Chapter 9
“You’re safe,” she murmured, even as fear pooled at her core. “I promise.”
What happened?
Whatever it was had nearly gotten him killed; if they hadn't shown up, he would have been dead by morning. Elias stirred then, lashes fluttering. His eyes struggled to focus on her face.
“Kara.” His voice was barely there. “Check… floorboards.”
Her heart slammed. “What? Elias, stay with me. Tell me who did this to you?”
He inhaled sharply. “Max”.
His head rolled to the side, consciousness slipping away again.
“No, Elias!” Kara gently rocked him. “Please. Who’s Max?”
He only groaned in response, face tightening as another wave of pain hit.
Isaac swore under his breath. “Damn it. Damn it.” He glanced back again. “What did he say?”
“I’m not sure!” Kara said, panic creeping into her voice. “About floorboards. A porch. He said it like I was supposed to know.”
“Yours?” Isaac asked.
“I… I don’t know.” Her thoughts spun out of control.
Every house in Pine Ridge has a wooden porch!
Her chest tightened, breaths coming fast and shallow. Her heart hammered in her ears. She only wanted to know what he knew—but this was turning into something far more sickening.
Elias groaned again, louder this time, his body jerking. Kara pressed her forehead to his, blinking back tears. “Please…please don’t leave like this.” She inhaled sharply, trying to steady herself, but the air felt too thin.
“I think I see a hospital sign,” Isaac said suddenly. “Is that Mile 7?”
“No,” Kara said instantly. “Too close to town.”
“What?” He shot her a look. “Kara, he needs help now!”
“I know,” she said, already pulling her phone out with shaking hands. “Just trust me.”
She opened Google Maps, breath hitching when Mercy General appeared—same time, opposite direction, away from Pine Ridge.
“There,” she said, pointing to the exit sign. “Turn. Now.”
Isaac hesitated only a second before jerking the wheel. Kara held onto Elias as they shifted.
“Hold on!” he said fiercely.
“Don’t you dare give up,” Kara whispered.
Kara clutched him tighter, reciting prayers she hadn’t uttered since she was a kid, her mind racing with one terrifying thought over and over:
Pine Ridge isn’t finished with me yet.
They rushed Elias to the regional hospital twenty-five minutes outside of town—it was too risky to stay local. They left a fake name at check-in and sped away before they could ask too many questions.
Kara insisted that they couldn't be tied to it. She was completely rattled. Finding Elias like that confirmed that something was wrong.
Was he almost killed for talking to me?
Kara guessed that she had gotten herself caught up in something that she didn't fully understand.
She swallowed, forcing herself back into the car, the road, the moment. “He said a name,” she said carefully. “Max.”
Isaac’s hands tightened on the wheel as he glanced at her. “Max?”
“I don’t know,” she said. That part was true. “But Elias thought I would.”
“That doesn’t exactly help if you don't know,” Isaac said.
She stared out the windshield, barely seeing the road anymore.
Max.
The name kept echoing.
Who was this Max?
She ran through faces in her mind—old friends, old enemies, people who’d drifted out of her life. Elias had said the name as though she were supposed to know exactly who he meant.
What has gotten you nearly beaten to death?
“Kara.”
She didn’t answer.
“Kara,” Isaac said again, sharper this time. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
It meant that deep down she did know. It just didn't come to the surface. Pine Ridge was a place where bad things didn’t happen, because bad was buried.
Some knew more than they should, and some people knew exactly where to dig, but she didn’t say any of that.
“He mentioned a porch,” she added instead.
Isaac frowned. “Yours?”
“Maybe,” she said, though doubt crept in. “But… maybe there’s another place.”
He waited.
“The Avery’s place,” she said quietly. “By the creek? Zoe and I used to go there when we were kids. The back porch is half-rotted. Everyone knows the one board you never step on.”
Isaac exhaled slowly. “That’s where you think he meant?”
“I think,” she said, voice unsteady, “If Elias was trying to tell me, it’d be somewhere we both knew without saying it out loud.”
Isaac nodded once. “Okay. That’s something.”
But her thoughts had already slid somewhere darker.
Reece.
