Chapter 29
MAYA
The kettle ticks on the stove, small metallic sounds that let you know that water is almost boiling.
The kitchen is warm, and the morning light comes through the window in pale gold bars that fall across the countertop and catch the steam already beginning to rise from the kettle's spout.
Last night is still inside me. The way the sky moved, those enormous ribbons of green and violet rippling overhead like the atmosphere was breathing.
I think about this morning. The three of them getting ready to ride the snowmobiles back to town to return the rentals and pick up the truck.
Jace straddling his sled in the driveway, goggles pushed up on his forehead, grinning like a kid.
"Race you back," he said to Reid. Reid gave him a look.
"That's a bad idea." Jace revved the engine.
"You're only saying that because you know you'll lose.
" Reid shook his head. Then they tore off through the snow, Jace whooping, Reid steady in the lead, Owen taking a line so precise it looked planned on graph paper, and I stood on the porch and waved and laughed and the sound of my own laughter still surprises me sometimes.
The kettle clicks. The water is ready.
I pour, watching the tea bag darken the water in slow amber spirals.
I'm blowing on the tea, testing the temperature, when I hear it.
Engine sound coming up the gravel road.
I set the mug down. Are the men back already? That was fast. But Jace was racing so maybe they made good time. I go to the door because that has become my habit. Going to the porch to welcome them home, the small domestic ritual that I adopted without noticing.
I step onto the porch. The air is late March cold, with a softness underneath it that promises spring. I wrap my arms around myself and watch the road.
The truck that comes around the bend is white.
Not Reid's truck.
I don't recognize it, but I don't think much of it. People come by sometimes. Deliveries. A neighbor checking on the property. Once, a hiker who got turned around on the ridge trail and needed directions.
I go down the steps.
The truck parks. The engine cuts.
The driver's door opens.
Boots hit the gravel. I see jeans. A dark jacket. A ball cap pulled low.
The passenger door opens. Then the back door. Two more men get out. The three of them standing by the white truck in the morning light and I'm looking at them trying to remember if I have met them before.
He lifts his head.
The ball cap. The jaw underneath it. The smile.
My blood stops moving.
I know that face. I know it from the bar. From the hand on my arm. From the voice too close to my ear saying I definitely know you. From the moment I told myself it was nothing, he was wrong, it was a mistake, I'm too far from LA, enough time has passed.
He's here. With two friends.
The cold is inside me now. I can't move. My feet are on the gravel and I can't move.
"Told you," the man says to his friends. He's walking toward me. Not rushing. The pace of someone who has all the time in the world. "Told you I wasn't wrong."
His friends follow. One is shorter, heavier, hands in his jacket pockets. The other is tall and thin and watching me with an expression that fills me with dread.
"I know who you are," the man says. He stops three feet from me. Close enough that I can smell him, stale beer and tobacco. His eyes move down my body and back up with the slow, assessing scan of someone browsing a catalog. "I'm here to see if you live up to your profile."
The word profile enters my body like a blade.
He steps closer. His hand comes up and catches my arm, and his other hand reaches for my jaw and he's trying to pull me toward him, trying to bring his mouth to mine, and the contact breaks the freeze.
I wrench backward. His fingers scrape across my arm as I tear free and I stumble, two steps back. And then hands from behind. The shorter man has his arms around my waist, pulling me against him, his breath hot on the back of my neck.
"So it's true what the profile says." His voice is excited. "You like it rough. Like being forced."
"No." My voice comes out thin. "You're making a mistake. You have the wrong person."
The man tsks.
I twist. Pull. The arms around my waist tighten, then loosen when I drive my elbow backward. He swears. I stumble forward and free and my legs are moving, taking me toward the porch steps, toward the door, toward inside where there are locks and walls and a phone.
They follow. All three. Not running. Walking. The leading man has his hands up, palms out, the gesture of a man who considers himself reasonable.
"Come on," he says. "We drove all the way up here. Don't be like that."
I reach the bottom step. My hand finds the railing.
Then I hear it.
An engine. Familiar. The specific pitch of Reid's truck at speed, the sound it makes when the driver has the accelerator flat against the floor.
The truck comes around the bend so fast the rear end slides on the gravel. It hasn't fully stopped when Reid's door opens and he's out, boots on the ground, crossing the space between the truck and the men, covering the distance with a speed that doesn't match how controlled his face is.
Jace is out a second later. From the passenger side, moving fast, circling wide to flank.
Owen emerges last, from the driver’s seat, and he doesn't circle.
He walks straight to me and positions himself between my body and the three strangers and he doesn't say a word.
He doesn't need to. His presence is the statement.
Reid stops two feet from the leading man. He doesn't touch him. He doesn't raise his voice. He is completely still in the way that makes the air around it denser.
"What are you doing here." A demand shaped like a sentence.
The man holds up his hands. The mock surrender. The reasonable smile. "Easy, big guy. We didn't touch her."
Jace is to Reid's right, slightly behind, and the energy coming off him is different from Reid's controlled stillness.
Jace is coiled. Vibrating. His hands at his sides are not relaxed and his jaw is set and I can see the boy he used to be, the one who fought strangers in New York, surfacing beneath the man Montana made him.
I look at them. Reid, ready to dismantle. Jace, ready to erupt. Owen, planted in front of me like a wall. Three men who would tear these strangers apart with their hands if I let this play out. Three men who would do it without hesitation, without calculation, without counting the cost.
I can’t let that happen. I can’t make them collateral of the wreckage that my life has become.
I step forward. Past Owen, who tries to catch my arm. Into the space between Reid and the strangers.
"It's okay," don't know how my voice is level. "They were asking for directions. They're just leaving."
Reid looks at me. His eyes search my face with recon-grade precision and I hold his gaze. And I lie to him.
The leading man watches the exchange. And I can see the moment he understands that the dynamic here is not what he expected.
"Yeah," he says. "We wanted directions. But I think we know the way now." The smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Have a good day."
He turns. Walks to the truck. His friends are already inside.
Reid follows the truck with his eyes as it backs down the driveway, turns, and disappears around the bend.
The engine fades. The gravel settles. The morning is quiet again.
Owen's hand finds my shoulder. "Maya. What just happened?"
"Nothing." The lie comes out clean."They were lost. Wrong road."
I turn. Walk past Owen. Past Jace. Up the steps. Through the door. Into the kitchen where my tea is sitting on the counter, still warm, still steaming, in a kitchen that smelled like belonging forty minutes ago.
I pick up the mug. My hands are shaking so badly that the tea trembles and I set it back down before I drop it.
They found me.
Daniel found me.
There is no cabin remote enough, no distance far enough to outrun the permanent, searchable, infinitely replicable fact of what he did to me.
I am not safe.
I look out the window. Reid is still standing in the driveway, watching the road. Jace is beside him, talking fast, gesturing. Owen is walking toward the house.
I lied to them. I looked into Reid's eyes and I lied.
And I will keep lying. Because the truth puts a target on their backs too.
I have to leave.
The thought arrives cold, final and it sits in my chest like a stone.
I pick up the mug again. My hands are still shaking.
Through the window, Reid is still watching the road. Still guarding the perimeter. Still protecting a woman who is already deciding how to disappear.