Chapter 2
EVELYN
Dutch let me go ten minutes early, grumbling that I might as well leave since the inventory was done. It was his version of kindness.
So, for once, I was actually on time to pick my girl up.
The school was a one-story brick building with two wings—one for high school and one for elementary, with the principal’s office, gym, and cafeteria at the center.
I hurried past the main entrance to the side door at the far end of the elementary wing, smiling down at the chalk drawings on the sidewalk of wobbly houses and stick-figure families.
Normal kids with normal lives.
I wondered if Sophia drew our family, just the two of us, always looking over our shoulders. Or maybe she included Trent in those portraits. She asked about him just about every night in the quiet moments before bed.
“When is Vigi coming back?” she’d whisper, using the nickname she’d given him during our time at Hope’s Embrace.
He’d gone by Vigil back then, which I’ve since learned was also his call sign with his black ops team. I had been Clarity, and Sophia was Promise. For two years, we’d almost been like a family. We’d had a community where people genuinely cared for one another.
By the time I realized that “community” was actually a cult, it was too late. We were trapped.
Trent had been undercover the whole time, tracking stolen tech. He’d extracted us on the night of the cult’s planned “ascension”—their euphemism for suicide—then dumped us in this forgotten corner of Montana with new identities, and made me memorize a phone number.
“Only for emergencies,” he’d said. “If you call, I’ll come. No matter what.”
I hadn’t called.
Not when I’d woken gasping from nightmares, not when I thought I’d seen Langston at the bar and grill in town, not when Sophia had cried for “Vigi” night after night.
Because what if I called and he didn’t come?
I didn’t think my heart could handle that.
Six months since we’d seen him. Six months of silence.
When was he coming back?
I never had an answer for that question.
The classroom door was propped open with a box of printer paper.
Inside, kindergarteners and first-graders were shoving papers into backpacks, and parents were signing their children out.
Toys and books and crayons scattered the floor, and someone’s abandoned lunch box oozed what looked like grape jelly onto a reading mat.
Beth stood in the center of it all, her hair now completely free from its morning ponytail, a streak of blue marker across her cheek. She was helping a little boy zip his jacket, all while fielding questions from a hovering parent about next week’s spelling words.
“Ms. Beth! Ms. Beth!” A chorus of children’s voices competed for her attention, but somehow she managed to acknowledge each one with a smile or a nod.
I was intimately familiar with this end-of-the-day chaos. I had been a teacher before I married Langston, and I’d been in charge of the Hope’s Embrace school while at the compound.
Sometimes, I missed it.
I spotted Sophia sitting quietly at her desk, carefully placing her pencils into their case.
One by one, eraser end first, points facing the same direction.
So meticulous, so controlled. So much like I’d been as a child, before I met Langston.
Before I learned that control was just an illusion and could be ripped away in an instant.
Sophia looked up, her serious little face breaking into a smile that made my chest ache. “Mommy!” She carefully closed her pencil case, slid it into her backpack, and pushed in her chair before running to me.
Always orderly, my girl, even in her excitement.
I knelt down to hug her, breathing in the scent of school glue and the strawberry of her shampoo. “Hey, sweet pea. How was your day?”
“We learned about butterflies and how they start as caterpillars and then make a cocoon and transform,” she said, her eyes wide with the miracle of it. “Ms. Beth brought in a real cocoon in a jar. We’re waiting for it to hatch.”
“Emerge,” Beth corrected as she approached us, still somehow managing to clean up a spill and redirect two boys heading for the door without supervision. “Butterflies emerge from chrysalises.”
I straightened. “Sounds like an exciting lesson.”
“Sophia was fascinated,” Beth said. “She asked the most incredible questions about metamorphosis—how the caterpillar knows when to change, whether it hurts to transform. She thinks deeply about things most five-year-olds wouldn’t consider.”
Because she’d seen transformation before. She’d watched her mother shed one life for another twice now.
“She’s always been observant,” I said simply.
Beth nodded, seemingly satisfied with my non-answer. “She’s doing wonderfully, by the way. Her reading skills are well above grade level, and she’s helping some of the other kids with their letters.”
Pride mingled with the ever-present anxiety in my chest. My brilliant, careful daughter. I squeezed Sophia’s hand. “That’s my girl. Always helping others.”
“Don’t forget your permission slip for tomorrow’s nature walk,” Beth reminded me, passing over a slightly crumpled paper. “And maybe a heavy jacket? The weather report says it’ll be chilly in the morning. Thankfully, no snow yet.” She rolled her eyes. “But we all know that’s coming before long.”
I nodded, tucking the form into my purse. “We’ll be ready.”
As we left the classroom, Sophia slipped her small hand into mine. “Can we have mac and cheese for dinner? The kind with the bread crumbs on top?”
“Sure,” I said, though my mind was already elsewhere, scanning the parking lot, noting the unfamiliar blue pickup truck idling near the school entrance.
Just a parent waiting for their child.
Not Carol’s mysterious guest.
Still, I steered Sophia away from the street, toward the path that cut through a field. This way added a few minutes to our walk home, but neither of us minded.
Our rental house sat on the very edge of town, backing up to the scrubby field that eventually gave way to the rimrocks. Not the nicest house in Garnett, but its isolation was a feature, not a flaw. Only one road in, with clear sight lines in all directions.
Inside, Sophia headed straight to her room to change out of her school clothes. I moved to the kitchen, mechanically pulling out ingredients for dinner while keeping my body angled toward the windows. The conversation with Carol this morning had unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
A stranger in town. A man with a gun. Asking questions.
“I drew a picture of a butterfly today,” Sophia announced, padding into the kitchen in her mismatched home clothes. “Ms. Beth hung it on the wall because she said my colors were very ‘ambitious.’”
