Chapter Eight
A fresh batch of cinnamon rolls cooled, untouched beside the register. Numb, Maya stood next to it, trying to hold herself together.
Nothing she’d recalled so far helped identify Raymond Dutton’s killer. Would she ever be able to piece the truth together to give both her and Asa closure?
Asa stood nearby, carefully watching over her.
JT finished a quiet phone call near the window. Rachel sat at a table reviewing notes on her tablet, her expression calm but alert. The entire bistro felt poised on a precipice—as if the thin veil of normalcy could tear with one sharp breath.
Asa came over. “How are you holding up?”
Maya smiled. “I’m not going to break.”
His gaze held hers, warm and unwavering. “I know you’re not, but I also know courage doesn’t mean not being shaken. It means walking in anyway.”
Her throat tightened. She nodded once.
JT approached, tucking his phone back into his coat. “Declan and Eli are en route. Chief Kelly’s been notified as well. We’ll meet everyone on the road near the Hardesty property.”
“Is he going to want to question me?” Maya asked, her voice a mere breath.
Rachel offered a reassuring smile. “He’ll want to help you, and he’ll follow our lead.”
The words should have comforted her, but instead they poked at something tender inside her chest—some small, stubborn part of her that still believed being alone was safer.
Being alone was how she’d survived—how she had stored away the parts of herself she couldn’t bear to face. How she had lived twenty-five years without a past and pretended it didn’t matter. Now those years felt like thin ice beneath her feet.
The memory from earlier pressed in again—Raymond whispering, “Stay here.”
A chime sounded.
A cold voice cut through the storm.
Maya swallowed hard and wrapped her arms around herself.
Asa reached out, brushing his knuckles lightly against her sleeve. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” He slipped off his jacket without saying another word and draped it over her shoulders. Its warmth flooded her instantly, carrying a faint hint of cedar and ocean wind—his scent. Something inside her settled just enough to breathe again.
JT cleared his throat. “The cameras we set up earlier are down—something happened to them. Eli and Declan will get there ahead of us and check them out as well as search the perimeter around the barn.”
Rachel stood. “You don’t have to do this today. There’s no pressure. No timeline.”
Maya’s eyes darted from one of them to the other—Asa, Rachel, JT. Three people who had shown her more support in one morning than she’d known most of her life.
“I’m ready,” she said softly. “Not because I’m brave. Because I can’t keep living in pieces, I need to know the truth.”
Asa’s eyes warmed with something that made her pulse explode. “Then we’ll find it.” He offered his hand.
She hesitated only a moment before letting her fingers curl around his. The contact grounded her instantly.
“Let’s go,” JT said.
They stepped out into the cold.
The air outside bit her skin, sharp and crisp. Snow layered the sidewalk in a thin frost, glittering like powdered glass beneath the weak winter sun. Asa held Maya’s hand all the way to JT’s waiting SUV, releasing it only long enough to help her into the back seat.
Once the door closed, she stared at her reflection in the window. She didn’t look like someone who had survived violence. She didn’t look like a four-year-old child who had watched a man die. She didn’t look like someone who was about to walk into the place where everything had gone wrong.
But her eyes . . . they knew.
Asa climbed into the seat beside her. JT and Rachel got in up front and pulled away from the bistro.
Maya clasped her hands in her lap, surprised to see them shaking. “Does it always feel this heavy? Going back to where something bad happened?”
Asa turned. “The first time? Yes.”
She waited.
He glanced at her. “When I stepped foot on the island after twenty-five years, it felt like a weight I couldn’t breathe under. I wasn’t ready, but being here today? I’m glad I am, and I’m grateful you’re here with me.”
Her eyes stung with unshed tears.
“What is it?” he asked when she struggled to find words.
“Thank you for coming back.”
He looked at her for a long moment, something unspoken flickering just beneath the surface. “Maya, coming back was the easiest decision I’ve ever made.”
