Chapter 11
Rowan continued to stare at the screen.
Tessa had been her agent/publicist for the last nine years. The woman was sharp, relentless, and not someone who called twice without a reason. Rowan had already ignored two of her calls since leaving California.
She stared at the name for one more ring. Then she answered.
“Where are you?” Tessa demanded without any greeting.
Rowan gripped the phone tighter. “I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask how you were. I asked where you were.”
She glanced at the open field in front of her. “I just needed some space.”
“Space.” A beat of silence passed that carried an entire conversation inside it. “Rowan, the production office has been trying to reach you. Do you understand what’s happening right now?”
Her throat burned. “I saw the article.”
“Then you know the media is already spinning this, and the press around your disappearance is going to get worse before it gets better unless you get ahead of things.” Tessa’s voice dropped, lower now, more careful. “So, I repeat: Where are you?”
Rowan looked across the property at Sarah’s old house. “Somewhere safe.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have right now.”
Silence stretched.
When Tessa spoke again, her voice had shifted into the register Rowan recognized as controlled damage assessment. “Vince and some of your castmates are saying you were acting erratic in the days before you left. That there was tension on set.”
“There’s always tension on any set Vince is involved with.”
“This is different.” Tessa paused. “I’ve heard rumors about a possible mental break.”
Rowan gaped before remembering to respond. “A mental break? I’m mentally fine.”
“I can work with a personal crisis narrative,” Tessa continued, almost as if she hadn’t heard her. “Family emergency. Exhaustion. Something that would explain your absence without—”
“It’s not an absence. I left. I told people I had an emergency.”
“There’s a dead man, Rowan.” The words landed flat and deliberate. “A man you worked with. A man whom you rejected. And you left around the same time he died. Do you understand how that looks?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with Thayer’s death.”
“I know that. But other people don’t. And right now you’re not here to tell them otherwise.”
Rowan closed her eyes.
Vince hadn’t threatened her with words. He hadn’t needed to.
The earring wasn’t evidence against her.
It was a leash that could control her.
“Rowan.” Tessa’s voice sharpened. “Talk to me. I cannot help you if I don’t know what I’m working with.”
Rowan pressed her lips together. Tessa was in her corner—she believed that. Whatever Rowan said would stay between them until the pressure became too great. But Tessa operated in Vince’s world. She needed relationships in that world to do her job.
She couldn’t risk that. Not yet.
“I didn’t have anything to do with Thayer’s death,” she said again. “That’s the truth.”
“I believe you. But belief doesn’t fix this crisis.”
“I know.” Rowan exhaled. “I’ll call you back. Just give me a little time.”
“Rowan—”
“I promise.” She ended the call before Tessa could push further.
For a long moment she stood there, the phone warm in her hand.
Do the right thing. Even when it costs something.
She’d heard those words her whole life. They’d always sounded simple.
Now they felt anything but.
Wes wrapped up the call and pocketed his phone.
He turned back toward the house, and his gaze automatically found Rowan. She’d stopped at the edge of the yard, her back to him and her phone in her hand.
He took a step toward her then stopped himself.
He still needed to tell Sheriff Sutherland about the toothpicks—and he needed to do it before the bag in his pocket became an afterthought. He pulled out his phone again, got the sheriff's number from Caleb, and then he shot off a quick text to him.
After he sent it, he looked at Rowan again.
Her chin was up. Her shoulders were back. One hand gripped her opposite arm just below the elbow. She wasn’t standing like someone holding herself together, but like someone holding herself still long enough to think.
He’d seen that look on her once before. The night she’d told him she was leaving for Hollywood. She hadn’t cried. Hadn’t wavered. She’d looked him in the eye and told him exactly what she was going to do and why. Her voice had been steady the whole way through.
He’d asked her to stay. He’d known it wouldn’t matter. He’d asked anyway.
She’d listened. She’d said she was sorry.
Then she’d left with the forward momentum of someone who had already been gone in her mind for a while.
At that moment, he’d understood just how determined she was. She might appear carefree and like the life of the party on the surface. But beneath that was one of the most motivated people he’d ever met. Once she decided something, there was no changing her mind.
Looking at her now, he understood something else. He understood that whatever she’d just decided while standing at the edge of the yard, she meant it the same way she’d meant everything else she’d ever set her mind to.
That was the Rowan he’d always known.
Wes looked away from her as tires on gravel sounded from the direction of the gate.
