Chapter Twenty-Seven
Long after midnight, the house settled into a strained sort of quiet that never quite became peace.
Nathan spent the evening inspecting locks, checking windows, and issuing enough instructions to suggest he expected the three of them to defend a frontier outpost before breakfast. When he informed Daisy she would be sleeping in the spare room nearest the kitchen, she remarked that his bedside manner continued to deteriorate.
Nathan informed her that surviving a day like this entitled him to several professional shortcomings.
The exchange drew a reluctant smile from her, and Flint found himself holding onto the sight far longer than he should have. Fear still lingered beneath it.
It lingered everywhere.
The workshop sat dark and empty. The carving remained hidden beneath the worktable. The bruises circling Daisy's arm would deepen before morning.
Nothing about the evening could be undone.
Eventually, Nathan gave in to exhaustion and headed upstairs, leaving Daisy and Flint alone in the sitting room.
Daisy remained beside him on the sofa, and neither of them seemed eager to disturb the fragile quiet that had settled over the house.
A lamp burned near the window, casting warm light across the room while darkness pressed against the glass beyond it.
The fire had burned down to a bed of glowing embers, and the occasional crackle from the hearth carried clearly through the stillness.
Flint tried to focus on the room's familiar comfort, yet his attention refused to settle for long.
His gaze returned repeatedly to the front door, drifted toward the windows, and lingered on the shadows moving beyond the curtains whenever the wind stirred the trees outside.
He told himself he was keeping watch, although the truth ran deeper than that.
Ever since Daisy's scream had shattered the evening, every quiet corner seemed capable of concealing a threat he should have seen sooner.
Daisy appeared far more interested in him than the room around them.
She sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap, yet he could feel her attention every time he shifted position or drew a heavier breath.
Sight had never been the way she understood people.
She listened. She noticed. She gathered meaning from details most others overlooked, and Flint suspected she had spent the better part of the evening measuring the weight of every silence he failed to fill.
The thought left him uneasy because Daisy had always been far too good at hearing truths he would rather keep to himself.
"You should try to sleep."
Daisy's voice broke the silence with the gentle certainty of someone who already knew her advice would be ignored.
Flint turned toward her.
She had drawn her feet beneath her and settled into the corner of the sofa, her posture relaxed in appearance only.
The braid she'd worn throughout the day had begun to loosen, allowing pale strands of hair to escape around her face.
Earlier that evening, he'd watched her meet fear with stubborn determination.
Now exhaustion had begun to soften the edges of that resolve.
"So should you."
A faint smile touched her mouth. "Your concern would sound far more convincing if you hadn't spent the last hour keeping watch over a perfectly innocent front door."
Flint glanced toward it again before he could stop himself. "It isn't the door I'm worried about."
"No, but the door seems to be bearing the brunt of your suspicion."
"My mother used to say I had a talent for worrying over things twice."
Daisy shifted slightly against the cushion. "Only twice? Knowing your mother as I do, I know she would've considered that a remarkably generous assessment."
After a while, Daisy moved closer.
The motion seemed instinctive rather than deliberate, as though she had simply followed the sound of his breathing until her shoulder rested lightly against his arm.
After several minutes of silence, Daisy shifted her hands in her lap and let out a quiet breath. "I keep hearing the workshop."
Flint turned toward her. "What do you mean?"
Her fingers traced absently across one another before coming to rest. "I know the room is empty. At least, I know that's what reason tells me."
Flint waited.
Daisy rarely rushed difficult thoughts. She turned them over carefully before offering them to anyone else.
"When I walked in this afternoon, everything sounded exactly as it always has.
The shelves were where I'd left them. The table stood where it always stands.
I could hear the jars, the tins, the familiar creak in the floorboards near the workbench.
" A faint crease appeared between her brows.
"Nothing warned me. I keep replaying it in my head, trying to work out what I missed, and every time I come back to the same answer.
" She lowered her gaze. "I didn't miss anything. "
Flint felt a knot form in his stomach.
Daisy drew another slow breath before continuing.
"That's the part I can't seem to make peace with. I spent years learning that room. I know how sound carries in there. I know where everything belongs. Most days I could walk through it in complete darkness and never think twice about it."
A sad smile touched her mouth.
"Today a stranger stood in that room, and I had no idea he was there until he decided I should."
Flint looked away.
"I keep thinking about how long he might have been watching me," she said softly. "He could have been standing there while I unlocked the door. He could have been listening while I talked to myself. He could have been close enough to touch me long before I realized I wasn't alone."
The fear in her voice remained controlled, which somehow made it harder to hear.
"I've always trusted that room, Flint."
His hand closed around hers before he realized he was moving.
Daisy's fingers slipped easily into his. "Now I don't know how I'm supposed to walk back into it and feel the same way again."
"I understand."
She laughed softly. "No, you don't."
The honesty surprised him.
Daisy tilted her head back against the sofa. "I appreciate the effort, Flint, but you don't understand what it's like to realize your safest place wasn't safe at all."
He couldn't argue with that.
