Chapter 1
Rowan tightened her grip on the steering wheel as the road stretched empty ahead of her.
She’d lost track of how many hours she’d been driving. How many days, really.
The miles had blurred together somewhere between Arizona and Tennessee, broken only by charging stations, cheap coffee, and a few restless hours of sleep she barely remembered.
Friday night felt both impossibly distant and far too close.
It was now late Monday morning. Back in California, the crew would be arriving on set any time. Makeup artists would be setting up stations. Vince would be barking orders at someone before the sun even came up, like he always did.
And Rowan was on the other side of the country.
By Saturday morning, somewhere outside Albuquerque, she’d finally realized disappearing completely would only make things worse.
So she’d sent a handful of vague texts to her roommate, the production coordinator, and her agent. She’d claimed a personal emergency had come up and she needed a few days away. Nothing specific. Nothing that invited questions. Just enough, she hoped, to buy herself time to think.
She’d checked her news feed a lot—too much, really. She kept waiting to see headlines declaring her a person of interest in Thayer Holt’s death.
So far, there had been nothing. But that didn’t mean those headlines weren’t coming.
That part unsettled her almost as much as the memory itself. However, Thayer had died on Friday evening. There was a chance no one had been in the studio all weekend. It was a possibility that today—this morning—would be when his body was discovered.
Her stomach churned.
Would people really think she was responsible? That she could be a killer?
She wanted to say no. But other times, she simply felt like her life was full of bad decisions. Maybe people would think that.
The landscape around her had shifted again.
Rolling hills rose into mountains—layered and solid, their dark shapes cutting into the sky.
Her chest tightened.
She knew this landscape.
These exact mountains weren’t home. She’d grown up an hour from here. But they were close enough that the pull of seeing them settled deep in her bones.
Refuge Cove sat somewhere beyond those ridges. The place Sarah, her oldest sister, had built. The place that had once been her sister’s dream.
And the place where everything had fallen apart.
Rowan swallowed and shifted in her seat.
Her eyes burned, and her shoulders ached from too many hours hunched forward. But she didn’t slow. Not now. Not when she was this close to the one place she might feel safe.
Stopping felt more dangerous than pushing through.
She swallowed, her throat dry.
Another sound echoed again in her mind—the crack of Thayer’s head against the coffee table.
Rowan sucked in a breath and forced the memory back. She couldn’t think about that. Not now.
Every time her mind drifted back to the studio, she nearly got into an accident.
She couldn’t afford that detour.
Her phone buzzed in the cup holder, and she flinched.
The dashboard screen lit with an incoming message, and the name at the top was enough to make her stomach tighten.
She didn’t need to read it.
She already knew it was from Vince.
Her grip tightened even more on the steering wheel.
“I’m not answering,” she muttered, her voice rough and gravelly. “I’m not.”
The buzzing stopped, and silence rushed back, heavier than before.
A mile passed. Then another.
The phone buzzed with a text message. Her car read it aloud. “We need to talk.”
Rowan’s jaw tightened.
Her car read another text message as it came in.
“You picked a bad time to disappear. This looks really bad for you, Rowan. First Thayer makes an advance toward you. Then he’s found dead with your earring on him?
You know what people say: Most crimes happen because of love or money.
This one has your name written all over it. ”
A chill slid down her spine.
Before she could entirely grasp the situation, another message followed. “Maybe we can come up with a solution together.”
Nausea roiled inside her. No way would she help Vince cover up Thayer’s death.
Never.
The road curved just ahead. Her GPS had stopped working ten minutes ago, and the screen was frozen on a useless map with no signal.
She’d bought this car used and had so many problems with it.
She was waiting for another paycheck before she treated herself to a nicer vehicle, one that ran as nicely as it looked.
When had keeping up appearances become so important to her? She knew the answer to that question. Her career demanded certain things of her. Compromises.
She wasn’t proud of some of the decisions she’d made.
Sometimes, she wasn’t proud of the person she’d become.
She frowned, glancing between the road and the shape of the curve.
Something didn’t look right.
Had she missed a turn somewhere?
No. She would’ve seen it . . . right? It had been a few years since she’d been here, but she’d been certain she could find her sister’s place.
Rowan hesitated, then flicked on her blinker and turned at the next road. This had to be the correct one.
