Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
Bennett’s House
The guest suite was exactly what Aubrey should have expected from Bennett, yet it still made her feel out of her depth.
Like the rest of the house, the room was a masterclass in minimalist design.
A low platform bed draped in charcoal linen sat against a feature wall of rough-sawn cedar.
To her right, a massive floor-to-ceiling window overlooked the gorge, showing nothing but black velvet peaks beneath a dusting of cold, distant stars.
She stood beside the bed in soft gray sweatpants and an oversized Philadelphia Eagles T-shirt she’d pulled from her duffel. She felt exposed.
Aubrey walked over to the door leading back to the main hallway. Her fingers hovered over the heavy black iron lever. There was a lock—a sleek deadbolt built into the frame.
She stared at it.
…and a lock on the door if it makes you feel better.
She remembered the hard, protective line of Bennett’s jaw when he’d said it.
Closing her eyes, she let her hand drop to her side.
She didn’t turn the lock. Locking him out felt wrong—not because she trusted the mountains, but because the thought of being completely sealed away from the only person who understood the weight of today felt infinitely more terrifying.
Climbing into the platform bed, she was struck by how clean and uncomplicated everything felt, a stark contrast to the historic heaviness of the Victorian.
Night swallowed the room.
For a long time, Aubrey lay there, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling.
In Philadelphia, the night was never truly quiet.
There was always the distant hum of the highway, the occasional siren, the rhythmic thud of a neighbor’s bass through an apartment wall.
Predictable, mechanical noise she’d learned to tune out.
Here, the silence was absolute. It pressed against the glass like a physical thing.
Then the house began to breathe.
Steel, concrete, and glass settled as the mountain temperature dropped. A sharp crack echoed from the roofline as the structure shifted.
Aubrey’s entire body went rigid. Her heart hammered against her ribs, her breath catching in her throat. She stared at the shadows near the window, her mind flashing to a gloved hand sliding a window latch. To a velvet pillow. To Mabel, trapped in the dark.
From the living room, a familiar tags-rattling sound carried down the hallway. Moose gave a low, relaxed huff from his gray bed, utterly unconcerned.
Aubrey forced herself to exhale, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. Get a grip, Langford, she scolded herself. It’s thermal expansion. You know engineering. It’s physics, not footsteps.
But logic was a poor shield against the raw fact of a homicide investigation.
Above her, a different sound filtered through the ceiling.
A steady, rhythmic thud.
Footsteps.
Bennett was moving around the upstairs loft. The concrete floors muffled the sound, but she could trace his path: from the kitchen area, across the floating staircase landing, toward the master bedroom directly above her.
Then, the footsteps stopped.
Aubrey held her breath, staring upward as if she could see through the poured concrete. The thought of him up there—solid, vigilant—sent a strange, complicated warmth through her chest, chasing back the worst of the cold dread.
He was awake. He was watching the house.
Above her, the low murmur of a radio started, so faint it was barely a vibration in the air.
Aubrey rolled onto her side, facing the glass. The stars blinked back at her. She closed her eyes, listening to the faint, steady rhythm of Moose’s breathing down the hall and the ghost of Bennett’s presence overhead.
Minutes ticked by. Her mind did not stop.
She checked the digital clock on the nightstand.
10:52 p.m.
She tried closing her eyes. Tried counting backwards. Tried listing winery expenses.
By the time the clock rolled past 11:45, her muscles ached from tension and her sheets were a twisted mess around her legs.
Sleep wasn’t coming.
Sometime after midnight, Aubrey threw the covers back.
She padded to the door in her bare feet and eased it open.
A sliver of soft light from a dimmed fixture in the main room spilled across the concrete.
Moose’s head lifted as soon as she stepped into the hall.
His tags chimed once as he stood and shook himself, then he fell into step beside her, fur brushing her hip with every stride.
The living room was a low-lit cathedral of glass and shadow. Someone—Bennett, obviously—had left a single recessed light on over the kitchen island. The rest of the house lay in darkness.
Aubrey drifted toward the massive leather sofa and sank onto one end, tucking her legs up under her. Moose circled once, then hauled himself up onto the cushions without invitation and sprawled along the length of the couch, his back warm against her knees.
“You’re not supposed to be up here, are you?” she whispered, resting a hand on his side.
