Chapter 16
Riley
The week before the final hearing, the air felt wrong. Too tight. Like something was being held back. Pressure before a storm. The pause before a scream.
Seven and a half months since the courthouse wedding. Since I’d stood in a borrowed dress, pen shaking just enough to notice, signing papers that were never meant to last.
Seven and a half months since Liam and I had shaken hands across a firehouse table and agreed—quietly, carefully—to save each other.
Tuesday.
The final custody hearing.
Five days away.
After that, Mia would be mine. Not just in practice. Not just because everyone had already decided it that way.
Legally. Permanently. Irrevocably.
The word settled heavily in my chest.
Mine.
Five days.
I counted them without meaning to. On my fingers. On my breaths. On the hours I couldn’t quite sleep through.
We just had to make it five more days.
I didn’t know why my shoulders stayed tight.
Why I kept listening for sounds that weren’t there.
Why every quiet moment felt like the one right before something broke.
Five days shouldn’t have felt this long.
Todd was out on bail.
Strict restrictions. No contact. No proximity. An ankle monitor strapped to his leg, tracking every step. The judge had been clear. One violation and he’d be back in a cell until trial.
I knew all that.
I felt him anyway.
A pressure at the edge of my awareness. Like a sound just below hearing, impossible to ignore.
The weight of eyes on me when I crossed the yard to my truck. The slow crawl between my shoulders when I stood at the kitchen window too long.
Three hang-up calls in the past week. Blocked numbers. Nothing on the line but breathing before the call went dead.
A car passed the ranch yesterday. Too slow.
Dark sedan. Tinted windows. I couldn’t see the driver.
It didn’t stop. Just eased off the gas at the mouth of the driveway, lingered for a beat too long, then moved on.
I told myself I was imagining it.
That the monitor would scream if he got close. That systems existed for a reason. That alarms worked. That rules mattered.
My body didn’t buy it.
I caught Liam checking the locks before bed. Once. Then again.
Caught him pausing at the window, eyes on the driveway, like he was listening for something more than sound.
Neither of us said anything.
We were waiting.
Counting.
Holding our breath.
Five days.
I tried to maintain a routine for Mia's sake.
School drop-off at 7:45, same as always. I walked her to the door, watched her disappear inside, waited until I saw her wave from the window of her classroom. Then I drove to the station for my shift, forcing myself not to look in the rearview mirror more than necessary.
Normal. We were doing normal. Normal was safe.
But normal felt like a costume that didn't fit anymore. Like wearing someone else's skin, going through motions that used to mean something and now felt hollow.
At the station, I ran through drills with mechanical precision. Ladder operations. Hose advancement. Search-and-rescue patterns. My body knew the movements, could execute them without conscious thought—which was good, because my mind was somewhere else entirely.
Three steps ahead. Always calculating. If Todd came to the ranch, which exits were closest. If he showed up at the school, how fast I could get there. If he found us on the road, where we could go, who we could call, what weapons we had access to.
Escape routes and worst-case scenarios. The mental math I'd been doing since I was sixteen years old.
Cal caught me in the apparatus bay during a water break. He didn't say anything at first, just leaned against the engine beside me, arms crossed, that steady presence he had.
“You okay, Santos?”
I forced a smile. It felt wrong on my face. “Ask me again next week.”
He nodded slowly, not pushing. Cal was good at that. Knowing when to ask and when to wait.
“If you need anything.”
Cal shifted his weight, boot scraping lightly against the concrete. His eyes stayed on the engine, not on me, like he wasn’t trying to corner anything fragile.
“Time off. Extra hands at the ranch. Whatever.”
He finally looked over, brief but steady.
“You know where to find me.”
“I know.”
He squeezed my shoulder once and walked away.
I stood there, staring at the engine's chrome finish, my reflection warped and distorted in the metal.
One week, I thought. When it's over. If we survive that long.
I didn't say that part out loud.
The call came in at 1:15 PM.
Kitchen fire on Maple Street that turned into a full structure by the time we arrived. The kind that ate hours without warning, that demanded every ounce of attention and left nothing for anything else.
I worked the line, moved through the house, did my job. Training taking over where my mind kept trying to wander. Stay focused. Stay present. The fire doesn't care about your problems.
We knocked it down by 2:45. Overhaul swallowed the next hour—ripping out the ceiling, checking for hotspots in the walls, making sure nothing was still smoldering in the places we couldn't see. When I finally surfaced long enough to check my phone, it was 3:42.
Twelve minutes late for pickup.
I called Liam on the way. He was supposed to be the backup today, but the call went to voicemail. Probably in the barn, out of range. I pushed the speed limit the whole way there, guilt gnawing at my chest. Mia hated it when I was late. It made her anxious, made her think I wasn't coming back.
The pickup line was empty when I pulled in. Just a few staff members chatting by the door, the last stragglers heading to their cars.
No Mia.
I parked crooked and walked fast, scanning the sidewalk. The benches. The playground.
Nothing.
The front office was bright. Calm. Too calm. A woman I didn’t recognize sat behind the desk, typing.
“I’m here for Mia Santos,” I said. “I’m a few minutes late—”
“Oh, Mia was picked up already.” She smiled, glancing at her screen. “Just a few minutes ago. Her father came to get her.”
The floor dropped out from under me.
“Her father?”
“Yes. He signed her out. She went with him.” Her smile wavered. “Is… is there a problem?”
“Mia doesn’t have a father.”
My voice didn’t sound like mine.
“Her father isn’t on the pickup list. No one is on the pickup list except me and my husband.”
