Chapter 18
The photos arrived at two in the morning.
Reagan's phone buzzed on the nightstand, the screen lighting up Channel's cabin with an unknown number. She grabbed it before the sound could wake him, expecting spam, expecting nothing.
She got her store.
Or what was left of it.
The first image showed the front window, shattered. Glass scattered across the sidewalk like diamonds in the streetlight. Through the broken frame, she could see destruction—racks toppled, clothes strewn everywhere, display cases smashed.
The second image was inside. Smoke hung in the air, thick and gray. A pile of what had been her consignment inventory smoldered in the center of the floor. Vintage dresses. Designer pieces. Things she'd spent years collecting, pricing, curating.
Burning.
The third image was the message.
Graffiti across the back wall, spray-painted in red: SHOULD HAVE SAID YES.
Reagan stared at her phone. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears, drowning out everything else. Four years. Four years of work, of sacrifice, of building something from nothing.
Gone.
"Reagan?" Channel's voice, thick with sleep. "What's wrong?"
She couldn't answer. Couldn't find words for the hole opening up in her chest.
He took the phone from her frozen fingers. She heard his sharp intake of breath, felt him go rigid beside her.
"That's—"
"My store." Her voice came out flat. Empty. "They destroyed my store."
Channel was moving before she finished speaking, grabbing clothes, pulling on boots. "When did these come in? Are there more?"
"Just now. Three photos." Reagan sat motionless on the bed, watching him without really seeing. "They burned the inventory."
"I'm calling Cottonmouth. We need to—"
"No."
The word stopped him mid-reach for his phone. He turned to look at her, concern and fury warring in his expression.
"Reagan—"
"I need to see it." She stood up, her body moving without her permission. "I need to see it myself."
"It's not safe. Whoever did this might still be—"
"I need to see it."
Channel stared at her for a long moment. Whatever he saw in her face made him nod slowly.
"Then we go together."
They rode through the dark—her in his truck because her hands wouldn't stop shaking, him behind the wheel pushing the speed limit. The lake roads blurred past. Stars overhead, indifferent to the destruction waiting at the end of the drive.
Reagan didn't speak. Didn't cry. Didn't feel anything at all.
She'd learned to do that a long time ago. Shut everything down until the danger passed, until she could process without falling apart. It had saved her when she left home at seventeen. Saved her through years of scraping by on nothing.
It would save her now.
The store came into view, and Channel pulled to the curb.
Reagan got out before the engine stopped.
The smell hit her first. Smoke and accelerant and the particular stink of burned fabric. The window was worse than the photos had shown—not just broken but destroyed, the frame twisted, the display forms she'd positioned so carefully knocked to the ground.
She walked through the shattered door and into the ruin of her life.
They'd been thorough.
Every rack was toppled. Every display case smashed, the salvage wood she'd built them from splintered into kindling.
Clothes were everywhere—trampled, torn, soaked with whatever accelerant they'd used to start the fires.
The register had been pried open and thrown across the room.
The shelves she'd installed herself hung at broken angles, the inventory that had survived the initial chaos pulled down and stomped.
The fire hadn't spread far—probably intentional, meant to destroy specific things rather than burn the whole building. Her consignment inventory, the vintage pieces she couldn't replace, the designer items tourists paid premium prices for.
All of it. Gone.
Reagan moved through the wreckage like a ghost. Her feet crunched on broken glass. Her hands brushed charred fabric. Four years of work surrounded her, reduced to rubble and ash.
She found the brooch she'd been pricing the night Channel walked in. Crushed flat, the vintage gold twisted beyond recognition.
She found the 1950s dress she'd planned to list at forty dollars. Ripped in half, soaked in something that reeked of chemicals.
She found the display case she'd built from salvage wood, the one customers always complimented, the one she'd been proudest of.
Smashed. Splintered. Thrown against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.
"Reagan." Channel's voice, close behind her. His hand on her shoulder, solid and warm.
She didn't turn around.
"The graffiti," she said quietly. "Should have said yes."
"Farris's message."