He sighed, a deep, content rumble, and nudged her calf with one paw.
She let her head fall back against the sofa, staring up at the exposed steel beams, listening to the house settle and Moose breathe. Her eyes slid toward the glass. The vineyard lights were long gone; only the ghostly outline of the valley and the endless scatter of stars remained.
“Can’t sleep either?”
The voice came from the shadows near the kitchen.
Aubrey jumped hard enough that Moose’s ears shot up. She turned to find Bennett leaning against the island, arms folded across his chest, bare feet on the concrete, a dark T-shirt and gray joggers replacing his usual work clothes.
She pushed a hand through her unbrushed hair, trying to slow her heart. “No,” she admitted. “You?”
He shook his head once. “Not my best night,” he said.
He crossed the floor and dropped down on the far end of the leather sofa, leaving a stretch of Moose between them. Moose, apparently thrilled with this development, stretched farther, one massive paw landing squarely across Aubrey’s bare ankle and the other nudging Bennett’s thigh.
“Traitor,” Bennett muttered to the dog, scratching absently behind one ear.
Aubrey let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “I thought he was your security system,” she said.
“He is,” Bennett said. “He thinks you’re part of the perimeter now.”
They sat in silence for a moment, the only sounds the soft hum of the fridge and Moose’s slow breathing.
Sitting inches apart in the dark, the air felt thick.
In her soft sweatpants and oversized tee, she looked more vulnerable than he'd ever seen her, and his gold-flecked eyes tracked every flicker across her face with an unreadable focus.
“It was different today,” Aubrey said finally, her voice low. “Hearing Burke say it out loud. ‘Homicide.’ Seeing them in her room. The cameras. The bags.”
“Yeah,” Bennett said. “It was different.”
He stared out at the glass for a beat. “I keep replaying it,” he went on. “Finding her. Thinking she… went in her sleep. Kincaid saying natural causes. Moose losing it outside the door. And I still walked out of there and told myself it was fine.”
“You couldn’t have known,” she said, a little too quickly.
He gave a small, humorless huff. “Maybe not,” he said. “Doesn’t mean it sits easy.”
Aubrey’s fingers curled in Moose’s fur. “I keep thinking about that window,” she whispered. “The latch. If he was there for me too. If Moose hadn’t barked, or if the storm had been louder…” Her throat closed around the rest.
Bennett’s gaze shifted to her, sharp and intensely steady across the expanse of the cushions. “He didn’t get you,” he said. “You’re here. He doesn’t get you.”
There was no bravado in it, just a flat certainty that settled somewhere deep under her ribs.
She swallowed. “Do you really think I’m safe here?” she asked. “Or are we both pretending so we don’t go insane?”
Bennett looked around his own house, like he was taking inventory.
“I built this place to be hard to get into,” he said.
“I know every inch of the land around it. Moose knows every scent that doesn’t belong.
Burke’s got a patrol car swinging the ridge road.
Is it perfect? No. But it’s a hell of a lot better than you alone in that house tonight. ”
Aubrey nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. “That’s… something.”
She shifted, the sofa creaking under their combined weight and the enormous dog between them.
“I really did think I was coming down here to sign some papers, tell everyone thank you, and go back to Philadelphia,” she said.
“Now I’m hiding on a mountain because my aunt was murdered in her bedroom and I apparently have a target on my back. ”
Bennett let out a humorless breath. "Hell of a homecoming," he said.
She shot him a look.
He held her gaze for a long moment before his eyes drifted, almost against his will, to her lower lip.
"You can still go back," he added. "When this is done. When it's safe."
“Can I?” she asked.
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze settled on her mouth for one beat before rising back to her eyes.
“Tonight you can sit on my couch,” he said at last, his voice dropping into a rougher, lower register. “That’s as far ahead as I’m planning.”
Moose shifted again, resettling his head heavily on Aubrey’s lap. Her hand went automatically to his fur.
“You should try to sleep,” Bennett said, pulling back his professional distance with an effort. “You’ve got a homicide investigation, a winery, and three spreadsheets yelling at you in the morning.”
“You’re really not going to let that cork discrepancy go, are you?” she murmured.
“Three grand is three grand,” he said. “Murder or not.”
Despite herself, Aubrey smiled. “I’ll try,” she said.
She didn’t move, though. Neither did he.