Heat rushed through her chest, unexpected and unsettling. She turned away without responding because she couldn’t trust her voice to say what she didn’t understand.
The drive through Hope Island felt different today, charged with electric energy. The snow-covered pines blurred past while the SUV climbed the narrow roads leading toward the Hardesty property. The closer they came, the heavier Maya’s heartbeat sounded.
Asa kept one hand resting near the armrest, fingers tapping in a slow, thoughtful pattern. He looked more contemplative than anxious.
The road twisted sharply, revealing two other vehicles parked on the side. Eli leaned against the hood of one. Declan was talking with a man near a police cruiser.
Once JT stopped, Asa exited the vehicle, then came around to Maya’s side.
Eli approached with a brief nod. “We’re still working on the cameras. We thought it was possible they went down due to the storm. But the wiring was cut clean.”
Declan stopped beside them with another man. He introduced Maya to the chief.
“Nice to meet you, Maya. You’re very brave to do this.”
She didn’t feel brave.
“If anything feels off, we’ll get you out of there immediately,” Declan told her.
Maya straightened her shoulders. Everyone seemed to think she might break into pieces, but she was done falling apart. She wanted answers.
Asa studied her for a long moment. “If you want to turn back—”
“I don’t,” she said firmly.
He exhaled, a mixture of pride and worry in his expression.
JT gestured toward the barn. “Let’s go. Maya, stay close to Asa.”
Maya nodded.
The walk toward the barn began in a heavy, purposeful silence, the kind that squeezed the air from Maya’s lungs with every step.
Snow crunched beneath their boots, each sound sharp and hollow in the winter stillness.
The trail curved gently, revealing more of the old Hardesty property with each turn.
Maya hadn’t seen the barn since she was a child, yet its silhouette lived in the deepest corners of her mind like a shadow that never moved.
Now that shadow grew clearer, larger, heavier. The closer they came, the harder it was for her to breathe.
When her throat tightened, her fingers curled around Asa’s jacket sleeve for balance. He stayed close without crowding her, his presence a steady warmth at her side.
Through the veil of trees, the barn appeared warped by storms. The door hung crooked on rusted hinges, like a mouth that had sagged open.
She stopped walking, not because she wanted to, but because her legs refused to move another inch.
Asa paused immediately. “Maya?”
“I remember this.” Her voice shook. “Not all of it, but the shape . . . the air . . . the smell.”
Rachel stepped up beside her. “Take your time.”
Maya closed her eyes and inhaled. Cold air. Rain. A gunshot. Then smoke.
Her ribs tightened, evoking a painful gasp.
Asa placed his hand against the small of her back—not pushing, just steadying. “We go in when you’re ready. Not before.”
She nodded, though the motion felt disconnected from the rest of her body.
JT and Eli scanned the perimeter while Declan and the chief fanned out to check blind spots and footprints. No one moved casually. No one spoke above a whisper.
Maya hated that. She wanted normal voices. Normal sounds to remind her that this nightmare belonged to the past, but fear didn’t care about calendars.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’m ready.”
Asa’s fingers laced through hers. “I’m right here.”
JT pushed the barn door fully open with a slow, controlled shove. It groaned loudly, the sound dragging across Maya’s nerves.
The interior was dim. Dust suspended in pale beams of light spilling through gaps in the walls and roof. The air inside was colder, and it smelled like damp earth and old smoke.
Her boot touched the threshold. The barn came alive around her.
Not in a distant memory. No, this was sharp. Immediate. Like sliding backward in time.
Rain hammered the roof, pouring through the holes. Wind pushed at the door. A flashlight beam cut through the dark.
She was that frightened girl again, terror rolling in waves around her.
Raymond’s voice echoed through her mind.
“Stay here. Don’t move. I’ll come back for you.”
A shadow crossed the floorboards. Slow. Deliberate.
A single, perfect sound ringing through the storm. Ching.