“That’s wonderful!” I smiled at her, forcing myself to focus. “Want to help me with dinner?”
She climbed onto her step stool, eager to sprinkle cheese on top of the macaroni. I let her, though I kept glancing out the window, watching as the afternoon light faded toward evening. The shadows grew longer across our small backyard. Perfect hiding places.
“Mommy, you’re not listening,” Sophia’s voice broke through my thoughts.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. What did you say?”
“I asked if Vigi likes butterflies. Do you think he does?”
My heart clenched. “I don’t know. Maybe.” I turned away, busying myself with the oven. “I’m sure he does. Most people do.”
“When he comes back, I can show him my drawing,” she continued, oblivious to my tension. “He promised he’d visit us, remember?”
Yes, he had promised. Another man making promises he wouldn’t keep. I’d sworn never to fall for that again after Langston, and yet I’d let myself believe Trent Dalton when he’d said he’d check on us. That he’d make sure we were safe.
“Sophia, honey, Trent—“ I caught myself. “Vigi is very busy. His work takes him to lots of places.”
“Fighting bad guys,” she said with certainty as she carefully placed cheese on top of the macaroni. “That’s what he told me. He fights bad guys like my dad.”
I nearly dropped the casserole dish. We never spoke of Langston, and I’d never told her what he’d done. What he was still capable of doing if he found us.
“Sweetheart, who told you your dad is a bad guy?”
She shrugged, suddenly interested in the cheese bag.
“Vigi did. When you were sleeping in the car, when we were driving here. He said my dad was a bad man who hurt people, and that’s why we had to move away from California.
And Vigi protects people from bad men.” She looked up, her eyes wide and trusting.
“He’s protecting us, isn’t he? Even when we can’t see him? ”
The lump in my throat made it hard to speak. How could I tell her that Trent had dropped us here and disappeared? That we were on our own, as we’d always been?
“Let’s put this in the oven,” I said instead, taking the macaroni from her.
As I moved around the kitchen, setting the table, pouring milk into plastic cups that wouldn’t shatter if knocked over in a hurry, my mind circled back to the stranger at the motel.
It wasn’t Trent. I knew that for certain, but what if it wasn’t just some random traveler?
What if Langston had finally tracked us down?
He had resources, connections. He was a determined man with a lot of money who could find anyone eventually.
Escaping his grasp was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life.
I’d taken my barely one-year-old baby and run to the mountains of California, to the Hope’s Embrace compound, thinking no one would look for us in an off-the-grid community. I’d been desperate and terrified, and the compound had offered a safety I hadn’t felt in years.
Until it didn’t.
The irony was bitter. I’d escaped one controlling man only to deliver my daughter into the hands of another.
Who was the stranger staying at the motel?
The question nagged at me all through dinner.
You’re just being paranoid, I told myself over and over as I helped Sophia with her bath and settled her into bed, reading her favorite bedtime story twice.
I smoothed the pages of “The Princess and the Knight,” my fingers lingering on the illustration of the warrior standing watch outside the castle walls. Sophia’s favorite character wasn’t the princess. It was the silent guardian who protected her.
“He looks like Vigi,” she mumbled sleepily.
A strange tightness gripped my chest—not quite pain, not quite longing, and more than a little bit of anger.
I’d sworn off depending on anyone after Langston, had learned the hard price of trusting too easily.
Yet in those desperate hours of escape from the cult, I’d placed my life and my daughter’s in Trent’s hands without hesitation.
He’d carried her through the night, her small body cradled against his chest as we crashed through the redwoods, his large hand supporting her head as he navigated the pitch-black forest like he could see in the dark.
Hell, maybe he could. There was so much about him I didn’t know, might never know.
I closed the book and tucked the covers around Sophia’s small form. Her eyelids were already drooping.
“Mommy?” she whispered as I switched on her night light. “When is Vigi coming back?”
My heart squeezed. Trent was the only father figure my girl had ever really had. What was my awful taste in men teaching her?
“I don’t know, sweet pea,” I said softly. “Try to sleep now.”
She nodded and clutched her stuffed rabbit tighter—another gift from Trent during our frantic escape from California. He’d handed it to her without ceremony, as if buying toys for little girls was something he did every day.
“Mr. Hoppy will protect me until Vigi comes back,” she murmured, already drifting off.
I stayed with her until her breathing deepened, marveling at my beautiful miracle of a child who’d survived so much already.
Langston had been so desperate for an heir that he’d spared no expense, sending me to the best fertility clinic with the latest technology. He’d controlled everything, even selecting the embryo himself from the genetic screening results, choosing traits like he was customizing a car.
But Sophia wasn’t his. She’d never been his, no matter how much he’d paid or what paperwork he’d signed. She was mine.
Once I was sure she was sound asleep, I slipped out of her room, leaving her door cracked just enough to hear if she called out.
The house was quiet except for the soft hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of settling wood.
I made tea I didn’t want, wrapping my hands around the warm mug while I sat at the kitchen table, facing the back door.
The tea grew cold as I stared into the darkness beyond the window, seeing nothing but my own reflection—a pale, tired woman with watchful eyes.
Was the stranger at the motel Trent? If so, why wouldn’t he come directly to us? Unless he wasn’t here to check on us at all. Unless he was here because something had gone wrong. Because we were in danger.
“Stop it. You’re being paranoid,” I whispered. “It’s just a stranger passing through. People stay at motels all the time.”
But not in Garnett, not really. Not men who paid cash and carried guns and asked about local law enforcement.
The crawling sensation up my spine wasn’t new.
I’d felt it in the days before Langston’s violence escalated, in the weeks before the cult leader started talking about “ascension.” My internal alarm—the one that had kept me alive through two abusive relationships—was more reliable than any security camera or system.
And right now, it was screaming.