Chapter Ten
He watched them leave from his hiding place. They hadn’t thought about searching here. He smiled at the idea of what else they’d missed by never checking this spot before.
After the chief’s death, the detective working the case had overlooked the obvious until that night when he’d accidentally stumbled on this hiding place.
He had to make Malone “disappear.” He forced him to write a resignation letter before he killed him and then left the letter on his desk, knowing the incompetent detective who took over for him would have to be dealt with soon enough.
And he had dealt with him.
He shifted his weight, his boots silent in the thick snow piled up outside his observation spot.
The cops were widening their net around Hardesty's property and beyond to the Dutton place. Will Kelly would have officers sweeping the area within minutes, but they’d lost his footprints without realizing why.
He’d resurrected the old rum-runner tunnels carved out during Prohibition—hidden paths from the sea into the island’s bones.
Nearly a century later, most people had forgotten they existed or never knew about them at all.
That suited him just fine. They let him move unseen, vanish cleanly, and leave nothing behind but questions.
The Hope Island Securities team didn’t move like a small-town outfit either; they worked like people who’d seen worse than this, who’d walked the edge more than once. Good. He preferred opponents who were awake.
A smile played at the corners of his mouth when he remembered that night. Another storm. Another time when the barn door had creaked open to admit someone who thought they were in control.
“Loose ends at the Hardesty barn.” That was what the dispatcher had said back then, according to Thomas Hale, the officer he’d blackmailed into reporting information to him.
Hale had a nasty gambling habit that had worked to his favor.
That stupid, innocent phrase had sent Raymond out into the weather alone and had cracked open the final act of a story years in the making.
He’d known the moment Hale called him with the news that Raymond had been getting close to figuring out the mainland murders, the files no one connected, the pattern only one man had seen clearly.
He’d had seconds to handle the problem that she represented before the chief arrived and he’d taken care of him as well.
One name buried in those reports had been the problem. Maya’s mother. She’d thought hiding away on this island with her child would keep her safe. She’d been wrong.
Satisfied they were way off course, he turned his attention back to the old barn as the snow picked up, blowing like a curtain of white.
Everything about that night was branded in his memories.
He relived them and what happened afterward.
He could still hear the little girl’s sobs when he dragged her mother away.
He had no choice but to end Raymond’s life, especially after the chief had seen his face.
No sooner had the cop died than the boy’s footsteps entered the barn.
He had warned them both.
You never saw this, kid.
Don’t say a word.
He didn't even need to raise his voice. Fear did most of the work. Fear and grief and the knowledge that the people you trusted most couldn’t save you.
Fear had stolen the girl’s memory clean.
Until now. Something had broken loose inside her. Something was moving.
He would have preferred she stay frozen there forever, locked in that one fragment of time, unable to crawl back to the words he’d laid in her ear.
But people were rarely as compliant as he wanted them to be.
He adjusted his binoculars away from the barn, angling back toward the police activity.
He’d watched the island long enough to know its habits. Tourists came for the small island's quaintness. Locals moved in familiar loops—church, school, dock, diner. The security team rotated through cases and contracts, quietly weaving themselves into other people’s secrets.
He’d stayed where they didn’t look. Moved where they thought no one cared to go. Today, he wasn’t trying to disappear. He was reminding them he could appear whenever he chose.
He thought of the dispatcher again. The one from all those years ago who’d sent a cop out to his death. He’d left her alone back then, a file marked as unnecessary risk. The island had been too hot with grief and rage, too many eyes turned outward.
But now . . . They were turning over every stone from back then. How long before they found her?
He’d taken care of the detective who investigated the case long ago and Hale, his replacement. Now it was time to eliminate the other law enforcement threat from that night.
He’d started the fire to get rid of any DNA evidence he might have left behind, as well as hers, the one who saw his face on the mainland and knew how to identify him. It had worked, or so he believed, yet he’d always suspected the dispatcher knew more about the case. Why else would she flee?
He rolled his shoulders against the cold. He’d have to decide what to do about that. Soon.
For now, the girl was the more pressing variable.
Maya Callahan. She’d grown into the bones of a survivor without ever knowing why she needed them.