The chime echoed from the door. Once. Twice.
Maya’s vision blurred. Her knees buckled. The memory pressed down on her like a weight.
Asa released her hand and grabbed her arm. “Hey. Easy. Just breathe.” He guided Maya toward the center of the barn.
“Let the memory come on its own,” Rachel told her. “Don’t reach for it. Let it reach for you.”
Maya swallowed hard. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Asa stepped in front of her. Not blocking her view but anchoring her. “Nothing here can hurt you.”
She wasn’t afraid of the barn. It was the truth buried inside.
Her gaze drifted toward where the old hay bale had been.
A strangled sound slipped from her throat.
“I hid over there. Behind a hay bale,” she whispered.
The space was dark. Shadowed. All too familiar.
She moved slowly toward it with Asa. The closer she came, the stronger the sensation grew—déjà vu rising like a wave.
She reached the spot where the bale had once been and stopped. Images surged again. Her tiny fingers were gripping the stuffed rabbit. Her cheek pressed into the rabbit for protection. A boot stepping into view. A low voice muttering something she couldn’t bring herself to remember.
Her breath stuttered. “He was so close.”
“Who?” Asa asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
She shook her head. “The man who shot your father.” She tried to bring out more. “I still can’t see his face, but he’s close.”
Rachel stepped to her side. “Trauma often erases faces but leaves sensations. Give it time.”
Maya exhaled a shaky breath. She turned toward the center of the barn. “That’s where Raymond fell.”
Asa’s jaw flexed, though he said nothing.
Maya took a single step before stopping. The glint of something buried beneath the dirt on the floorboards. Tiny. Metallic. Out of place.
She crouched and brushed the dirt away.
“What is that?” Asa asked, dropping down beside her.
The object nestled between two floorboard planks. A fragment of something copper. Thin. Rounded on one side.
She bent down and caught her breath. “It’s part of the chime.”
Asa picked up the fragment, turning it over in his gloved fingers. “Looks like it’s been here a long time. It must have been overlooked because it was wedged between the boards. Pure luck we found it now.”
Her pulse hammered. Was it luck, or was God bringing all the pieces of her past together now? She closed her eyes as a memory flashed bright like a light. “It got broken when he—someone—grabbed the chime. It was by the door.”
“Who grabbed it? My father?”
“No, I think it was the killer.” The vision flickered. “There was someone else here with me hiding.”
“Can you see them?” Asa asked in an urgent tone.
She closed her eyes and tried to hold onto the vision, but it was too late. She shook her head. “Sorry, it’s gone.”
“You’re doing great,” Asa assured her.
She didn’t feel like it. Why couldn’t she recall the rest of the details about who else was there with her?
Eli’s voice cut through the barn. “We’ve got something out here!”
JT sprinted toward the door.
Asa’s grip tightened around Maya’s hand. “Stay close to me.”
She nodded, her heart pounding as they stepped outside.
Declan and Chief Kelly converged from one side of the barn. Eli stood near the treeline. “A fresh set of footprints.”
They led into the woods.
JT’s expression hardened as he straightened. “These weren’t here earlier.”
“No, they weren’t,” Declan confirmed. “Someone was watching the barn from near the trees.”
Maya’s stomach dropped. “While we were inside?” The thought was alarming.
“Looks that way,” Asa said, his voice grim.
The cold wind cut through the trees, brushing over Maya’s skin like a warning. She lifted her gaze to the woods ahead. They appeared dark, tangled, silent.
A shiver ran through her spine with the realization that the man from her childhood memory—the shadow with no face—hadn’t vanished into the past. He was still here. Close enough to leave tracks in the snow.
She exhaled slowly, her breath trembling, her gaze still fixed on the place where the tracks disappeared.
The past wasn’t done with her—nor was the man who killed Raymond Dutton. But this time she wasn’t a child hiding in the dark.
This time she wasn’t alone.