Chapter 2
Two
For eight years, Grace Carter had lived by one rule: be forgettable.
But every morning in the mirror, she saw Magnus’s Annie staring back at her, the stupid, reckless girl who’d let herself be loved, and she wanted to break the glass.
“Morning, Amy.” His voice rasped from decades of Marlboros.
Amy. She almost missed a beat. Before Amy, she’d been Annie. Before Annie, she’d been someone else. How many more names before she forgot the real one?
“Morning.” She slid his black coffee across the counter: medium cup, no cream, no sugar. Same order for six months running. “Blueberry muffin’s still warm.”
“You’re an angel.”
Grace offered the bland smile she’d perfected. Not too bright, not too dim. Forgettable by design. She’d practiced it in the mirror until her cheeks ached, until every trace of the real her had been scrubbed clean.
Mr. Halverson took his usual spot by the window. Within minutes, the morning rush would begin. Fishermen heading out, dock workers coming off night shift, the early risers of Port Serenity seeking caffeine and carbs before facing another day at the edge of the world.
She moved through her routine mechanically. Wipe down the display case. Check the coffee levels. Arrange the pastries just so. Every motion calculated to project competent mediocrity. Not bad enough to be memorable, not good enough to draw attention.
The woman she’d been before would have laughed at how hard she worked at being forgettable. That woman had been brilliant, bold, unafraid to stand out.
That woman had gotten people killed.
By mid-morning, Mrs. Thornton arrived, her weathered face creased with the permanent squint of someone who’d spent decades staring at sunlight on water.
“Amy, honey, could I get four bear claws to go?”
“Of course.” Grace bagged the pastries, adding napkins. “That’ll be eight-fifty.”
“Keep the change.” Mrs. Thornton dropped a ten on the counter. “You look tired, dear. Everything all right?”
The concern in her voice made Grace’s chest tighten. After eight years, she should be immune to casual kindness. Should be able to accept it without the twist of guilt that reminded her she was lying to everyone who showed her even basic human decency.
“Just didn’t sleep well.” She shrugged. “You know how it is.”
“This weather would keep anyone up.” Mrs. Thornton glanced out at the gray morning. “Another storm coming in tonight, they say. An even bigger one than yesterday’s.”
Grace nodded, making appropriate sounds of interest while Mrs. Thornton filled the silence with weather predictions and gossip about whose boat needed repairs.
By eleven-thirty, the morning rush had died to a trickle. She flipped the sign to “Back at 12:30” and slipped out the rear door.
The walk to her cabin took eight minutes.
She’d timed it. Knew every shortcut, every blind spot where security cameras couldn’t reach.
The small one-bedroom structure sat at the edge of town, backed against the tree line.
Close enough to be convenient, isolated enough that no one dropped by unannounced.
Inside, the space looked like what it was supposed to be. The home of a quiet baker who kept to herself. Minimal furniture, neutral colors, nothing personal on the walls. The packed go-bag by the door could be explained as emergency supplies. Everyone in Alaska had one.
But the bedroom told a different story.
Grace pulled aside the heavy dresser she’d modified with furniture sliders. Behind it, a section of drywall she’d cut and rehinged swung open. Not high-tech. Just careful craftsmanship with tools from the hardware store. Anyone searching would have to know exactly where to look.
The hidden space was cramped, barely a closet. She’d set it up eight months ago when she’d arrived, knowing this was temporary. Just long enough to finish what she’d started.
She settled into the folding chair, her only concession to comfort during the long hours spent here. Three monitors flickered to life. Military-grade encrypted hard drives hummed beside equipment that looked out of place in the rough-hewn hiding spot.
The main monitor displayed a digital map that had taken her five years to build. Every node, every connection, every vulnerability in a network that most people didn’t know existed. She’d been picking it apart thread by thread, and she was close now. Days, maybe.
Eight years of running. Eight years of building a weapon out of patience and code and a slow, steady anger that never went out.
She was almost done.
The timer on her phone buzzed. Noon.
