Chapter 2 Saint
Saint
I can hear Allie’s voice in my head right now.
Why are you baking when you could be out having fun?
Thinking of Allie, away at college, makes my chest ache, like it always does. I try not to wallow in self-pity. It won’t do me any good. Plus, I decided to stay here and help my dad instead of going with her. No one forced me to stay.
No one encouraged me to go either. I ignore the voice and guilt inside my head and hum along to the low crackle of the radio, the smell of vanilla and brown sugar filling the kitchen.
There’s a certain warmth that fills me when I bake.
Cookie dough clings to the whisk, sweet and golden, and I lick a smear from my thumb with a quiet smile.
It’s just me, the warmth of the oven, and the steady rhythm of mixing—safe, familiar, mine. I’m just about to scoop some cookies onto the cookie sheet and pop them in the oven when three sharp raps against the front door stop me in my tracks.
The noise shatters the quiet and makes me flinch. My hands freeze above the mixing bowl, a startled sound catching in my throat.
It’s past midnight. Too late for visitors. Especially in Black Hollow Creek, where most folks are asleep by ten. Our house sits on the edge of town, backed by miles of wilderness.
Whoever’s out there is lost—or looking for trouble.
Don’t do it, Saint. Don’t you dare.
Even as the warning flashes in my mind, the need to check coils tightens in my chest.
What if someone needs help?
Then, a fourth knock, softer this time, pushes me despite my worry.
I wipe my hands on my favorite sunflower apron.
The bright flowers remind me of my mom, who made it before cancer took her five years ago.
The sweet scent of cookies clashes with the unease climbing up my spine, reminding me I’m here alone.
My father’s gone until Sunday, away at another pastor’s retreat. Usually, the silence doesn’t bother me. But right now it crawls.
Don’t be ridiculous, Saint.
At nineteen, I should be past jumping at every creak. Bad things happen everywhere, not just here. Still, the prickling at the base of my neck refuses to fade. What if someone really needs help? What if I do nothing—and regret it?
Untying the apron, I drape it over the chair, grab my phone, and shove it into my jeans pocket. My reflection flashes in the kitchen window—messy bun, flour on my cheek, blue eyes wide with uncertainty.
Relax. It’s probably nothing.
The floorboards groan beneath my bare feet as I cross the living room. Family portraits stare from the walls, ghostly in the dim light. My pulse hammers as I pause at the door, hand trembling against the cold metal of the dead bolt.
“Who’s there?” I surprise myself with the strength of my voice.
I wait, but I’m greeted with silence and the gentle sound of the wind slipping through the pines. Maybe they left. Went to another house. The thought curdles the ever-present guilt in my gut. If I were just a little faster, if I hadn’t hesitated.
Then I hear it, a whisper so faint I almost miss it.
“Help.”
The word slips through the wooden door like a desperate prayer.
One word laden with pain and fear.
All my thoughts shift, and instinct takes over. In an instant, all I can think about is helping. No one should have to beg for aid. I unlock the dead bolt and pull the door open, the hinges whining in protest. At first, I see nothing but darkness, my eyes still adjusting to the change in lighting.
Then I spot movement at the edge of the porch.
A slumped figure leans heavily against the railing.
I can tell it’s a man by his size, even as his face is blanketed in shadows.
The coppery stench of blood reaches me a moment before my eyes track the spreading stain on his shirt where his hand is braced.
“Oh my goodness,” I breathe. “You scared me.”
At the sound of my voice, the man staggers forward into the spill of light from the open doorway.
His face is pale as bone china, slick with sweat despite the chill in the air.
By the looks of him, he’s middle-aged. His skin is weathered, like someone who’s worked outdoors their entire life.
I don’t recognize him, though, despite a passing familiarity with most of the townsfolk.
Well, at least the ones who go to church regularly.
“Are you okay, sir?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
His frightened gaze locks on mine, and then he peers over his shoulder into the dark forest behind him. Did someone attack him? Maybe he was injured while hunting? I don’t see a gun or weapon.
“Sir?” I say.
He whirls back around, catching himself on the railing. “Please,” he rasps, the word frayed and faint. “They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?”
My gut tells me to shut the door and walk away, but I know I’d never be able to forgive myself if he died and I could have helped.
Even though I shouldn’t, I step aside and gesture toward the warm interior. “Come in, and I can help you.”
