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Evan’s smile faded. “Because it was my late mother-in-law’s house. She was paranoid as hell and built that place to disappear.”

Charlotte seemed to approve of that answer.

Noah exhaled slowly. It was coming together.

* * *

A quiet voiceinterrupted the low murmur of conversation. “Someone… tell me what’s going on.”

The room went still. She felt the shift of his presence before she heard the scrape of a chair. The silence pressed against her ribs, thick and heavy. Something was wrong.

Her body felt too weak, too sluggish. The air smelled like antiseptic, the kind that clung to everything in hospitals. But she couldn’t see. The world was still black, no matter how much she strained, no matter how much she tried to will her vision back.

Noah’s voice came, soft but firm. “Rae, we’re working on taking you somewhere safe.”

She frowned, her head aching from the effort. “I don’t… understand.”

A pause. A flicker of something in the air.

Noah wasn’t alone. She could hear the faint shift of someone else moving—Paul? She wasn’t sure. Something wasn’t right.

The silence stretched again, just enough for unease to start twisting in her stomach.

Then, Noah’s voice, careful, steady: “You’re in danger.”

Her chest tightened.

“We need to get you out of here before they try again.”

Try again.

Her breath hitched. “Someone—someone was here?” Panic curled at the edges of her thoughts, pressing inward. There was a gaping hole in her memory, a blank space where something should have been. She knew she was injured. She knew something happened. But she couldn’t piece it together.

Noah’s fingers tightened around hers. “Yes,” he said. “But we stopped them.”

She swallowed, trying to hold on to the information. Trying to process it, to lock it down before it could slip away. But the harder she grasped for it, the further it slipped through her fingers.

Noah must have noticed because his grip didn’t loosen. Neither did hers. She exhaled, her voice small. “Okay.” It was all she could give. All she had. But it was enough.

Noah’s voice rose. Was he talking to the others? “We move tomorrow.”

A muttered curse. Paul, maybe. He didn’t argue.

Another male voice: “We’ll make it happen.”

The tension in the room shifted. Then, her mom’s voice—not directed at her. At Noah? Ruth couldn’t see her expression, but she felt the moment her mom’s gaze landed on him. The realization. The understanding. She knew that tone.

And then, a beat later, Charlotte answered, “Okay.”

Ruth didn’t know why. But something told her it wasn’t about the plan.

* * *

The hospital roomwas too quiet, but the tension hadn’t lifted. The plan was set. Tomorrow, they would disappear. But, until then, they had to survive one more night.

Noah sat at Ruth’s bedside, his hand still wrapped around hers. He hadn’t let go. Not since she’d fallen into an uneasy sleep, her breaths shallow and uneven. Every now and then, her fingers twitched, grasping at something unseen. Maybe dreams. Maybe memories that wouldn’t stay.

Noah squeezed her hand gently, just enough to remind her he was here.