The adoptive parents had done their job and given her a name, a life.
Something steady to stand on. Raymond had done this, too, in his own tragic way.
The island had wrapped itself around her like a blanket and pretended nothing lay beneath.
Snow clung to his coat. He brushed it off, his fingers lingering on the binoculars.
They’d spirit Maya away now. Somewhere safe. Somewhere monitored and warm and wrapped in reassurance. They’d sit around a table and ask her gentle, probing questions, and she’d try to drag words up out of deep water.
She’d get some of them wrong.
But she’d get some of them right.
He didn’t fear the memories themselves; he feared the moment she remembered the tone of his voice.
“There’s nowhere on this island I haven’t been,” he said softly to no one. Not the barn. Not the roads. Not the so-called safe places they thought he couldn’t touch.
If they wanted to move the game to a safehouse?
He’d be there, too.
◆◆◆
By the time they reached the SUVs, Maya’s teeth wouldn’t stop chattering.
It wasn’t just the cold. She knew the difference between winter shaking and the kind that came from somewhere deeper—an aftershock in her bones.
Asa opened the rear passenger-side door and waited for her to climb in first.
She slid onto the seat, his jacket still wrapped around her, the familiar scent of him clinging to the fabric along with coffee, something clean and sharp beneath it. He closed the door firmly, shutting out the wind, then came around to slip into the seat beside her.
Rachel and JT got in up front. JT started the engine. Warm air began to creep from the vents, slow but steady.
Maya stared out the side window at the growing storm. She could still feel the rough boards from the barn under her palms. She could almost feel a crucial memory tugging at the corners of her mind. Why was she at the barn alone with Raymond?
Her gut screamed something had happened to her parents. Something bad. Her chest tightened. She pressed her fingertips against her eyes until color flared.
“Talk to me,” Asa said quietly as they pulled onto the narrow road leading back toward town.
She dropped her hands and blew out a shaky breath. “He knows I’m remembering, doesn’t he?”
“Probably,” he said without pulling punches.
She swallowed at the certainty in his voice. It should have terrified her, and it did, but there was something else under the fear now. Something harder. Anger, maybe. Or the simple, stubborn refusal to be prey anymore.
“I keep trying to make sense of it,” she said.
“He could have killed me and you that night. He could have finished it. Why risk leaving a witness alive?” She remembered something and sat up straighter.
“He threatened me, too. He told me if I told anyone about what happened, he’d kill her.
” She swung toward Asa. “My mother. He took my mother.”
Surprise widened his eyes before he tapped Rachel’s shoulder to get her attention. “You’re sure?”
She closed her eyes briefly before they flew open. “I’m sure he said if I told anyone, he’d hurt her.”
“This is big, Maya,” Asa said. “He used your mother as control over you. He needed you silent more than he needed you dead. A dead child would have raised a different kind of heat. A living one that he could scare into silence was cleaner. Safer for him.”
She stared at the blur of trees slipping past in the snow. “And my memories obeyed him.”
“After witnessing what you did, I can understand. At least for a while,” Asa said softly. “But fear can’t hold everything forever. Eventually, something breaks loose.”
“Lucky me.” She tried to smile and failed. “I feel like I’m falling into pieces instead.”
He glanced at her, the weight in his gaze steadying. “Falling isn’t the same as breaking, Maya. Sometimes it’s just the process of landing where you were always supposed to be.”
“That’s very philosophical of you,” she said, her voice wobbly.
“Don’t tell JT. He’ll make fun of me.” Asa winked at JT in the rearview mirror.
She managed a small, shaky laugh.
Silence settled for a moment, punctuated by the hiss of the heater and the muted thrum of the tires on packed snow. The island slid past in ghost-like shapes—tree lines, fence posts, the distant glint of harbor lights through the storm.
“Chief Kelly wants to move you,” Asa said after a minute. “Someplace off your usual routes. Some place where he can control entry points.”
“Like witness protection?”
“More like common sense,” he said. “We’re not set up for full-on WITSEC here, but we can put distance between you and the places he’s already used, like your cottage, the bistro. The barn.”
She turned her head to look at him. “Do you think it’ll help?”