Chapter Twenty-two – Holt
The station is too quiet when my phone vibrates.
That’s the first thing I register. Not the screen lighting up beside the half-finished report in front of me.
Not Beckett’s voice carrying from the apparatus bay where he’s trying to convince Ray that reorganizing the supply cabinet by snack preference is “a morale initiative.” Not the low, steady scrape of Mac’s pen from his office where he’s still finishing paperwork that should’ve been somebody else’s problem three signatures ago.
My phone shifts once more against the table, and I look down, expecting a text from Hadley, or my mother, or one of my brothers, needing something stupid and immediate, and very much not immediate at all.
It’s Lark. She never calls unless something’s wrong. My whole body reacts before thought catches up.
I answer on the first ring. “What happened?”
Her voice comes through fast and tighter than I’ve ever heard it. Not panicked. Worse, somehow. Controlled in a way that means she’s working hard to keep it from becoming panic.
“Nolan found footprints near the carriage house,” she says. “And the latch on the side gate was open.”
The report in front of me goes out of focus.
“When?”
“Recently.” She takes a breath. “He said they weren’t there this morning.”
I’m already standing. The chair legs scrape hard against the concrete, and three heads lift at once from around the room.
This isn’t about the inn. Or the footprints.
Or the possibility that something bigger is happening under all of this.
It’s about her, standing somewhere she shouldn’t have to question her safety.
And the fact that the thought of her doing it alone isn’t something I can tolerate.
“You still there?” she asks.
“Yeah.” My voice sounds different even to me. Flatter. Colder. “Don’t touch anything.”
There’s a pause on the line. “I didn’t.”
“You alone?”
“No. Bailey, Hadley, Ivy, and Lila are with me.”
Some part of me unclenches at that, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
“Stay put,” I say. “I’m coming.”
Another pause, this one shorter, lighter somehow, though maybe I’m imagining that because I need to.
“Okay.”
I end the call and look up. The station has changed shape in the last ten seconds. Beckett is already crossing the room. Ray has set his mug down. Mac stands in his office doorway with one hand braced against the frame, his expression giving away nothing and everything at once.
“What?” he says, his body stiff in a way that shows he’s in charge.
The question is direct. Stripped clean of anything but need. I drag a hand through my hair and force myself to answer like a firefighter first, not a man who has started measuring his own pulse against whether one woman is safe.
“Possible trespass at the Carrington House,” I say. “Fresh footprints, open gate, scene disturbance near the carriage house.”
Mac’s gaze narrows. “Law enforcement called?”
“Not sure.”
“Then that’s first.” His voice stays level. “You going in uniform or personal?”
I glance toward the turnout rack, then down at the shirt I’m wearing. Duty black. Department patch on the sleeve. Nothing about this is technically a call, but none of it feels personal either. Not anymore.
“Personal,” I say. “If this is related to the fire, I don’t want somebody spooking before we know what we’re looking at.”
Mac nods once. “Good.”
He doesn’t ask why I’m the one going. He already knows. Maybe because he’s seen enough to understand the difference between professional vigilance and the kind of protective instinct that burns hotter because it’s trying not to call itself what it is.
“I’ll notify the deputy on duty,” he says. “You do not go off by yourself if you find more than tracks.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wright.”
I look at him.
His eyes hold mine a second longer. “Use your head.”
That should be obvious. It shouldn’t need saying.
“Yes, sir,” I repeat.
Beckett is beside me by the time I reach for my keys. “I’m coming.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
I cut him a look. “You don’t even know what we’re walking into.”
“Exactly,” he says. “Which is why you’re not walking into it alone with that face.”
“What face?”
“The one that says you’re five bad seconds from punching the nearest tree and then apologizing to nobody.”
That would almost be funny if I weren’t suddenly very aware of how hard my heart is beating.
Ray steps in before I can answer. “I’ll go.”
I turn. “You’re on shift.”
“So are you.”
He says it plainly. No weight. No accusation. Just fact. The problem is I have no comeback for that one that doesn’t expose too much.
Mac handles it for me. “Ray stays,” he says. “Deputy meets Wright there. Beckett, you ride along if you can keep your mouth shut for at least the first ten minutes.”
Beckett places a hand over his heart. “You ask the impossible of me, Captain.”
