Chapter 28
Bridlepath Farm — Late Morning
Grant was hauling a fresh bale of hay when a siren cut through the valley. He dropped the bale, his head snapping toward the drive.
Burke’s cruiser came sliding in, gravel flying, blue lights strobing against the barn’s red siding. Burke was out of the door before the car even settled.
“Where are they?” Burke shouted, his face tight with a kind of controlled panic.
Grant stepped toward him, his stomach dropping. “They went riding an hour ago. Why?”
“Caitlin called. Someone just trashed the cabin. I told her to get back here, but the line went dead.” Burke scanned the empty yard. “They aren’t here?”
“No.” A cold dread opened in Grant. “They haven’t come back.”
Naomi appeared from the tack room, already carrying two saddles. She didn’t ask questions; she tossed one to Grant. “Outlaw and Trigger are ready. Move.”
Grant and Burke didn’t speak. They moved with the synchronized speed of men who knew exactly how fast a mountain could swallow a person.
They mounted up, the horses sensing the tension. As they broke into a gallop, Grant reached down. His hand went to his lower leg, beneath the hem of his jeans, checking the leather holster strapped there—a compact .38 snub-nose.
Burke saw the movement. He didn’t say a word. He checked his own service weapon, and they kicked the horses into a dead run toward the ridge.
The Cabin
Inside, the cabin was a wreck. The mattress had been sliced open, the few remaining canvases tossed.
“He didn’t find it,” Izzy whispered. She was on her knees by the roll-top desk, her fingers frantic against the base. She felt the hidden catch—the one from the sketch—and pressed. The false bottom popped with a dry clack.
She pulled out the oilcloth bundle—the sketches and the black notebook.
“Izzy, we have to go,” Caitlin urged, standing by the door, watching the shadows in the trees.
“I have it. I have her story.”
Thunderous hoofbeats echoed outside, growing louder until they stopped abruptly at the porch.
Grant and Burke burst through the door, weapons drawn—Burke’s service weapon and Grant’s small revolver held in a low, practiced grip.
They stopped dead, eyes scanning the room for a threat before they even looked at the girls. Seeing them standing there, shaken but whole, didn’t make them drop their guard. It shifted their focus.
“Which way?” Burke barked, his voice pure authority.
Izzy didn’t hesitate. She pointed toward the thicket leading toward the Hollis line. “That way. Dark hoodie. He moved fast, Burke. He knew exactly where he was going.”
Grant didn’t wait for a second set of directions. He and Burke exchanged a single, sharp look—the kind shared by brothers who had hunted these woods together since they were boys.
“Stay inside,” Grant commanded, his voice like gravel. “Lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone but us.”
They vanished back out the door. The sound of hoofbeats tore away from the cabin, growing faint as they dove into the deep timber.
Inside, the quiet felt heavy. Izzy held the oilcloth bundle to her chest, her heart still hammering against her ribs. Caitlin sat on the edge of the battered desk, her hands folded tight in her lap.
“They’re going to be okay, right?” Caitlin whispered.
“They’re in their element, Cate,” Izzy said, though she didn’t move away from the window. “I wouldn’t want to be the one they’re hunting.”
Fifteen minutes stretched like hours. Then, the sound of horses returned—slower this time.
Grant and Burke walked back into the cabin. Their faces were grim, their clothes snagged by briers, their boots coated in the dark mud of the lower cut.
“Lost him at the creek,” Burke said, his voice lower now, the jagged edge of the adrenaline dulling. “He had a dirt bike stashed on the other side. By the time we hit the water, he was gone.”
He crossed the room to Caitlin. He looked at her for a long second, chest still heaving from the ride. Then he reached out, his thumb brushing a smudge of dust from her cheek. His hand stayed there, cupping her face.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Caitlin leaned into his palm, her eyes fluttering shut. “Yes. We’re okay.”
Burke’s shoulders sagged, relief roughening his voice. “Thank God.”
Then he pulled back, his eyes snapping to Izzy, then back to Caitlin, the Sheriff returning to his eyes.
“Now,” he said, his voice regaining its steel. “You’re both grounded. Both of you. For the next ten years. I’m impounding the horses. I’m impounding your boots. You aren’t leaving the farmhouse without an escort.”