He ambles forward while shaking his head, his body swaying with each step. “No time. Just need to stop the bleeding.”
My gaze gravitates to the spot between his fingers, tracking the blood already slipping free to splatter in fat drops across the porch boards. What this man needs is an ambulance, not a first-aid kit.
“It would be easier to help you if you came inside.” I try again. “Or at least warmer.”
His chest rises in a shallow jerk, the air expelling in a rasp as he struggles to breathe. “No! I just need some damn bandages.” Another gasping breath fills his lungs. “Can you help me or not?” The snap in his voice, laced with pain, gets me moving.
“I think so. Let me grab my first-aid kit.” I don’t know if that two-week first-aid course I took last summer will cut it in this situation, though.
Pressure. Elevate. Call for help.
I repeat the steps in my mind. “I’ll also call for an ambulance.”
“No!” he objects, and reaches for me, his hand closing around my wrist before I can take a step toward the hallway leading to the bathroom.
His grip isn’t strong, and his fingers tremble.
I know I should be scared, but I’m not. Not when I see the urgency in his eyes. “No hospital. No phones. Please!”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to demand that we call 911.
Still, I hesitate because the raw fear in his eyes goes beyond the pain of injury.
It’s suffocating, life and death. Like he already knows his days are numbered.
I don’t know what happened, or how he ended up on my porch, but only one family in this town is known for striking that kind of fear in people.
The Bishops.
The blood in my veins turns to ice. The Bishops own half the county—their five-thousand-acre ranch stretching across the wilds of Montana.
Roman Bishop sits on every council worth sitting on, his name stamped across mortgages and deeds like a warning.
His four sons are the same—handsome, dangerous, men who make rooms go silent.
My father warned me to stay away, and I did.
Mostly. Except for the one night, when I thought Calder might have differed from the rest of his family. Turns out he wasn’t. My father said every soul deserves redemption, but I know he didn’t mean them, not after the night of my eighteenth birthday.
The memory twists my stomach, his words, his stare. The porch feels colder, darker—like thinking of him might call him here.
Forget him. Focus.
“Okay,” I say, gently extracting my wrist from the man’s grip and pushing the memories of Calder to the dark confines of my mind. “No ambulance, but let me get the first-aid kit.”
The flash of relief in his eyes is followed immediately by another spasm of pain.
“I’ll be right back.”
He nods visibly, relaxing before sagging against the side of the doorway.
I close the door as much as I can with him leaning there and hurry through the house to the bathroom. My heart pounds against my ribs, a frantic rhythm matching each footstep on the hardwood floor. This is crazy. I should call Sheriff Tanner, not play nurse.
But you already told him you wouldn’t call.
I can’t go back on my word. Otherwise, it means nothing.
I yank open the cabinet beneath the sink where I keep the extensive first-aid kit. The white plastic box is heavier than it looks, packed with everything from bandages to antiseptic to the suturing kit I still barely know how to use.
“You can do this, Saint,” I whisper, using the nickname everyone in town has called me since I was a child. Not because I’m particularly good, though I try to be, but because my full name, Saintlyn, is a mouthful. Just one of Dad’s many nods to our family’s deeply religious roots.
I return to the kitchen and snatch a bottle of water from the fridge, then a blanket from the couch in the living room as I pass through. With my hands overflowing, I head back to the door. Balancing everything carefully so I don’t drop anything, I pull the heavy door open.
My breath forms small clouds in the air as I step out onto the porch. Goodness, the air has a chill to it that wasn’t there a few minutes ago. I stare at the spot where I’m certain the man was standing when I went inside.
Wait… where did he go?
For one disoriented heartbeat, I wonder if I imagined the whole thing—if the late hour and too many true crime podcasts have finally caught up with me.
My gaze lands on what I can only describe as a nightmare brought to life a few feet away. A tall, broad-shouldered man, face hidden by the shadows, stands over a slumped figure with a knife in his hand, glinting with blood.
I should run. Or look away, but I can’t. I squint down at the body at the man’s feet. He’s lying face-down on the weathered boards, his body sprawled out in the weak glow of the porch light, one arm outstretched toward the door as though he’d tried to crawl away.
Blood spreads beneath him in a dark, glistening pool, black as oil in the dim light.
The man who needed help—he’s dead. That man in the shadows killed him.