A county vehicle rolled to a stop near the entrance. A moment later the gate opened, and the vehicle pulled through and parked. The driver’s door opened, and a middle-aged man stepped out wearing a jacket with a county seal on the chest.
Caleb appeared from around the side of the house—moving at a pace that said he’d seen the vehicle before it reached the gate. He crossed the yard and reached the man near the drive, and they shook hands. The greeting looked cordial enough from a distance.
Caleb’s posture said otherwise.
Wes stayed where he was and watched. He’d learned early in his work that you could read a property owner’s relationship with a visitor before a word was exchanged—in the set of the shoulders, the angle of the body, whether the handshake pulled them closer or held them at arm’s length.
Caleb’s did the latter.
His weight had shifted back. He held his chin level, but his jaw was tight. When he gestured toward the east side of the property, the motion was controlled in a way that indicated this wasn’t a casual conversation.
The county man made a note on his clipboard without looking up.
Wes had worked enough threat assessments to know the difference between an enemy who wanted to hurt you and an enemy who wanted to exhaust you.
One came at you directly. The other filed paperwork.
In his experience, the second kind was harder to stop.
Rowan had been heading toward the kennel when the county vehicle pulled up.
She’d been meaning to see the puppies since she arrived—Caleb had mentioned them at breakfast, and she’d been looking for an excuse to step away from her own thoughts for five minutes. A litter of puppies seemed like exactly the right prescription.
But the vehicle stopped her before she made it around the side of the building.
She stilled at the corner of the house and watched as Caleb crossed the yard to meet the man at the drive. From here she couldn’t hear the words.
She didn’t need to.
She could read her brother the same way she’d always been able to, and she knew this wasn’t a welcome visitor.
She walked closer, keeping to the edge of the house, her footsteps quiet on the grass.
“. . . property assessment has been flagged for review.” The man’s tone was pleasant in a bureaucratic way. “Given the commercial activity on the premises, the county needs to verify the current tax classification is still appropriate.”
“We’ve been through this.” Caleb’s voice was level but had an edge beneath it.
“I understand. But the inquiry was filed again, so we’re required to follow up.” The man made a small note on his clipboard. “Someone will be in touch soon about scheduling a formal assessment.”
Caleb said something she didn’t catch.
The man nodded once, made another note, and headed back to his vehicle.
Rowan waited until the tires had crunched back down the gravel drive before she stepped around the corner. Caleb still stood where he’d been, watching the road.
“What was that about?” she asked.
He turned. If he was surprised she’d been close enough to hear, he didn’t show it. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
“Caleb.” She gave him a look. “I know I haven’t been around, but I do care.”
He let out a breath and looked back toward the road. “It’s a tax classification challenge. Someone filed an inquiry claiming Refuge Cove should be assessed as a commercial operation rather than agricultural and residential. It would change our tax burden significantly.”
Rowan let that simmer a moment. “Someone filed it. You mean, it didn’t come from the county on its own.”
“No.” His jaw tightened. “It didn’t.”
There were only two families she could think of who’d do something like that. “The Hendersons or the Hardings.”
“We feel it’s most likely the Hardings—it’s more their MO.
Richard is in prison, but his family hasn’t gone quiet.
This is the third inquiry in the past twelve months.
Before that there were zoning complaints, an anonymous tip to the state about our kennel licensing, a noise ordinance challenge.
The Hardings can’t get to us directly, so they use whatever’s available. ”
“That’s terrible.”
“And now that we have custody of Grace, they’ve upped their antics. We have more court dates coming up. There’s a chance they’ll get some rights.”
She sucked in a breath. “But they’re bad people.”
Caleb grimaced. “I don’t think they’d hurt Grace. But I do fear they’d disappear with her.”
“That would be terrible.”
Rowan stared at her brother.
She hadn’t been home for three years. While she was away building a career that was now publicly collapsing, her family had been quietly absorbing all this—the inquiries, the court dates, the harassment—without a word to her.
Not because they didn’t trust her.
But because they hadn’t wanted to burden her with it.
And she hadn’t asked.
Had she ever made a good decision in her life?
Right now, it felt like she hadn’t.
So many roads she’d taken had only led to failure. Wes. Vince. Thayer.
Some of those failures she could explain.
They’d happened because she’d compromised—something she’d vowed to never do.
She looked back at the road where the county vehicle had disappeared.
She still didn’t know how to make any of it right. But standing here watching her family absorb one more hit, she knew one thing with certainty.
She was done letting her family carry these burdens without her.