Grace minimized her work and opened a different application. One that looked like a simple video chat program but was a backdoor into the phone Oliver always carried. The phone she’d programmed with her own software before she’d left.
The feed flickered to life.
The image showed a backyard. Sun-dappled grass, the edge of a wooden fence. Oliver must have set the phone down while playing outside. She waited, heart hammering, for a glimpse of them.
When they’d moved to Port Serenity, she’d worried she would have to find a new place to hide, but that port was just far enough away on the Aleutians that she could stay put a little longer.
Plus, it made her feel connected to them, which was the sort of sentimental nonsense that could get people killed.
“Okay, buddy, you throw from there.” Magnus’s voice, warm and patient, drifted through the speaker.
“What am I aiming for?” Oliver asked.
“The hole in the board. It’s called cornhole.”
“That’s a weird name.”
Magnus laughed. “Yeah, it is. Here, watch me.”
Magnus came into view, demonstrating an underhand toss, his T-shirt stretching across the muscles in his shoulders. A beanbag sailed through the air, landing perfectly in the hole. He turned toward Oliver with a grin that made Grace’s chest ache.
“Your turn.”
Oliver appeared in frame, tongue poking out in concentration as he mimicked Magnus’s stance. His toss went wide, the beanbag sliding off the board.
“Almost! Try again. Remember, it’s all in the easy swing.”
They went back and forth, Oliver improving with each throw. When he finally got one in, he let out a whoop and launched himself at Magnus in a tackle-hug that sent them both tumbling onto the grass.
“I did it! Did you see? I got it in!”
“I saw.” Magnus’s voice was thick with pride. “You’re a natural.”
They lay there on the grass, both of them laughing at nothing in particular. Just happy. Just a father and son enjoying a summer day.
Grace pressed her fingers to her lips, holding back the sob that wanted to escape. This was what she’d given up. These small, perfect moments. The daily rhythm of a family she’d created and then abandoned.
She imagined Magnus doing the silly voices at bedtime, the ones that made Oliver laugh so hard he couldn’t breathe. Then she stopped imagining, because that way lay madness.
She’d stolen that from herself. From all of them.
Her hand moved toward her phone—the real one, not the burner she used for surveillance.
Magnus’s number was still there, buried in contacts under a fake name.
She could call. Just to tell him she was sorry, that she thought about them every single day, that leaving them was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
Her finger hovered over the screen.
Then she caught the reflection of her monitors in the darkened phone glass. The map. The evidence. Everything she’d spent years building.
She set the phone down.
Not yet. Not until it was finished. Not until the man hunting her couldn’t hurt anyone ever again.
She’d never planned to leave Oliver. Never planned to fall in love with Magnus either. But she had, and the longer she’d stayed, the more she’d understood what Oliver needed — stability, safety, a father who would always be there. Not a mother on the run, constantly looking over her shoulder.
So, she’d done the unthinkable and left her son with the one person she trusted to keep him safe. A man so thoroughly disconnected from her world that no one would ever think to look there.
The video shifted as Oliver picked up the phone.
“Let’s take a selfie!” Oliver held the phone at arm’s length, capturing both their faces.
Magnus’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. Oliver beamed, his two front permanent teeth bigger than the rest.
She closed the video feed, though it felt like cutting off her own oxygen. She shoved the grief down where it couldn’t reach her and turned back to the screens.
Red, flashing alerts flooded her screens, all three monitors and her phone.
Her automated security sweep, scanning every four hours for any digital footprint that might compromise her location, screamed at her. Day after day, that scan had come back clean.
She stared incredulously at a photo on Instagram posted ninety-three minutes ago by someone named TravelBunny2020.
“Hidden gems in Alaska! This little bakery in Unalaska has the BEST coffee! #AlaskaAdventure #OffTheBeatenPath #Unalaska”
The image showed the interior of the bakery. And there, in the background, partially visible but unmistakably her, Grace stood behind the counter, handing bear claws to Mrs. Thornton.
Eight years of hiding are gone because some tourist couldn’t eat a bear claw without posting about it.