4. Nothing Left to Burn
Chapter four
Nothing Left to Burn
Della’s definition of ‘strict bedrest’ eventually had to be negotiated, if only to keep me from losing my mind.
By Friday afternoon—five days since the fire—the four log walls of Holt’s cabin had started to close in on me.
The anxiety wasn’t just a mental loop of legal strategy and revenge; it was a restless, crawling physical energy that made it impossible to sit still.
The late summer heat was not helping. Without the air conditioning of my city apartment, the air inside the cabin grew thick and stagnant by midday, smelling of baked dust, warm timber, and the faint, bitter tang of coffee grounds.
I sat on the edge of the worn leather sofa, staring at the floorboards, rhythmically tapping my fingers against my knee.
From the kitchen counter, Holt watched me. He had spent the morning mapping out the property lines and checking the solar battery banks, but for the last ten minutes, he had been leaning against the granite island, drinking a glass of water and quietly observing my spiraling tension.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the wood,” he said.
“I need to move,” I told him, looking up. “I know what Della said. But sitting here in the heat, thinking about Chase liquidating my grandmother’s accounts, is going to spike my blood pressure far higher than standing up.”
Holt set his glass down without arguing, understanding better than anyone what it felt like to want to crawl out of your own skin. He walked over to the heavy wooden door and pulled it open, letting a wave of dry, pine-scented heat roll into the room.
“Just to the tree line and back,” he said, holding the door. “Slowly.”
I pushed myself up from the sofa. The sheer weight of my belly threw off my center of gravity, forcing me to brace a hand against my lower back until I found my balance.
I was wearing an oversized, faded gray cotton T-shirt I’d borrowed from Holt’s dresser and a pair of soft maternity sweatpants that had survived in Della’s donation bin at the clinic.
It wasn’t exactly armor, but the thin cotton was light enough to breathe in the sweltering heat.
I stepped out onto the porch.
The late summer sun pressed down on the mountain like a heavy weight.
The air tasted bone-dry. The grassy clearing behind the cabin was baked to a brittle, golden brown, with the curled, pale pine needles littering the ground.
In the distance, the faint, acrid scent of scorched earth and charred wood carried on the breeze—a lingering ghost of the fire that had consumed the neighboring ridge.
Holt walked beside me as we moved down the porch steps and into the yard. He didn’t hover, and he didn’t try to hold my elbow like I was an invalid, but he stayed within arm’s reach. His presence was a steady, quiet reassurance in my peripheral vision.
“Take your time,” he said as my boots crunched over the dry grass.
“I’m fine,” I said, though my breathing was already growing shallow. We walked at a painfully slow pace, aiming for the deep shade of a massive ponderosa pine at the edge of the clearing.
“You don’t have to be fine,” Holt replied, his voice entirely even. “You survived a house fire and an attempted murder on the same afternoon. The adrenaline crash takes about a week to fully bottom out. It’s going to hit you.”
I glanced sideways at him. He wore a faded gray henley, the sleeves pushed up past his elbows, exposing thick forearms corded with muscle and crisscrossed with old, silver burn scars.
He didn’t carry himself with the frantic, restless energy of someone trying to outrun their problems. He moved with deliberate, measured intent.
“You sound like you know,” I said.
We reached the shade of the pine. The air was instantly cooler under the thick canopy of the branches. I leaned my shoulder against the rough, puzzle-piece bark of the trunk, closing my eyes for a second to just feel the breeze against my sweat-dampened neck.
“I spent eight years on a hotshot crew out of Missoula,” Holt said.
He leaned his back against the opposite side of the trunk, looking out over the baked valley below.
“Jumping out of helicopters into ravines, cutting fire breaks, watching a hundred-foot wall of flame suck the oxygen right out of the air. You live on pure adrenaline for days at a time. Your brain convinces you that you’re invincible.
Right up until you get back to base camp, take your boots off, and your hands start shaking so hard you can’t hold a coffee cup. ”
I opened my eyes, watching his profile. The harsh light filtered through the needles, casting sharp shadows across his jaw. “Is that why you left?”
“I left because I stopped recognizing the quiet,” Holt said, turning his head to look at me.
