Chapter 2
SIMONE
The cabin smells like coffee and cedar and something that might be him, which is a problem I'm going to have to solve later.
I drop my duffel on the couch and do a slow lap of the main room. High ceilings. Stone fireplace that looks like it could cook a small pig. Leather chair by the window that's clearly his because the cushion's worn in the exact shape of a man who sits and watches.
He watches a lot. I can tell that already.
I've been in the cabin for ninety seconds and he's looked at me four times and every single one felt like being X-rayed.
"Kitchen's through there," he says behind me, voice low and unbothered, like we're negotiating the rental agreement on a beach condo. "Bedroom upstairs on the right. Mine's across the hall. Bathroom between. Don't wander outside after dark."
"Don't wander outside after dark." I turn on my heel. "Got it. Anything else? Should I tug my forelock when you enter a room?"
His jaw does a thing. Small tic at the hinge.
"Your brother said you'd be difficult."
"My brother says a lot of things. Most of them overrated."
I walk past him to the window and make a point of not looking at him while I do it, which is harder than it should be.
The man is built like something someone carved on purpose.
Dark hair, gray at the temples. Beard that's got a little silver in it too.
Eyes the color of a storm most people would run from.
I'm not running.
I spent twelve hours on a plane and a car to get up this mountain, and the last thing I did before I left Toronto was wash my grandmother's cast iron pan and leave it drying on the counter. If I was going to be scared, I'd be scared already.
I push the curtain back half an inch and look at the tree line.
"You're going to give yourself away if you keep doing that."
"Doing what."
"Curtain's already open. You framed yourself in the window. Anyone watching from up there with a scope just got a clean shot at your profile."
I let the curtain drop.
Turn slowly.
He's two steps closer than he was. Didn't hear him move.
"You serious."
"Yeah."
"There's nobody out there, Gray. We're in the middle of nowhere. The driver said the route was clean."
"The route was clean until it wasn't."
"That's not a sentence."
"It's the only one that matters."
Something in me goes still. Not scared. Annoyed in a way I don't fully understand yet.
Because this man looked at me like I was furniture when I got out of the car and now he's standing close enough that I can see the stubble coming in along his jaw, and the part of my brain that was supposed to be processing threat assessment is processing his hands.
His hands are big.
Focus, Simone.
"Look." I take a step back because I need the space, not because he told me to.
"I appreciate what you're doing. I do. My brother pulled in a favor and you showed up.
That's kind. But I am thirty-one years old, I've been chased down alleys in three countries on assignment, and I am not about to spend the next two days being managed like a golden retriever with separation anxiety. "
He blinks once. Slow.
"That what you think I'm doing."
"That's what you're doing."
"I'm trying to keep you alive."
"I'm trying to stay a whole person while you do it."
We stand there a second. His storm eyes do a thing I don't have a name for. Something in his face shifts, not softer, but attentive in a way that feels like being read out loud.
"Noted," he says finally.
That's it. That's all he gives me. One word, clipped at the edges, and somehow it lands harder than if he'd argued.
I turn away because my skin feels warm.
"Is there coffee?"
"In the kitchen."
"Great. I'm going to make some. Don't follow me, Mercer."
"Wasn't planning to."
I walk to the kitchen and do not look back.
The coffee's good.
That's the first surprising thing. I expected camp sludge and I got a dark roast that tastes like someone actually gives a damn. There's a grinder on the counter. Beans in a labeled jar. A little scale.
I look at the setup a long moment.
Precise man.
I file that.
My phone is in my back pocket and I pull it out out of habit before I remember the rule he laid down on the porch. Don't use it without checking. I look at the screen. Three texts from my editor. One from Yara. One from Marcus that says be nice to him.
Nice.
I text him back:
define nice
Then I tuck the phone away and take my coffee and walk a slow loop of the downstairs, because I need to map this place the same way I map any new space, and because it gives me something to do that isn't thinking about the way Gray's voice dropped half an octave when he told me I framed myself in the window.
Living room. Kitchen. Mudroom off the back with boots and a heavy coat on a hook. Locked door beside the pantry that probably leads to a basement. A small office with a desk and a radio and two rifles in a locked cabinet I can see through the glass.
Rifles.
Okay.
I take a slow sip.
I've been around men with guns. I grew up with one. Marcus cleaned his service weapon at our mother's kitchen table while she yelled at him about oil on the placemats. I'm not rattled by a gun.
I'm rattled by the man who owns the gun and the way he's moving around the upstairs right now like he's doing a second sweep of rooms he already swept. I can hear the floorboards. Deliberate. Unhurried. A man taking inventory.
He comes down the stairs a minute later. Still hasn't taken the flannel off. I notice because the sleeves are pushed to his elbows and his forearms are a whole situation I'm not equipped to handle on a Thursday.
"Your bags are upstairs."
"You carried them up."
"Yeah."
"You didn't have to do that."
"I know."
I open my mouth to say something smart and my phone buzzes in my hand.
I look down.
Unknown number.
One line of text.
pretty little cabin you picked, Ms. Baptiste.
Cold moves through me from the chest out.
I don't make a sound. I just look at the screen a long moment and try to make the letters mean something else. They don't.
When I lift my head, Gray is already watching me. He saw whatever my face did.
"Give it here."
I hand him the phone.
He reads it. His face does absolutely nothing. No jaw tic. No flinch. Nothing.
That's the moment I understand, really understand, what kind of man my brother sent me.
"Upstairs," he says. Quiet. "Away from the windows. Now."
I don't argue.
I go.
Behind me I hear him kill every light on the main floor one by one, his boots silent on the floorboards, and the last thing he does before he follows me up is slide the bolt on the front door with a click that sounds final.
Forty-eight hours.
I have a bad feeling about forty-eight hours.