Chapter 2
two
. . .
Logan
Dale Miller’s coffee mug still sits in the cabinet.
I’ve replaced everything else. A desk lamp. A chair that doesn’t list to the left. My field manuals took the place on the shelf where Dale kept a row of golf trophies he never dusted. But the mug remains.
I pull it out, fill the cup with the coffee I made at five-thirty, and then my hand stops. The ceramic feels wrong. Too light and cold. Like the old chair did and the whole office still does.
Standing here, I can smell the mine shaft again: wet rock, rotted timber, and the airless cold of a space that hasn’t been opened in years.
The silence down there presses on your eardrums. My flashlight beam swept across the support beam.
The edge of a shoe, half buried in dirt. A young woman’s shoe, lace still tied.
Sarah Jenkins was only nineteen.
Dale sat in this office and let her stay in that mine for eleven years rather than face what he’d done.
I blink. The memory loosens its grip. The office is here. So is the coffee. March light streams through the window, catching on the edges of the desk and reminding me that time keeps moving even when it feels like it shouldn’t.
Maybe that’s why I keep the mug. So I don’t forget what this chair can cost.
I sit.
Outside, Lush Hollow is waking up. The feed store’s lights flicker on at seven. Mrs. Porter’s library at seven-thirty. Roz’s has been humming since six, the kitchen exhaust putting out that perfect blend of bacon grease and coffee that says the valley is alive again.
Sophie starts at six.
I don’t think about that. Or at least I try not to.
I open yesterday’s case notes and force myself through them.
Fence dispute between two ranches east of the ridge.
Noise complaint that turned out to be a bear.
The quarterly county report I keep meaning to finish and never do because paperwork wasn’t why I became a deputy and it sure as hell isn’t hell why I took this job.
Accepted is a generous word for what happened.
Dale got arrested. Sheriff Dale Miller, who shook my hand when I graduated the academy and told me over bad whiskey, I was the best deputy he’d ever trained, got put in the back of a cruiser.
And I sat down in his chair because someone had to.
That was last month. The county is deciding whether to make it official.
I’m still deciding whether I want them to.
I turn to a fresh page in the notebook. Write the date. Then the plates.
Oregon rental. First seen on Sunday, parked across from Wilde’s General Store. Second sighting Monday, one block east of Roz’s. Third sighting this morning, tucked beside the hardware building, with a clean sightline to the diner’s front windows.
Same vehicle. Different spots. Always within a block of the same building.
I’ve learned not to ignore the thing that won’t stop snagging.
I run the plates. The rental traces to a shell LLC out of Nevada that goes cold after two layers. That’s not a hiker.
I stare at the ceiling, then pick up my phone and scroll to a number I haven’t used in years.
Mike Reeves answers on the third ring. “King.”
“I need a favor.”
He listens while I give him the LLC and the pattern. Doesn’t ask unnecessary questions. “Give me a day or two. Anything else?”
I hesitate. Sophie’s been avoiding me since she returned to town.
I don’t blame her since I’m the reason she left at nineteen, but this morning felt off.
Her jaw was tight, her movements too careful.
“Someone came back to Lush Hollow this past year after eight years in Seattle. Female, twenty-eight. Check if there are any open threat files, anything that might’ve followed her home. ”
Reeves is quiet for a beat. “You got a name?”
I swallow. “Sophie Wilde.”
“I’ll see what I can find.”
I hang up and look out the window again. The light drops behind the ridge early and takes the warmth with it, leaving everything in that flat, gray March tone that makes the mountains feel closer than they are.
Jesse stops in at ten. He never calls ahead. He drops into the chair across from my desk, stretches his long legs, and says nothing for a full minute.
I let the silence sit. Jesse Wilde will speak when he’s ready.
“Nora made her diner run this morning,” he says finally.
“Mm.”
“She said Sophie seems off.”
I glance at the notebook with the plate numbers. “She say how?”
“Tired. Watchful.” Jesse picks up the smooth rock on the corner of my desk and turns it over in his hand. “You notice anything?”
I think about Sophie handing me coffee this morning without quite meeting my eyes. She moved like she was checking the exits. “She’s still finding her footing.”
Jesse sets the rock down. “Sure.”
More silence.
“You need anything.” He stands. “You know where I am.” He gets to the door. Stops. Doesn’t turn around. “My little sister doesn’t ask for help. Never has. It’s not stubbornness exactly. It’s more like she forgot she’s allowed to.”
Then he’s gone.
The afternoon is routine with two patrols, but my mind keeps circling back to the rental car. I spot it again on Birch Street at four, parked with a perfect view of Roz’s back lot.
I’ve been in law enforcement long enough to know the difference between a tourist who parks in the same general area because they’re staying nearby and someone running surveillance.
The pattern is too deliberate. Shifting positions every time.
Never the same spot twice, but never far enough away to lose the angle.
I don’t stop or let them know I’ve noticed.
Back at the office, I pour the last of the cold coffee into Dale’s mug. I sat on years of gut instinct because I had no evidence. But Sarah Jenkins had been in that mine shaft the entire time.
I close my eyes and there it is again: the air changing temperature against my skin and the weight of the beam settling on that shoe. I was too late, and I would always be too late because the man I trusted had made sure of it.
I’m not doing that again.
I pull on my jacket and lock up the office. I tell myself I’m doing a standard evening loop, then turn onto Sophie’s block anyway
The rental car is gone.
I stop in front of her building. Second-floor lights are on. Third floor—her floor—is still dark. She’s not home yet, or she’s home and in a room facing the back.
I kill the engine and sit in the quiet cruiser, watching her windows like I have any right to.
The Valentine’s auction surfaces. It always does when I sit here alone.
Roz’s had been packed that night. Heart-shaped decorations, twinkling lights, pie-scented air. Nora ran the show like a pro.
I stood on the low riser in my uniform, holding that damn basket, feeling every eye in the room on me, especially hers. Sophie stood near the back with her arms crossed and chin up. For one long second, I thought she might bid.
I caught myself leaning forward. Sophie Wilde would finally claim me in front of the whole town. But… she didn’t.
The schoolteacher won for a hundred and eighty dollars. The hike was fine. Linda was nice. But the whole time I kept thinking about the woman who hadn’t bid. The one who turned away and mixed craft cocktails like she was trying to disappear inside her own skin.
I’ve been patient. Telling myself Sophie will get there in her own time.
The third-floor light finally comes on.
I don’t start the engine.
I’m not going anywhere tonight.