Her tires crunched over gravel.
The road narrowed almost immediately, and trees closed in on either side. Branches arched overhead in a way that made her feel as if the woods were trying to grab her, to capture her and not let her get away.
Or not.
She’d always had a flair for the dramatic. Everyone had said so. It seemed like a given that she’d capitalize on that quality and become an actress.
“This isn’t right,” she murmured.
She slowed and scanned ahead of her for the Refuge Cove sign.
She only saw more road and trees.
Another curve appeared. Then another.
A knot tightened in her chest.
She should turn around. This wasn’t right. Refuge Cove wasn’t this far off the main road.
Rowan eased off the gas. But before she could turn, a building in the distance came into view.
The house sat low and sprawling, disjointed as if it had been pieced together over time. Sections jutted out at uneven angles, and the roofline shifted from one addition to the next.
The yard was little more than a wide stretch of packed dirt, littered with empty beer cans and crumpled fast-food wrappers that caught in the wind. A few rundown vehicles sat scattered across the property.
Rowan slowed, scanning the house.
This definitely wasn’t Refuge Cove. She knew that much.
But she hadn’t passed another house in miles.
She could keep driving. Or she could bite the bullet and ask for directions.
She hesitated, her hands tightening on the wheel.
Then she turned into the gravel drive.
The engine idled as she studied the place another moment.
Her chest tightened. Was this really the place where she wanted to stop? Or had she become a snob? Was she showing her biases by allowing the rundown house to scare her? Good people could live here. Good people could let their house go.
After another moment of hesitation, Rowan pushed open the car door and stepped out.
She took a few steps toward the porch, scanning the windows and the edges of the yard.
Then a scent hit her. Two actually. One reminded her of rot—like something had died nearby.
And the other was . . . gasoline?
Gasoline? Maybe someone had been doing some yardwork or repairing one of the vehicles out here.
Her instincts called for her to turn around. To get back into her car.
Her mom had always taught her she should listen to her gut. She’d said the gut was God’s built-in warning system.
Rowan paused and took a step back toward her Tesla.
Before she reached it, a figure stepped out from the shadows at the side of the house.
Her heart lurched.
The man looked to be in his mid-thirties.
He was lean and loose-limbed, with dark hair that fell across his forehead as if he’d just rolled out of bed.
He had an unshaven jaw, and a crooked smile gave him the kind of looks that might have been charming under different circumstances—if not for his eyes.
His eyes were cold.
He worked a toothpick between his teeth, and his hands were tucked into the pockets of his worn, dirty jeans.
The man walked toward her slowly and deliberately, almost as if he had nowhere else to be.
A shiver went down Rowan’s spine—and not the romantic kind.
The kind caused by fear.
He stopped a few feet away and observed her. Recognition flickered in his eyes then sharpened.
“Well, now. I’ve seen you before. On TV.” A hint of a smile tugged at his mouth. “Didn’t expect to see someone like you out here in the middle of nowhere.”
Rowan kept her movements measured, resisting the urge to show any fear. This man might enjoy that too much.
“I’m sorry,” she started. “I think I took a wrong turn. I was trying to find—”
“Refuge Cove?” he finished with the raise of his eyebrows.
Her pulse skipped. How had he known?
He stepped closer, a smirk on his face. “I figured that’s where you were heading. You are a King, after all. I heard one of you was famous, but I wondered if it was just a rumor.”
Rowan straightened as instinct kicked in. “Do you know how to get there?”
“Oh, I know how to get there.” His gaze swept over her, slow and assessing. “Question is . . . what’s someone like you doing out here in the middle of nowhere all alone?”
Most people in the mountains were good people. Welcoming and downhome. But some were backward. Some wanted isolation and privacy for nefarious reasons.
She should know. She’d grown up only an hour from here, and she’d loved her small, mountain community. But there had always been troublemakers.
Blue Ridge Hollow was no different.
She took another step back. “I’m just visiting family.”
“Family.” He nodded as if filing that information away. “Right.”
“Listen, I didn’t mean to bother you. I’ll just—”
“You’re Rowan King.” His eyes didn’t leave her face. “The Rowan King. I can’t believe you’re here.”
Rowan forced a polite smile. “I’ve been in a few things.”