The workshop had always represented independence. Daisy had built that life for herself with stubborn determination and more courage than most people possessed.
Amos had managed to poison it within a single evening.
"I'm sorry."
The apology slipped out before Flint could reconsider it.
Daisy's fingers tightened around his hand, and the gesture carried more impatience than comfort. "You really ought to find a new hobby."
He frowned. "What?"
"You apologize for things that aren't yours to own." She shook her head. "It's an exhausting habit, and I'm beginning to suspect you enjoy it."
A rough laugh escaped him. "I can assure you I don't."
"Then stop doing it."
"If Amos had never come looking for me—"
Daisy turned toward him immediately. "If Amos chooses to terrorize people, that's Amos's failing, not yours."
The argument felt familiar because they'd had versions of it before, and Daisy never seemed any more willing to surrender than he was.
"You've spent weeks trying to shoulder responsibility for every unpleasant thing that happens within a hundred-mile radius," she continued. "At this point, I'm surprised you haven't apologized for the weather."
"I don't control the weather."
"No, but give yourself time. I have complete confidence you'll find a way."
The dry certainty in her voice almost coaxed a smile from him. The exchange should have eased the heaviness hanging over the room.
Instead, it left Flint with an ache he couldn't seem to escape.
Even after everything that had happened, Daisy remained herself. Fear had shaken her. Anger had wounded her pride. Yet the stubborn determination that carried her through every challenge remained intact, along with the dry humor she deployed whenever life became particularly unreasonable.
Watching her fight to hold on to those pieces of herself made the reality he was facing even harder to bear.
As the evening wore on, exhaustion gradually began to win the battle Daisy had been fighting since the attack.
Her replies arrived more slowly, and every subject seemed to require more effort than the last. More than once, she drifted into silence halfway through a thought, only to return several seconds later with the vague air of someone trying to remember where the conversation had gone.
Flint found himself listening to those pauses as carefully as he listened to everything else.
Eventually, her head settled against his shoulder.
The movement happened so naturally that he doubted she had fully realized she'd done it.
He remained still, unwilling to disturb her, and after a while, he eased an arm around her shoulders. Daisy made a quiet sound in her sleep and shifted closer, settling comfortably against him as though she had always belonged there.
The trust contained in that simple gesture struck him harder than any injury Amos Grady had ever arranged.
Daisy never hesitated where he was concerned.
She had welcomed him into her life when he arrived battered and half-conscious, offered kindness he had done nothing to earn, and placed faith in him long before he believed he deserved it.
Even now, after a day that should have shaken her confidence in everyone around her, she rested easily in his arms.
Flint wasn't certain he would ever stop feeling humbled by that.
Without ever setting out to do so, Daisy and Nathan had given him the first real sense of belonging he had known in years.
Flint looked down at the woman sleeping against him and let his hand drift carefully through the loose strands of hair that had escaped her braid.
Exhaustion had finally smoothed away the strain she had carried all evening, yet traces of it remained.
He could still see the pale shadows beneath her eyes.
He could still remember the tremor in her voice when she spoke about the workshop.
Daisy deserved the freedom to walk into her workshop without wondering who might be waiting inside. She deserved mornings that began with ordinary concerns rather than fear. She deserved a future shaped by her own choices, not by a man like Amos Grady deciding where the next threat would fall.
Flint wanted to believe he could give her that future.
The events of the evening had stripped away the last of that illusion.
When the grandfather clock marked two, the sound echoed softly through the quiet house, and Flint found himself accepting a truth he had spent hours trying to avoid.
Ever since he had seen the bruises on Daisy's arm and the message carved beneath her worktable, he had been searching for another answer, another path, another reason to stay.
None of them survived careful examination.
He could help Nathan reinforce the ranch. He could ride the fence line every morning and stand watch every night with a revolver within easy reach. They could bolt every door, strengthen every lock, and turn the property into the hardest place in Wyoming to reach.
It still wouldn't change the one fact that mattered.
As long as Amos Grady believed Flint could be found here, he would keep coming.
Perhaps not tomorrow. Perhaps not even next week. Amos had always understood the value of patience, and he knew fear lingered the longest when people had just begun to convince themselves they were safe again.
Sooner or later, another rider would appear. Another message would be left behind. Another door would open. And one day Flint might not reach Daisy in time.
That possibility eclipsed every other argument.
He would leave before dawn, make certain word reached Amos that he had gone, and keep riding until every man Amos sent was looking for him instead of toward Nathan's ranch.
If the chance came to end things once and for all, Flint would take it.
If it didn't, then he would keep Amos following his trail for as long as he could.
It was a thin sort of plan, built more on hope than certainty, but it was the only one that offered Daisy a chance to reclaim the ordinary life Amos had already begun stealing from her.
Flint looked down at her sleeping against his shoulder.
She deserved mornings that began with candles, customers, and the familiar sounds of her workshop. Not with fear, armed guards, and questions about who might be waiting behind the next door.
The realization settled over him with the quiet certainty of sunrise after a sleepless night.
When Daisy woke, he would be gone.
Whether she ever forgave him for it was a burden he would have to carry alone.