His slate-gray eyes were incredibly sharp, taking in my exhaustion without an ounce of pity.
“It gets to a point where the chaos is the only thing that makes sense. The noise, the heat, the panic. It rewires your baseline. When I finally came back to the ‘real world’, the silence felt wrong. It made me paranoid. I moved up here to force myself to relearn how to exist in the quiet. To stop waiting for the next spark.”
His words settled into the quiet space between us. I looked out at the valley, thinking about my life in the city. I had never fought a literal fire before this week, but I had spent my entire adult life bracing for the next disaster.
Chase’s constant demands, his vanity, his reckless spending, his deep need to be validated and catered to.
Sienna’s endless financial disasters, her emotional breakdowns, her refusal to take accountability for a single mistake she ever made.
Lorraine’s obsessive need for me to smooth over the ugly realities of our family’s public image.
I had spent years running into their burning buildings, throwing water on their self-made fires, convinced that if I just managed everything perfectly, they would eventually let me rest.
They never did. They just used my exhaustion as an opportunity to lock the door.
Looking at Holt, I saw the exact opposite of the man I had married.
Chase was performative, wrapped entirely in expensive suits, practiced smiles, and empty words.
Holt was deeply, fundamentally real. The dirt on his boots, the calluses on his hands, the quiet, steady capability he carried with him.
He didn’t ask anything of me. He didn’t need me to manage his emotions or clean up his messes.
“I think I’ve been waiting for the next spark my entire life,” I admitted quietly. The confession felt strange on my tongue, stripped of the usual armor I wore to pretend my marriage was fine. “I thought if I just kept fixing things for them, they would love me.”
Holt held my gaze for a long moment. He understood exactly what I meant. He didn’t offer a platitude. He didn’t tell me I was wrong or that things would magically get better. He just gave a single, slow nod.
“Well,” Holt said, his voice a low rumble. “The fire already came through here. There’s nothing left to burn. You get to decide what grows back.”
Before I could respond, a sudden, forceful pressure rolled across my belly.
I gasped, my breath hitching as my hands moved reflexively to the bottom of my stomach.
It wasn’t the suffocating, rock-hard vise of a Braxton Hicks contraction.
It was a sharp, distinct kick, followed immediately by a slow, rolling shift that visibly pressed outward against the thin cotton of the oversized shirt.
Holt instantly pushed away from the tree, his posture shifting into high alert. “Wren? Are you in pain?”
“No,” I breathed, my eyes widening.
Since the fire, the baby’s movements had been sluggish, muted by the sheer shock and exhaustion of the last five days. I had spent the last five nights lying awake in the dark, terrified by the stillness, wondering if the smoke inhalation had done invisible damage I couldn’t quantify.
But this was strong. This was a vigorous, undeniable reminder that she was still there.
“She’s moving,” I whispered, overwhelmed by a sudden, fierce rush of relief. I looked down at my hands resting over the swell of my belly. I could feel the hard ridge of a tiny heel dragging across the inside. “She’s really moving.”
Holt stepped closer, the rigid line of his broad shoulders finally relaxing. He stood right beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his arm. His eyes were fixed on where my hands rested.
“She’s fighting back,” Holt said, the reverence in his voice unmistakable.
Another sharp kick landed against my ribs, so forceful it made me flinch before I let out a shaky laugh.
I looked up at Holt. Standing there in the dry heat, feeling the fierce, rhythmic movements of my daughter, I let the relentless mental loop of strategy and survival finally fade.
For the first time since I had caught my husband in my grandmother’s bed, I felt an undeniable spark of hope. Chase had tried to bury us in ashes. He had plotted for months to erase me. But we were here. We were alive, and we were intact.
“Yeah,” I said, looking from Holt to the valley and back again, a small, fierce smile breaking across my face. “She is.”
We retreated inside a few minutes later, escaping the oppressive peak of the midday sun. The cabin, shielded by the thick logs and the shade of the pines, felt ten degrees cooler than the porch.
I settled back onto the leather sofa, pulling my feet up. The undeniable sensation of the baby’s kicks still lingered, leaving me with a sudden clarity that hadn’t been there an hour ago.