"Jesse Groves." She'd learned the names by now, had been part of the Church meetings where brothers discussed strategy. "Farris's youngest crew member. The one who handles repeat visits and property destruction."
"We'll find him."
"I know."
She kept walking. Past the burned inventory. Past the broken shelves. Past everything she'd built from nothing.
And there, in the center of the destruction, she stopped.
Her folding table stood in a clear space, untouched.
The same folding table she'd bought for fifteen dollars at a garage sale when she was twenty-two. The one she'd set up at the Branson flea market every weekend for two years, selling vintage clothes to tourists, saving every penny. The table that had been the foundation of everything.
It stood alone in the middle of the wreckage. Perfect. Clean. Positioned like a monument.
Or a taunt.
This is where you started, the table said. This is where you'll end up again.
Reagan stared at it. The message was clear—Groves had left it intentionally. A reminder that everything she'd built could be taken away. That she was nothing but a woman with a folding table, and she'd always be nothing but a woman with a folding table, no matter how hard she tried to be more.
Something shifted in her chest.
Not grief. Not despair.
Fury.
She walked to the table and ran her hands across the surface. The same surface she'd covered with inventory when she could barely afford to eat. The same legs she'd set up in rain and heat and early morning cold, determined to make something of herself.
This table had started everything.
And it would start again.
"Reagan?" Channel's voice was careful. He was watching her like she might shatter, like the devastation had finally broken through her defenses.
"Help me fold this."
"What?"
She grabbed one end of the table, collapsing the legs with a motion burned into muscle memory. "I'm taking it with me."
Channel moved to the other end, helping her fold it flat. "We should call the brothers. Get a crew here to document everything, figure out what can be salvaged—"
"Nothing can be salvaged." Reagan's voice was steady now, the cold clarity of calculation replacing the numbness. "They made sure of that. The inventory's gone, the fixtures are destroyed. This isn't a cleanup job. It's a crime scene."
"Then we document the crime scene. Make them pay."
"Oh, they'll pay." She met his eyes, and whatever he saw there made him go still. "But not through documentation. Not through insurance claims or police reports or anything civilized."
"Reagan—"
"They wanted to break me." She carried her end of the table toward the door, forcing him to follow. "Send me a message that said I'm nothing. That everything I built was worthless, and I should go back to the folding table and stay there."
"That's not—"
"But they forgot something." She stopped at the broken doorway, looking back at the destruction one last time. "I started with a folding table. Built an entire business from nothing but this table and stubbornness. They think reminding me of that breaks me?"
She turned to face Channel, the table between them, smoke still rising from the wreckage behind her.
"It just reminds me I've done it before. And I can do it again."
Channel stared at her. The concern hadn't left his face, but something else had joined it. Respect. Recognition. The dawning understanding that she wasn't falling apart—she was calculating.
"You're planning something."
"I'm planning to help you kill every last one of them." She carried the table through the broken door and into the night. "Starting with Jesse Groves."
They loaded the folding table into Channel's truck. Reagan climbed into the passenger seat and stared at the ruined storefront while he started the engine.
Four years. Gone in a single night.
She should be crying. Should be screaming, or numb with shock, or anything other than the cold certainty settling into her bones.
But she'd survived worse than this. Survived her stepfather's attention and her mother's denial. Survived leaving home with nothing. Survived years of poverty and struggle and building something from scratch.
Groves thought destroying her store would destroy her.
He'd learn differently.
"Reagan." Channel's hand found hers on the center console. "Whatever you're planning—we do it together."
"I know."
"I mean it. No solo missions. No running off to handle this yourself." His grip tightened. "You're mine, which means your fights are my fights. We hit them together or not at all."
She looked at him. At this man who'd walked into her store and decided she was worth protecting. Who'd fought for her, killed for her, held her through the aftermath.
"Together," she agreed.
He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles.
They drove back to the compound in silence, the folding table rattling in the truck bed behind them. Dawn was starting to break over the lake, painting the water gold and rose, beautiful and indifferent.
Reagan watched the sunrise and thought about destruction.
About rebuilding.
About Jesse Groves, who didn't know yet that he'd signed his own death warrant.
The table had started everything once.
It would start everything again.