Chapter 6 Sloane
SLOANE
The coffee is bitter the way Dane makes it—strong enough to strip paint off walls. I've given up trying to get him to use a proper ratio of grounds to water. The man approaches coffee the same way he approaches everything else—with excessive force and no regard for subtlety.
I curl into the armchair by the fireplace, mug warming my hands, and stare at the television. The morning news drones on—weather, traffic, local politics. Then a segment that makes my blood run cold.
My face fills the screen. It's my hospital ID photo, the one they took three years ago when I renewed my credentials. The caption reads, LOCAL NURSE MISSING—FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.
The anchor's voice is grave, concerned. "Twenty-eight-year-old Sloane Grady was last seen Friday night at a Manhattan nightclub with friends.
When she failed to report for her shift at Mount Sinai Hospital on Monday morning and didn't return calls from family and friends, concerned colleagues contacted police.
Authorities are asking anyone with information to come forward. "
They cut to footage of my apartment building with yellow crime scene tape across the door and detectives going in and out. My neighbor's elderly face looks grim during an interview, crying, saying I was such a sweet girl who always helped her carry groceries.
"We have Erin Walker, a friend and colleague of Miss Grady's, joining us now." The camera switches to show Erin—my best friend and the only person I ask to cover my shifts when I miss work. "Ms. Walker, when did you last see Sloane?"
"Friday night. We went out for drinks after our shift, about six of us from the hospital.
Sloane was tired, said she'd had a rough week, but she came anyway.
" Erin's voice cracks. "We were at this club in Chelsea.
She went to get another round from the bar, and when she came back she seemed off—dizzy and confused.
I thought maybe she'd had too much to drink, but now…
" She breaks down, unable to continue, and my heart physically aches.
Watching my best friend break down like this is killing me. I want to call her and let her know I'm okay, but I've tried. There's no cell reception up here.
The anchor's face reappears as he continues speaking.
"Police are investigating the possibility that Miss Grady's drink was tampered with at the club.
Security footage from that night has been seized, and investigators are asking anyone who was at the location to contact them immediately.
This is being treated as a potential abduction case. "
The segment ends and they move on to sports scores.
I set down my coffee with shaking hands. My friends think I'm dead. My family—God, my parents must be losing their minds. And I'm sitting here in the Adirondacks drinking terrible coffee while a killer keeps me prisoner under the guise of protection.
I need to call home and tell them I'm alive and they should stop looking for me in the city and start looking…
Where? Here?
With Dane?
And then what?
The police will show up, arrest him for kidnapping, and I get sent home while whoever drugged me and dumped me here plans their next move? Dane's right that involving law enforcement won't help. But watching Erin sob on national television is tearing me apart.
I'm pouring a second cup of coffee when someone knocks on the door.
I freeze.
In the week I've been here, not a single person has come to the cabin. We're miles from town, miles from anyone, and I don't know who knows this place exists except for me and Dane, maybe the mailman.
There's another knock, more insistent this time, and I feel my body tense.
Dane wouldn’t knock on his own door. And knowing what we're up against, it doesn’t give me a whole lot of confidence that this is just some harmless visitor.
I set down the mug and approach the door slowly, wishing I had access to the gun Dane keeps in his waistband. But he took that too, leaving me defenseless and isolated.
"Who is it?" I call through the door.
"Mail carrier. Got a package that needs a signature."
Mail carrier? God, I'm such an idiot. I got myself all worked up for nothing.
I crack the door open and see a man in his forties standing on the porch—light brown hair under a postal service cap, with blue eyes, a medium build, and a sturdy postal uniform.
He's holding a clipboard and a medium-sized box.
"Package for Dane Strouse," he says, offering the clipboard. "Just need a signature."
Dane Strouse isn't his real name—I figured that out days ago when I pressed him about his past. But it's the name on all his mail, his property records, everything that makes him exist in this town.
It makes me wonder what his real last name is, but given how he responds when I call him Dane, I figure that's either his given name or a nickname he's gone by for a while.
He flows with it too easily for it to be an alias.
I sign the form, take the package, and close the door before he can ask questions. The box is light, wrapped in plain brown paper with no return address. Just Dane's name printed in block letters and the post office address.
I carry it to the table and set it down, then return to my coffee. Whatever it is can wait until he comes back.
The door opens twenty minutes later and Dane enters carrying his rifle in one hand, breathing hard. His jacket is unzipped despite the cold, and there's blood on his hands. Fresh blood, dark red and slick.
"Got a deer," he says, moving past me toward the kitchen. "Eight-point buck, clean shot through the lungs. I'll be in the barn most of the evening processing it. You'll have to handle dinner yourself."
