Chapter 2
Golden hour painted the Ozark hills in shades of honey and amber, and Delaney Cross had exactly eighteen minutes to catch it.
She pulled her Jeep into the gravel lot behind Ozark Light and grabbed her camera bag, already calculating angles.
The engagement shoot at Ha Ha Tonka had run long—the couple couldn't stop kissing long enough to pose—but she'd gotten the shots.
Now she needed to download the files, back up the cards, and prep for tomorrow's family session at Big Sugar Creek.
The studio door was unlocked.
Delaney stopped with her hand on the frame. She'd locked it this morning. She always locked it—four years in the Army had burned certain habits deep enough that she didn't have to think about them anymore.
She pushed the door open slowly, weight balanced, camera bag held loose in case she needed to swing it.
A man sat in her client chair.
He was maybe mid-thirties, wiry build, the kind of forgettable face that made him hard to describe. Her photos were spread across the consultation table in front of him—property shots, landscape work, real estate documentation from the past six months.
"Miss Cross." His voice was flat. Professional. "Close the door."
Delaney didn't move. She cataloged exits: front door behind her, back door through the processing room, windows too small to climb through quickly. The man hadn't stood up, hadn't reached for a weapon, but something in his stillness told her he knew how to hurt people.
"Get out of my studio."
"We need to talk about some photos you took." He tapped one of the prints on the table. "Property on Brush Creek Road. You remember it?"
She didn't. She shot dozens of properties every month—vacation rentals, real estate listings, the endless Ozark appetite for lake views and rustic charm. Brush Creek Road meant nothing specific.
"I don't discuss client work with strangers who break into my business."
The man's expression didn't change. "You photographed the exterior and interior of a rental cabin six weeks ago. The owners wanted listing photos for a vacation site. You delivered the files and moved on."
Delaney remembered now—a standard job, two hours of shooting, forgettable. "What about it?"
"You captured something in the background that wasn't meant to be documented." He stood, and she saw the controlled way he moved. Not military, but trained. Someone had taught him how to use his body as a weapon. "I need those files deleted. Every copy. Every backup. Every cloud storage account."
"I don't know what you think I photographed—"
"You don't need to know." He stepped closer. "You just need to delete."
Four years in the Army had taught Delaney to read threats. This man wasn't bluffing. He wasn't negotiating. He was delivering instructions and expecting compliance.
She didn't comply.
"Get out." Her voice came out steady, which surprised her. "Whatever you think is in those photos, I don't have it. I deliver files and move on. Take it up with the property owners."
Something shifted in his eyes. Annoyance, maybe. The flicker of a man who wasn't used to hearing the word no.
He moved fast.
Delaney jerked back, but he wasn't coming for her—he grabbed her camera from the bag still hanging on her shoulder and swung it against the wall.
The Nikon hit the drywall with a crack that echoed through the small studio. Glass shattered. The lens mount snapped. Eighteen thousand dollars of professional equipment fell to the floor in pieces.
"That was your warning." His voice hadn't changed. Still flat. Still professional. "Delete everything from the Brush Creek property. Every file, every backup, every copy you might have forgotten about."
Delaney stared at the broken camera. Her hands wanted to shake. She didn't let them.
"And if I don't?"
He stepped over the debris and stopped close enough that she could smell cigarettes and coffee on his breath. "Next time, it won't be equipment."
He walked out the front door like a man with nowhere particular to be. A moment later, an engine started in the lot, and she heard tires on gravel fading into the evening.
Delaney stood in her studio with broken glass on the floor and eighteen thousand dollars of ruined equipment at her feet.
Her hands were shaking now. She let them.
Twenty minutes later, the shaking stopped.
Delaney swept the broken glass into a pile because the alternative was staring at it. The camera was beyond repair—she'd known that the second it hit the wall, but she picked up the pieces anyway, arranged them on the table like evidence.
Because that's what they were.
Four years as an Army photographer had taught her things they didn't put in the recruitment brochures. How to document a scene. How to capture details that might matter later. How to function when everything in your body wanted to run.
She'd spent those four years pointing cameras at things that didn't officially exist. Operations that never happened. Faces that would never be identified. The Army had trained her to document first and process later, and right now that training was the only thing keeping her upright.
Brush Creek Road.
She pulled up her files on the backup laptop—the old one she kept for emergencies, not the primary system. Six weeks ago. Rental property listing. She found the folder and opened the images.
Standard work. Exterior shots showing the cabin's position on the lot. Interior shots of the kitchen, bedrooms, the living room with its stone fireplace. Lake views from the deck. Nothing remarkable.
She zoomed in on the exterior shots and started scanning.
Third image. A van parked at the edge of the frame, partially obscured by trees. She'd included it in the composition for scale, hadn't thought twice about it.
She zoomed tighter.
Two men stood at the back of the van with equipment cases. One was on a ladder, doing something to the cabin's exterior near the roofline. The other was handing up what looked like—
Cameras. Small ones. The kind you hid in places people didn't think to look.
Delaney leaned back from the laptop and let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding.
She'd photographed men installing surveillance equipment. Hidden cameras in a vacation rental. And someone had broken into her studio, destroyed her equipment, and threatened her life to make sure those images disappeared.
Whatever this was, it was bigger than a property shoot gone wrong.
She thought about calling the police. Dismissed it immediately. A man breaks in, smashes a camera, makes vague threats—what would the sheriff do? Take a report. Tell her to install better locks. Drive away and forget about it by morning.
The Army had taught her other lessons too. When official channels won't help, you document everything and find people who will.
Delaney pulled a portable hard drive from her equipment drawer and started copying files. Not just the Brush Creek property—everything from the past year. Every shoot, every backup, every image that might contain something she hadn't noticed.
If they came back, they'd find a studio full of standard client work and nothing else.
The real files would be somewhere they couldn't reach.
The sun had fully set by the time she finished. Ozark night settled over the hills, crickets screaming in the darkness outside the studio windows.
Delaney wrapped the hard drive in a canvas bag and walked to her Jeep. She'd modified the cargo area years ago—a hidden compartment under the floor panels that held emergency supplies, a med kit, and enough cash to get out of town if she ever needed to run.
She added the drive to the stash and sealed the compartment.
Standing in the lot behind her studio, she let herself feel it for a moment. The fear. The violation. The knowledge that someone had been watching her, researching her, learning her schedule well enough to know when she'd be gone and when she'd return.
She thought about the photos on her table. The man's flat voice. The controlled violence in the way he'd destroyed her camera.
This wasn't over. He'd be back—him or someone like him—and next time they wouldn't stop at equipment.
Delaney looked at her studio. The lights were still on inside, illuminating the mess she'd left on the floor. Tomorrow she'd clean it up, file an insurance claim, figure out how to replace eighteen thousand dollars of equipment she couldn't afford.
Tonight, she'd document everything she could remember about the man who'd threatened her. Face, voice, build, mannerisms. The details the Army had trained her to notice.
She wasn't running. The Ozarks were her home now—the first place that had felt like home since she'd stopped pointing cameras at classified operations and started pointing them at something beautiful instead.
Some man with a forgettable face and a talent for violence wasn't going to take that from her.
Delaney walked back into her studio, pulled out a notebook, and started writing down everything she could remember.