Grant stepped up beside Izzy. He didn’t touch her, but the heat coming off him was a physical weight. He looked at the bundle in her hands, then at the hard, determined line of her mouth.
“Whoever was up here today wasn’t trying to scare you off,” Grant rumbled. “They were trying to beat you to it.”
Izzy didn’t flinch. She held out the black notebook. “The warning came twenty-seven years ago, Grant. We’re the ones finally reading it.”
* * *
The Kitchen — 30 Minutes Later
The black notebook sat in the center of the farmhouse table. It looked small, but it felt like a bomb.
Burke flipped through the loose sketches Izzy had pulled from the oilcloth. He stopped at the last one. It was raw, urgent, done in heavy charcoal that had smeared under Clara’s hand.
“Look at this,” Burke said, his voice tight.
Grant leaned in. Izzy and Caitlin stood behind them, very still.
The sketch showed the landing strip, but it wasn’t empty.
A small Cessna sat on the asphalt. Four men stood in a semicircle near the wing.
Three were blurred, but the fourth—even in rough lines—was unmistakable.
The height, the tilt of the Stetson, the way he stood like he owned the ground beneath him.
“Wade,” Grant whispered.
“And look at the tail,” Izzy pointed.
Clara had rendered the call letters with obsessive detail, as if she knew they were the only thing that couldn’t be denied. N372FL.
But it was the next sketch that made the room go cold. It showed the men loading heavy, rectangular crates into the belly of the plane. In the foreground, partially hidden by a tree—as if Clara were drawing from the shadows—was a man watching them.
He wasn’t part of the crew. He was holding a badge.
Grant and Burke looked at each other. A thick pause settled over the kitchen.
Burton Scott had been the Sheriff for thirty years. He was the reason Burke had a career in law enforcement. He was the reason the Scott name meant law in this county.
“No,” Burke said, the word scraping out quiet and raw. “Dad wouldn’t. Not for Wade. Not for anyone.”
“She saw it, Burke,” Izzy said, her voice soft but unyielding. “She saw the crates. She saw the plane. And she saw the Sheriff watching it happen.”
Burke’s hand shook as he flipped to the final entry in the notebook.
“Sam called. He’s coming to get me tonight. He says we’re going to the Sheriff. He says Burton will listen.”
Burke stopped. He looked at Grant, his eyes wide with a sudden, sickening realization.
“But I saw the way Wade and the Sheriff looked at each other at the fair. I don’t think anyone is coming to save us.”
The stillness that followed was deafening.
Grant reached out, gripping the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white. He thought of his father—the man who had coached his ball games, the man who had sat on the porch and talked about honor and the ‘weight of the mountain.’
“He told us it was a walkaway,” Grant rumbled, the sound coming from deep in him. “He sat right there at that fire pit and told us she just moved on. That it was a story.”
“Grant…” Caitlin started, reaching for his arm.
He didn’t feel her. He was looking at Burke.
The two brothers stood in the heart of their home, staring at each other across the wreckage of their family legacy. Everything they believed about their father, about the badge, about the ‘Scott way’ was fracturing.
“N372FL,” Burke said, his voice regaining a jagged, professional edge. “I’m going to run the tail number. I’m going to find out where that plane came from and who owned it in ninety-nine.”
“And then?” Izzy asked.
Burke closed the book. He looked like he’d aged ten years in ten minutes.
“And then we go to the house,” Burke said. “We don’t wait for tomorrow. We go tonight.”
Grant grabbed his hat from the counter, his jaw set in a hard, rigid line that mirrored the mountain peaks outside.
“If he lied to us, Burke,” Grant said, his voice a low, dangerous vibration. “If he let that girl disappear to protect Wade Hollis… then the Scott name doesn’t mean a damn thing in this valley.”
He looked at Izzy—not as a guest, not as a city girl, but as the woman who had brought the truth home.
“Stay here,” he commanded, but his eyes were pleading. “Naomi has the gate. Don’t open the door.”
The two brothers walked out of the house, their shadows long and dark against the barn. The siren didn’t wail this time. They drove toward their father’s house in a quiet that felt like the end of the world.