The blood on his hands is disgusting, and knowing how little healthy food there is here in this house, I don’t want to "handle dinner" myself. But there's something undeniably attractive about a man who can provide for himself, who knows how to live off the land.
Plus, Dane's hot.
I've been trying not to notice, but it's hard to ignore when he's standing in the kitchen, stripping his hunting clothing.
"There's a package for you," I say, nodding toward the table. "Came by courier to the post office. Mail carrier brought it by."
He stills, hand hovering over the knives. "What kind of package?" His eyes narrow like he's suspicious or something.
"Medium box—no return address. Just your name."
His expression darkens and he crosses to the sink and washes his hands, scrubbing away the blood with scalding water that turns his hands pink. Then he dries them and retrieves his phone from his pocket, setting it on the counter.
I stare at that phone. Freedom sitting right there within reach. I could grab it, lock myself in the bathroom, call the police, tell them everything, and get out of here.
But the news report flashes through my mind—Erin crying, the detectives, the assumption that I'm already dead. And beneath that, a deeper fear. Whoever sent that bullet knows about Queens and Domingo Maddox, and enough to connect me to Dane across five years and hundreds of miles.
Going home might get me killed faster than staying here.
"I want to call my friends," I say quietly. "I saw the news. They think I'm dead. My family's probably destroying themselves trying to find me."
Dane turns, leaning against the counter. "You call them, you put them in danger too. Whoever's watching will trace the call, find out who you contacted, and use them for leverage."
"Then what am I supposed to do? Just let them suffer?"
"You're supposed to be patient long enough for me to end this." He pulls his knife roll from the drawer, unrolling it to reveal a dozen blades in various sizes. "Once I know who we're dealing with and neutralize the threat, you can go home. Make your calls, tell your story, resume your life."
"And how long will that take?"
"However long it takes." He selects a whetstone from the drawer and begins sharpening the largest blade with smooth, even strokes. The sound is hypnotic, steel against stone, and I watch his hands move up and down rhythmically as I remember who I’m dealing with.
Those hands have killed people—dozens of them, maybe hundreds. They've ended lives, destroyed families, caused pain I can't begin to quantify. But they've also kept me safe for a week, fed me, protected me from whatever's lurking outside these walls.
I don't know what to do with that contradiction.
"Open the package," he says without looking up from the blade. "I want to see what we're dealing with."
I move to the table and pull the box closer. The brown paper tears easily, revealing a plain cardboard box beneath with no markings or tape, just folded flaps tucked together. I open them and photographs spill across the table.
Dozens of them. All of me.
Me leaving my apartment building in scrubs. Me at the hospital entrance, coffee in hand. Me walking through Central Park on a Sunday morning. Me at the grocery store, the gym, the coffee shop two blocks from my place.
They're surveillance photos, taken from a distance with a telephoto lens. Dates stamped in the corner going back weeks—August, September, early October. Whoever took these has been following me for months.
My hands shake as I flip through them. There's a photo of me with Erin, laughing outside the hospital. One of me hiking upstate, taken from across a ravine. Another of me through my apartment window, clearly visible despite being three floors up.
They've been watching me, learning my routines, my habits, my life. And I never knew.
Beneath the photos is a note, plain white card stock with typed text.
I know this woman sabotaged a surgery that killed him…
The card slips from my fingers and I feel like I can't breathe. Strong hands grip my shoulders, steadying me. Dane's voice cuts through the panic, while my eyes draw up over his sweaty chest to his face and I blink hard, feeling myself grow weaker.
"Breathe. Look at me. Breathe," he says.
I try to inhale but my lungs won't cooperate. Black spots dance across my vision. I'm going to faint, going to hit the floor, going to—
Dane pulls me against his chest, and the blood smell hits me first. Deer blood, coppery and warm, mixed with pine and gun oil and the scent that's distinctly him.
His arms wrap around me, and I focus on the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against my ear.
On the way his hand moves up and down my back.
"They don't just want you," I whisper into his shirt. "They want me too."
"I know."
"I'm going to die here. We're both going to die here."
"No." His voice is absolute, leaving no room for argument. "I've survived worse than this. And I'm not letting some vindictive bastard with a camera take me down now."
"But—"
"Listen to me." He pulls back enough to look at me, and his gray-blue eyes are fierce.
"I spent fifteen years as the Ferraro family's best asset because I'm good at two things—killing people and staying alive.
Whoever sent those pictures thinks they have us cornered.
They think we're scared, passive, waiting for them to make their move. They're wrong."
Dane stands here holding me up while my mind is spinning. I didn't do anything wrong and they're coming for me anyway—whoever "they" are. I don't like this at all, not one bit.
But I sort of like his arms around me a little more than I should.
What's happening to me? And why now, five years later?