Chapter 37
Phoenix
I needed coffee like it was nobody’s business.
After a night of not sleeping much, caffeine to function was a necessity.
Elyna and Braden were in my house, their house now, whether she let herself say it yet or not.
The chime Dad brought sounded as I left through the mudroom door, the porch camera logged me leaving while the orchard stretched out in rows of frost-silvered green.
I told myself to breathe. To act like a man who ran a brewery and a restaurant and not a man who’d built a fortress overnight to protect those closest to his heart.
By eight I was at the brewery, the big copper kettles humming from the morning boil.
The place smelled like toasted grain and orange peel, like work and warmth.
Dominic had the back delivery bay open with a clipboard in hand.
His hair was shoved under a beanie. Cooper was already behind the bar, sleeves rolled, polishing glasses he’d dirty again in an hour.
“Look who decided to show up to his own business,” Dom said without looking up.
“Don’t get sentimental on me,” I said. He smirked as he marked boxes a driver using a hand truck moved down the ramp.
I should’ve felt normal here. I knew every sound this building made.
The tick of the glycol chiller. The clink of glass.
The heavy sigh of the walk-in door. But nothing truly felt normal.
Every time a truck engine idled out front, my shoulders went tight.
Every time a car drifted down the lane, I checked the cam on my phone without thinking.
Cooper slid a mug along the rail. “You’re wound up,” he observed, not unkindly. “It’s like watching a German shepherd watch a squirrel.”
“Don’t talk about squirrels. They’ve unionized in the attic,” I said, taking a drink. He laughed anyway.
Dominic’s voice cut through from the back. “Hey, boss?” He jerked his chin toward the side windows that faced the gravel service road cutting past the orchard to the river road. “You expecting an SUV?” He didn’t sound worried. Just… aware.
I drifted to the window. A dark SUV was idling too long where people didn’t idle. It had tinted glass and plates I couldn’t read from this angle. The engine revved, then rolled slowly past the cedars, like it was counting trees.
I fired a quick text.
Becket: Black SUV cruising service road. Slow. Tinted windows. Didn’t make out plates.
The dots bounced for a second.
Becket: Copy. We’re aware. Stay visible. Don’t engage. Patrol at the river bend will log it.
“You think it’s someone who shouldn’t be here?” Cooper asked casually, like we were talking about the weather.
“Maybe,” I said.
He made a face. “I miss the little problems in life, like my hair not cooperating in the morning.”
Despite the tension I was feeling, I laughed.
Cooper was a funny guy. I took one more scan through the camera feeds, checking the front porch at my house, the kitchen door, and the back deck.
I also checked the driveway cam Dad insisted on mounting that morning at dawn.
Everything was clear. Elyna had texted a photo fifteen minutes ago of Braden in a onesie with cereal dried on his cheek. Everything was fine. Normal.
I forced myself into tasks. Signed off two purchase orders.
Checked the bright tank carbonation. Answered a question about our fall menu and whether we would bring back the Maple Ale braised short rib poutine.
By late morning, customers began to drift in; locals who knew our tap list by heart, out-of-towners snapping photos of the barrel wall.
By noon, my phone buzzed with a motion alert at the kitchen door.
My heart skipped a beat as I checked what caused the alert.
A shadow skimmed the deck and kept going, turned out to be a cat I’d seen twice now.
I huffed, then let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
If the worst thing on that camera today was a cat with boundary issues, I’d take it.
I was pulling a list for a distributor when my phone vibrated again, this time it was a different tone.
House chime. Kitchen door open, then shut.
A quick text from Elyna followed, like she knew the chime had turned my spine to wire.
Elyna: Package on the step. No logo. Bringing it in.
No logo?
Me: Don’t touch it. Back away. I’m calling Becket.
Her dots popped, disappeared, popped again.
Elyna: Too late. It’s inside. Just a box. I didn’t see anyone.
My thumb was already sliding to call. “Pick up,” I muttered.
She did on the second ring. “It’s just cardboard,” she said, voice steady but thinner than it had been this morning. “No return address.”
“Put it on the table and step back,” I said, walking fast toward the back. I pointed to the door and nodded to Dominic that I was leaving.
“Okay, relax,” she answered. I could hear Braden babbling somewhere near her feet. “Phoenix. . .”