“Five,” Mac says, already turning back toward his office phone. “I’ll settle for five.”
That’s how it happens. One minute, I’m at a table trying to convince myself patterns can wait until daylight.
The next, I’m moving fast enough that the world has narrowed to keys, truck, road, and the image of Lark standing outside the inn with somebody else’s footprints too close to what she’s trying to rebuild.
Beckett slides into the passenger seat while I back out hard enough to make him grab the dashboard.
“You know,” he says as I take the turn out of the lot, “I was about to say something supportive and noble, but the way you just almost launched us into county property killed the mood.”
I don’t answer.
The road opens in front of us, late afternoon light flattening under a bank of gray clouds that have been building all day. The weather feels wrong. Heavy. As if the sky can’t decide whether it wants to storm or just sit there and threaten it.
Beckett glances over at me once, then decides, wisely, to leave the running commentary alone. For almost a full minute.
Then, “You love her.”
I don’t answer. Not because I don’t know, but because saying it out loud would make it real in a way I’m not ready to survive if this goes wrong.
The words sting as if he’d reached over and landed a fist in the center of my chest.
I keep my eyes on the road. “Now’s not the time.”
“That’s not a no.”
I grip the wheel tighter. There are a dozen responses available to me. Most of them rude. At least three of them satisfying. None of them useful.
The silence stretches.
Then Beckett, quieter now, says, “That’s not a joke, man.”
No, it isn’t. I know exactly when it stopped being one. Not the kiss in the hallway. Not the second in the barn. Not even when she looked at me in my own kitchen and admitted I scared her because that truth had already started growing roots before either of us knew what to call it.
It happened somewhere smaller than that.
At the inn. At the farm. In a hundred tiny moments, she kept stepping into the center of my attention and refusing to leave it.
In the way she makes the ordinary parts of a day feel more immediate just by being inside them.
In the way she braces for impact even when nobody’s swinging.
In the way I’ve started thinking about safety like it has her face.
The answer sits in my throat. By the time the inn comes into view, I still haven’t said it out loud.
The Carrington House stands with that same stubborn dignity it always has, all weathered trim and old money gone to rot and bones too proud to admit what’s been taken from them.
Lila’s car is in the driveway. Bailey’s SUV too.
Ivy’s smaller sedan was tucked in at an angle, which tells me Hadley was almost definitely trying to direct where everyone parked and got ignored by everyone involved.
I’m out of the truck before the engine fully dies, Beckett right behind me. Lark meets me halfway up the walk. That alone tells me how rattled she is.
And everything in me settles—just enough to breathe again.
She never comes running. Not for anything. But here she is, moving fast enough that the gravel slips under her shoes, hair loose around her shoulders from whatever had held it back earlier, eyes too bright in a face gone paler than I like.
“You took too long,” she says, her relief at my arrival evident in the sharpness of her voice.
I don’t slow down until I’m right in front of her.
“Show me.”
She opens her mouth like she wants to say something else. Maybe ask whether I’m okay. Maybe tell me I’m overreacting. Maybe admit she’s scared and hates that fact as much as I hate seeing it.
What she does instead is turn and lead me around the side of the house.
The side gate stands open exactly the way I hate seeing it—unlatched, shifted off-center in the soft earth, one hinge sticking enough that whoever used it either didn’t care about noise or knew there’d be nobody close enough to hear.
The stack of materials against the west wall has been disturbed.
Tarp peeled back. Nails still in place, but somebody definitely looked underneath.
The footprints are there too. Fresh enough that the edges haven’t softened. Not one set. Two, maybe. Hard to tell where the gravel gives way to the softer dirt near the burned remains of the carriage house.
I crouch. Beckett circles wider, scanning the tree line, the road, the angle back toward the house. Lark stands just over my shoulder. I can feel her there before she speaks.
“Nolan found them.”
That shouldn’t feel strange. He’s been working the site longer than anyone and knows the layout better than most.
Still…something about him being the one to find it sits wrong. Not because I think he did anything, but because I don’t know how long he’s been looking.
I look up at her. “Where is he?”
“In the back hall. Taking photos.”
Already documenting. Already moving. Like he expected something to be there. I hate that the thought comes with immediate resentment anyway.