Holt walked into the kitchen, poured two glasses of water, and brought one over to the coffee table. As he set it down, the rugged laptop resting beside it chimed.
A notification flashed across the dark screen. Renata had dropped a message in our secure portal, requesting an immediate VoIP call.
I opened the laptop and clicked the encrypted link. The connection took a few seconds to stabilize, the audio feed hissing lightly with static before suddenly clearing.
“The coroner won’t sign it,” Renata Vance said, skipping any kind of greeting.
I sat forward, the leather creaking beneath me. “Explain.”
“Chase filed the sworn affidavit yesterday, officially claiming you were trapped inside the house,” Renata said, the connection clipping her sharp consonants.
“The burn site finally cooled enough for the local fire investigators to sift through the ashes this morning. The fire burned too hot, and the roof collapse destroyed the structural footprint. Without forensic proof of a body, the county coroner kicked the paperwork back. They need proof of ‘Imminent Peril’ to bypass the standard waiting period.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning they need physical evidence you were inside the house when it collapsed,” Renata said, her tone entirely pragmatic. “Without it, the state legally classifies you as a ‘missing person’. The estate stays locked in probate. Chase gets nothing for five years.”
I stared at the black square on the screen. Five years was an eternity. If Chase had to wait five years, he would adapt. He would find another angle, file for divorce in absentia, take half of my assets, and walk away clean. We needed him to commit federal fraud right now, while he felt invincible.
“I can’t forge forensic evidence, Wren,” Renata stated flatly.
Holt walked around the sofa and stopped behind it, his eyes fixed on the laptop. “Did you leave anything behind?” he asked, his voice carrying toward the microphone. “Something that wouldn’t burn?”
I closed my eyes. I forced myself to walk backward through the last hour I had spent in my grandmother’s house, pushing past the paralyzing memory of the smoke. I pictured the hallway. The plastic pharmacy bag hanging from my fingers. The muffled voices leaking from the bedroom.
Before that, I had been getting ready to drive into town for Sienna’s face cream. My wrists were swollen, and something tight had been digging into my skin.
My eyes snapped open. “My smartwatch.”
“What about it?” Renata asked.
“I took it off right before I grabbed my keys and drove to the pharmacy. I left it sitting on the kitchen island. The counter is solid granite.”
“A smartwatch has an internal GPS and an ambient temperature gauge,” Renata said, catching the thread instantly, her pace picking up.
“Even if the exterior housing melted, the internal chip might still be intact enough for a forensic tech to pull the last ping. It would prove you were standing in the center of the house when the temperature spiked past human survival limits. That’s your ‘Imminent Peril’. ”
“It’s a breadcrumb,” I said, feeling a sudden, distinct rush of vindication. “Exactly what they need to validate his lie.”
“I can go look,” Holt said, keeping his voice low and steady. “I know how to sift a burn site safely. I can find it and mail it anonymously to the fire investigator’s office.”
“No,” I said, looking up at him. “I’m going with you. I want to look.”
Holt frowned, his posture immediately going rigid. “Wren… it could be dangerous. The ground is unstable, there are buried nails, and the ash is toxic.”
“I have a mask,” I countered, pointing to the respirator he had used to pull me out. “I can wear your boots.”
“It’s a bad idea,” he pushed back, crossing his arms. “If someone sees you, this whole plan dies.”
“We’ll talk to Della,” I said, softening my tone to cut off his protest. “When she radios in tonight, we’ll ask her. If she says I can’t make the ATV trip without risking the baby, I stay here. But if she clears me… then we go.”
Holt searched my expression for any sign of panic or shock. He didn’t find it. I wasn’t acting out of fear, but out of absolute necessity.
“If you’re sure,” he said quietly.
“I’m sure,” I said, resting my hand over my stomach. “I need this. We both do.”
I looked back at the laptop screen. “Renata, give us twenty-four hours. We’ll get you the watch.”
“Be careful, Wren,” Renata said. “If he catches you out there, he has two million, three hundred thousand reasons to finish the job.”
The call disconnected, plunging the cabin back into silence. I sat back against the leather cushions, keeping my hand pressed to the slow, deliberate roll of the baby beneath it.
Tomorrow, we were going back to the burn site.