Color drained from her face.
She pulled up the security footage. I stood beside her, close enough to see the grain.
Todd walked in.
Smiling. Relaxed. Wearing the same easy mask he’d worn for years—the one that fooled teachers and neighbors and my mother until it was too late.
Mia stood at her locker, backpack half-zipped. Unprepared.
Todd approached.
Her body went rigid. Her shoulders lifted. Guarded.
Then he leaned down.
Said something.
Mia’s face collapsed into panic.
She grabbed her backpack and followed him. Too fast. Almost running.
“Can you rewind that?”
My voice was steady. Calm. The one I used on calls when everything was burning and someone had to stay clear.
“What did he say to her?”
The woman scrubbed back. We watched again. Todd’s mouth was moving. Mia breaking.
I didn’t need audio.
I knew the shape of the words.
Your sister.
Hurt.
Fire.
He told her I was hurt.
He told her I was dying.
And Mia—who had already lost our mother, who lived every day afraid of losing me too—didn’t stop to question it.
She ran.
Toward the only family she thought she had left.
He used me to take her.
I don't remember leaving the office. Don't remember crossing the parking lot or starting the engine.
One moment I was staring at that grainy footage, watching my sister disappear through a door with the man who used to hit our mother, and the next I was tearing out of the school lot, running every red light, the speedometer climbing past numbers I'd never hit before.
I called 911 first. My voice came out steady, calm—the voice of a first responder reporting an emergency. Training taking over again.
“Abduction in progress. My sister, Mia Santos, twelve years old.
The man who took her is Todd Harris. White male, mid-forties, approximately five ten, one eighty.
He's driving a blue Ford F-150, license plate Charlie-Alpha-seven-three-nine-two-one. He has an active restraining order and an ankle monitor. He took her from West Valley Elementary approximately eight minutes ago.”
I'd memorized those plates years ago. Just in case. Because I'd always known, somewhere deep in my bones, that this day might come.
The dispatcher confirmed. Sheriff Daniels was mobilizing units. State patrol notified. An Amber Alert was being issued.
“Ma'am, we need you to stay where you are and let law enforcement—”
I hung up.
Todd had an eight-minute head start. But I knew him. Knew the way he thought, the places he'd go. He wouldn't stay on main roads where cameras could track him. He'd go somewhere remote. Somewhere he could control.
The old logging roads off Route 7. Miles of nothing but trees and dirt and silence.
I floored it.
My phone rang. Liam. I answered without slowing down.
“Riley? I just got your messages. I was in the back pasture—”
“Todd took Mia.” The words came out flat. Factual. Like I was reporting a structure fire, not the end of my world. “He told her I was hurt. Used me to make her go with him.”
“Where are you?” I heard keys grabbing, a door slamming, boots on gravel. He was already running.
“Heading toward Route 7. The logging roads. He'll go somewhere isolated.”
“I'm coming.” No hesitation. No questions.
Then the line went dead.
I spotted Todd's truck three miles outside town, turning off the main road onto the old logging access. Blue F-150. Those plates I'd memorized. Disappearing into the trees.
This ends in the woods.
My gut screamed trap. This was exactly what he wanted. Lure me somewhere alone, away from backup, away from witnesses. Finish what he'd been threatening to finish for years.
But Mia was in that truck. Mia, who'd followed him because she thought I was dying. Mia, who loved me enough to walk into danger without thinking.
So I followed.
The road deteriorated as I drove. Pavement giving way to gravel, gravel giving way to dirt, trees pressing close on either side until the canopy blocked out most of the afternoon light.
Todd's truck was stopped in a clearing up ahead. Empty. Driver's door hanging open.
I pulled in behind it and killed the engine. My hands were shaking. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles went white, trying to steady myself.
Logic said wait for backup. Sheriff Daniels was on his way. Liam was on his way. If I waited—if I stayed in the car, if I let the professionals handle this—
A scream cut through the trees.
Mia.
I was out of the truck before I made a conscious decision to move. Running toward the sound, branches catching at my clothes, my hair, tearing at my skin. The clearing opened up ahead of me, afternoon light slanting through the trees in golden shafts, and I burst through the tree line and stopped.
Todd stood in the center of the clearing.
He had a gun. Leveled at my chest.
And behind him, bound to a tree with a rope that bit into her wrists, was Mia. Tear-streaked. Terrified. A strip of duct tape over her mouth that couldn't quite muffle her sobs.
“Took you long enough.”
His mouth curved upward before the last word even settled.
He was smiling. That smile I remembered from my nightmares, from all the nights I'd lain awake in my childhood bedroom listening to him hurt my mother, from the day I'd finally escaped and sworn I'd never let him touch me again.
“Now we can finish this.”
I'd known it would come to this.
Not the details. Not the clearing, the gun, the way the afternoon light slanted through the trees like something from a painting. Not the specific choreography of horror that had brought us here.
But the inevitability of it. The gravity that had been pulling us together since the day I climbed out that window at eighteen and left everything behind.
Todd and me. The final reckoning.
And Mia was caught in the middle, like always.
I looked at my sister. At the terror in her eyes, the tears streaming down her cheeks, the way she strained against the ropes like she could somehow break free if she just tried hard enough.
Twelve years old. She'd already survived more than most people faced in a lifetime. She'd already lost so much.
She wasn't going to lose anything else. Not today.
I looked back at Todd. At the gun that hadn't wavered, at the smile that made my skin crawl, at the man who had haunted my nightmares for a decade.
And I made a decision.
Mia was walking out of these woods.
Whatever happened to me after that didn’t matter.