quick. “Because River would want me to. And because the man you’re chasing is an idiot if he thinks walking away from you solves anything.” She picked up her mug. “Besides, I’ve got nothing better to do at five in the morning. Might as well prevent a tragedy.”
Rainey made her decision. “The UTV?”
“Better off with the side-by-side. More ground clearance for the back route.”
They walked to the side-by-side parked behind the equipment shed.
Gemma climbed into the driver’s seat without waiting to be invited.
Rainey lifted Tilly into the back — the dog went willingly, settling into the cargo bed with the resigned air of an animal who understood vehicles were part of the job — and then climbed into the passenger seat.
Gemma started the engine. The sound ripped through the morning quiet, too loud, and Rainey winced.
“Nobody’s going to hear,” Gemma said. “The bunkhouse guys sleep like the dead. Trust me, I’ve tested this theory.”
They pulled out of the yard. Gemma took them east along the fence line, past the paddock where Whiskey Tango Foxtrot lifted his head to watch them pass, then cut north onto a two-track that Rainey didn’t recognize.
The side-by-side jolted over ruts, its headlights carving weak yellow tunnels through the pre-dawn gray.
Tilly braced herself in the back, steady, her nails clicking against the metal bed.
“How long have you and River been together?” Rainey asked. The question came out of nowhere, spurred by the jolting silence and the need to hear something besides the engine.
“Little over a month.” Gemma kept her eyes on the track. “Met him at the Rusty Spur. He spilled a drink on my shoes and then spent twenty minutes apologizing while making me laugh. It was very him.”
Rainey almost smiled. That sounded exactly like River — the catastrophic charm, the desperate cover-up. She’d watched him do variations of the same routine for years.
“He talks about you a lot,” Gemma said. “You should know that. Even before you showed up here.”
The words landed somewhere tender. Rainey looked out at the dark timber sliding past, the shapes of pines emerging slowly as the light strengthened.
They drove. The track wound through low draws and across stretches of open grassland where the frost still lay silver on the dead grass. Gemma drove with confidence, taking the ruts at speed, her hands loose on the wheel. She knew the terrain. That much was clear.
Something nagged at the back of Rainey’s mind. A detail, not quite fitting.
Evander’s cabin lay northwest of the ranch. They were driving northeast, and had been for at least fifteen minutes. The track beneath them trended steadily away from the ridgeline she knew led to his property.
She waited. Counted another five minutes.
“Gemma.”
“Hmm?”
“This isn’t the way to his cabin.”
Gemma’s hands tightened on the wheel. “There’s a cut ahead,” she said. “We swing west after the creek.”
Rainey watched her profile. Gemma’s jaw had set. A muscle twitched beneath her eye.
They reached a junction. The main track continued northeast. A smaller trail branched west, climbing toward the ridge — the turn Rainey had been waiting for. The turn that would take them toward Evander’s mountain.
Gemma drove past it without slowing.
“Stop the vehicle,” Rainey said.
Gemma kept driving.
“Gemma. Stop.”
The side-by-side slowed. Gemma pulled onto a flat stretch of grass beside the track and killed the engine. The sudden silence was absolute. Frosted grass, dark timber, the sky lightening to pearl above the eastern ridge.
Gemma didn’t look at her. She reached into her jacket pocket and came out with a pistol.
She pointed it at Rainey’s chest.
Rainey went very still. The anger that had carried her out of the guest room, across the yard, into this vehicle — it didn’t vanish. It crystallized. Became something colder and sharper.
“You work for Mal,” she said.
It wasn’t a question. She already knew.
Gemma smiled. It wasn’t the same warm smile Rainey had come to know. “Mal sent me to watch River six weeks ago.”
Six weeks. Right after she and Sylvie Granger ran. “Because I left?”