“I’m two minutes out,” I said. “Do not open it.” My voice was sterner than I meant it to be, but I couldn’t believe she was telling me to relax with how tense she had been these last several days.
A beat passed and then she said, “Okay.”
I hung up and made a second call to Becket. “We got a delivery,” I said the second he answered. “No markings. It came to the kitchen step. She already brought it inside.”
“I’m two minutes away from you,” he said. I heard the cruiser’s siren in the distance. “Tell her not to touch it. I’ll bag it.”
I didn’t run to the house. I drove like a man who’d blow a tire if he hit gravel wrong, forced every muscle into a version of calm that would not help if I arrived panting and half blind.
The lane to my house felt longer than the two hundred meters it was.
The porch light sensor flicked to life. The camera caught my shoulder and sent me my own face, which was proof of the good job I’d done installing everything.
Inside, Elyna stood next to the table with Braden on her hip, his fingers playing with the strap of her tank top. The box sat like a stupid, ordinary brown box.
“Hey,” I said, voice quiet on purpose. “You did good.” I felt bad for snapping moments before, and I didn’t want her questioning her decisions.
Her eyes met mine, sturdy and steadfast. That was the thing about Elyna, she was brave in the places no one watched.
She set Braden in the high chair and kissed the top of his head once, long enough to breathe him in.
I stepped between the boy and the box without thinking, and went to the sink to wash my hands, because procedure sits in the bones if you were raised by Pierre Thorne.
Patrol lights flashed through the kitchen window. A heartbeat later, Becket and another officer came through the mudroom, gloves already snapped on.
“Morning,” Becket said in that voice he used when he was an officer of the law and not my brother. “Let’s take a look.”
He crouched down, his eyes scanning without touching. “Tape’s common. No grease rings underneath. Box is light, based on how the cardboard’s holding shape.” He glanced up at me. “You moved it?”
“I did,” Elyna spoke up. “From the porch to the table. One trip.”
“Okay.” He lifted the box gently in both hands and set it down on a contractor bag he’d spread out. Then he cut a thin slice through the tape with a pocketknife, pried the top open with two gloved fingers, and eased back the flaps.
No one breathed.
Inside was a child’s toy truck, a bright yellow plastic thing. The wheels were smudged with something dark. There was a folded sheet of printer paper. Becket lifted the page with two fingers and read.
He didn’t say the words. He passed the paper to me.
YOU HAVE SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T BELONG TO YOU.
It wasn’t handwritten. Block letters from a printer.
The room narrowed and then snapped back. I felt Elyna’s eyes on me like a wire. I passed the note back to Becket, and he slid it into an evidence sleeve the other officer held open.
“What’s on the wheels?” Elyna asked, her voice low, too even. She’d fixed her gaze on the toy so she didn’t have to look at the sentence.
Becket leaned in. “Could be grease. Could be oil. Could be dirt from any parking lot in the province.”
I checked the camera from the kitchen feed and connected it to the main TV so Becket could analyze it.
We watched it together. An empty porch at 11:57. A blur at 11:58 and a shadow passing fast, crouching, then gone, head turned away, as if he knew exactly where the camera cone ended. Cheekbone. Hoodie. Gloved hands. No plate in the sliver of driveway the lens caught.
“Professional enough not to smile for the camera,” Becket said. “Amateur enough to step under the chime.” He flicked his gaze toward the device above the door. “It sounded. He didn’t care.”
“He wanted me to know,” Elyna said softly. I turned to her. She’d gone very still. “He wanted me to feel it.”
I had a hard time not punching a hole in my own counter.
Becket bagged the truck and the box. “We’ll dust the tape and the inner flaps.
Might catch a rush fingerprint. The note’s a no-lift, but we’ll pull a fiber check.
” He lifted his eyes to me. “Keep the house tight. Patrol at the end of the lane. You walk her to the truck for daycare drop and pickup. No routines alone.”
“You think this is Riley?” Elyna asked. She meant, Please tell me this is just Riley being cruel and not something bigger.
Becket didn’t blink. “I think men who are losing money like to remind people they can be found,” he said. “And men who want leverage reach for whatever’s small and close.”
The words hit their mark. Braden clapped at the sound of the evidence bag crinkling, utterly delighted by a sound that made my stomach hurt. I kissed the top of his head and tasted baby shampoo and the faintest hint of apple.