Her jaw tightened as she recalled their brief exchange. She didn’t want to think about it, but the question crept in anyway—had he sent her out to the sticks there knowing what she’d find? Had she been meant to find Elias like that?
Her phone felt like it weighed a thousand pounds in her pocket. She couldn’t bring herself to reach out to Reece again. Not yet. Not when she didn’t know which side he was on.
“I don’t know who to ask,” she admitted suddenly, the words slipping out before she could stop them.
Isaac looked at her in the mirror. “About Max?”
Whatever Elias had known had ripped something open, and now she was standing in the middle of it without a map and no direction.
Isaac exhaled, rubbing a hand over his face. “Kara… listen to me.”
She looked at him.
“We are not solving this mystery tonight,” he said. “You’re exhausted. “You’re not thinking straight.”
Her pulse spiked. “Isaac—”
“No,” he cut in, not unkindly. “We got him somewhere safe. We get food. We get sleep. Then we think.”
She stared at him. “Sleep?”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “Sleep. You haven’t stopped shaking since we left.”
“I can’t just—” she started.
“You can,” Isaac said. “And you should. If there’s a Max, if there’s something hidden under a porch, it’ll still be there in the morning. Running yourself into the ground won’t help anyone.”
She hated that he was right. Her shoulders sagged, the fight draining out of her all at once. “I feel like I’m missing something,” she said. “Like everyone else got the memo and I didn’t.”
Isaac met her eyes in the mirror. She felt lost—adrift between what she knew and what she was afraid to learn. Between the urge to dig and the need to stop before she broke herself apart.
“Food and sleep,” Isaac repeated gently. “Then answer.”
Kara nodded.
Max knew, she thought. And tomorrow, so would she.
They pulled into the resort just off the highway. She went in for a shower as soon as Isaac unlocked the door, washing away Elias' blood that had dried on her.
When she was done, Isaac was already unpacking a meal onto the dinette table.
“You’re eating,” he said.
She opened her mouth to argue, then thought better of it. Her hands shook as she took the food—hot fries and a sandwich. She managed a few bites before nausea rolled in.
“More,” Isaac said, watching her closely.
She forced herself to chew. Swallow. Repeat. Her body protested, but the fog in her head lifted. Just enough to remind herself how close she was to falling apart—and to keep herself from doing it.
“That’s good,” he said finally.
She sank onto the bed, exhaustion crashing over her all at once. Isaac went down beside her. Kara brushed her fingers over his arm, relief and guilt tangling tight in her chest.
Isaac dimmed the lights. “Get some rest,” he said quietly.
Kara curled onto her side, the weight of everything pressing down as her eyes finally closed. The last thing she felt was shame—at her trust, at her certainty, at how wrong she might have been about the man who’d opened the door to all of this.
Sleep crept in whether she wanted it or not. With it came a memory.
Reece’s office. The way he’d smirked when she walked in, as he’d already known her and that he’d been waiting.
I think she's perfect, unsuspecting and innocent, Reece told King, right in front of her. Yeah, let's give her a shot.
King nodded.
Mount West Coast Crew, “MWC,” ran across three states and had ties to the Russian mob. Reece, its leader, was a man shrouded in monstrous rumors and bloodshed. Kara heard he had murdered his older brother with his bare hands before breaking away to build his own empire.
No one actually knew if it was true, but she didn't doubt that he was capable of it.
For reasons she never understood, Reece had developed a fascination with her. He saw potential in her, in all the ways she could be useful to him.
He made her an offer she couldn't refuse.
Kara had always known Reece was a bad man—everyone did—but there were variations of bad, weren’t there? Men who lied. Men who cheated. Men who hurt people for sport. Then there were men like Reece. The kind who could ruin or end lives with a single word.
She desperately wanted the money. She tried to focus on the good it could do, convincing herself it was worth it so her conscience wouldn’t nag at her.
Elias is Reece’s enforcer, his right hand. A quiet, sharp-eyed man, dangerous in a way that made people step aside without realizing they were doing it. He was ordered to tail her for the first week, but he’d stayed long after he was supposed to.
Somewhere along the way, his watchfulness had turned into something else.
Protectiveness.