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There isn’t room for Connor on the UTV. I ride back with Nick. At the lodge, he removes the makeshift bandage, along with my coat, then slices my sleeve up to the shoulder and flushes out the wound—a process that is almost as painful as getting shot in the first place, though I try not to show it.

Instead of leaving me in the kitchen with Olena lurking curiously by the door, he takes me to Magnus’s office before going to fetch more supplies. For privacy, ostensibly. Or maybe it’s more about containing me.

Magnus’s office is how I would have imagined it. Deep wood tones and navy, a gold fountain pen on the desk, a trio of mounted antler trophies on the wall. Bookcases that would kill an elephant in an earthquake. I spot Dubliners among them but can’t manage to be amused.

I sit in a leather armchair that has the softness of old age and high quality, my shoes off and my knees tucked up, feeling like a small girl—lost and vulnerable.

The clock on the wall of the study ticks steadily, a hollow sound. Without it, I wouldn’t be sure that time is passing at all. Nick left me here, the chair protected by several towels. It wouldn’t do for my wounds to stain the good furniture. The study is private. A room away from the plate glass windows and flowing light.

I keep trying to picture Connor’s face, the instant the arrow came toward me. But every time I shut my eyes, I see not Connor but Liam.

The door opens. I shrink against the chair, still subject to the startled animal living inside of me, but it’s only Nick. He’s come in with a large leather satchel, which he unzips to reveal a first aid kit—though calling it that seems reductive, given how extensive it is.

“Let’s get a look at that,” he says. He pulls the office chair over to me and unwraps my arm. I hiss with pain and force myself to look. The edges of the wound are clean. The skin is split, gaping, and I don’t particularly want to think about what I can see underneath. “You’re lucky,” he says, voice gruff with barely restrained anger. “And Connor’s an idiot.”

“I wasn’t where I was supposed to be,” I say. I backtracked. He didn’t expect me there; it couldn’t have been some kind of plan to stage an accident. Except that Magnus told me where to go.

Nick leans back. “I’m going to give you a local anesthetic to numb it up before I suture it.”

“I forgot to ask what kind of doctor you are,” I say idly.

“Endocrinologist,” he says. “But don’t worry, I know how to stitch up a cut.” He takes a syringe from the tray beside him, filling it from a tiny bottle. I look away when he brings it to my arm, biting the inside of my cheek at the pinch. The pain recedes, fading into cold and absence.

Images play through my mind in an endless loop. My blood, speckling the snow. The antlers of the deer. Connor’s face, replaced by his father’s.

Nick works in silence. He leans close as he pushes the needle through my skin. I feel minuscule next to him, swamped in this armchair. I watch the clock on the wall. It’s not even lunchtime.

“Nick, can I ask you something?” I say when he’s almost done. He doesn’t pause in his work but ticks his chin in a nod. “Was Liam ever violent?”

He pulls the needle free of my arm slowly. The suture draws shut, bringing the edges of my skin together. With his other hand he presses a gauze pad to the edge of the wound, dabbing up the blood that still oozes from it.

“You worried about Connor?” he asks at last.

“No,” I say. I look away. “I don’t know.”

“This was an accident,” Nick says.

“I know.” But everything is too strange. That flash of metal in the woods. Mr. Vance, appearing out of nowhere. Magnus directing me to a clearing alone. Stories of poachers in the woods: a perfectly plausible explanation, if the worst were to happen.

I cannot help but feel hunted.

We’re silent again. The needle glides through my flesh once, twice. “Liam had a temper. But he never hit the kids, if that’s what you’re asking.” He says it carefully.

“Did he hurt someone else?”

He’s on the last stitch. He finishes it. Clips the thread. “What is it you’re asking?”

I wait until he looks at me. “Mallory Cahill,” I say. “You knew her. Didn’t you.”

He pauses. His eyes flick to me—and then down, and there he stops. I’m not wearing a turtleneck today, but a scoop-neck, and his gaze has frozen on the two dark birthmarks just above my collarbone. He looks at me again, and his face is pale.

I go still, instinct telling me not to make a sound, not to twitch. I don’t even breathe.

He jerks. Looks away. He sets his tools down on the tray, cleans blood from his fingers with the gauze. “You’ll need to keep that clean and dry, but it can stay uncovered. The stitches should dissolve on their own in a couple of weeks, and of course I’ll check it for you. You’ll have a scar.”

He stands, gathering his things. When the door closes behind him, tension floods out of me. Relief doesn’t come in its place, only a scraping emptiness as the pain in my arm begins to leach back, and suddenly I’m biting back tears.

I don’t want to cry. Crying is useless. The feeling in my chest, in my gut, in my throat is useless. I don’t have time for sorrow or self-pity; I never have.

So I won’t feel them. I knuckle the tears from my eyes, but I can’t seem to get a proper breath.

These people knew me. They know that something happened here. And the Daltons don’t do scandal. They don’t let the misdeeds of their sons become known. What happened here, what Liam did, was covered up. I’m a threat to that.

And Nick recognized me. I know he did.

I blink the tears from my eyes, trying to steady my breathing. I need to think.

My gaze catches on a scrap of green, slotted between the heavy bookshelf and the side table opposite me. A curl of paper, fallen into the gap and forgotten. I stare at it a moment, not quite sure why it’s caught my eye, and then I realize with a jolt that I’ve seen it before.

It’s wrapping paper. The same wrapping paper from the gift that was left so lovingly on my windowsill just days before.

My fingers dig into the chair’s arms, fingernails scraping against leather. That scrap of paper might have blown in from anywhere. But it’s here, in Magnus’s study.

So Trevor wrapped that little present in here—but no. Why would he cart it all the way here to the lodge, the place he was most likely to be spotted? Trevor’s angry. Lashing out without particular direction or intent. Those messages, though, that warning? They had purpose, and it wasn’t to wound. It was to drive me away.

Louise gave me that check so I would go. Magnus tried to talk me into it, directly. And when I didn’t…

I check the door quickly—closed, and no sound of anyone approaching. I’m sure they’re off discussing what happened. Planning how to keep it all under control. Keep the story straight.

I rise. I don’t know how much time I have or what I’m looking for, but I know how to dissect a room, to slit open its secret places. I go to the side table first. It has a set of drawers, but these don’t offer much—a heavy set of scissors, a blank legal pad, a set of inks. I snatch the scrap of paper from the floor and shove it into my pocket, and then I go to the desk.

The top of the desk is spartan: a closed laptop, which I don’t bother with—it will certainly be password protected—and a black-and-gold Montblanc pen on a wooden stand. The top drawer is locked, as I expected, but the second slides open. Inside is a well-thumbed appointment book, which at a glance is from four years ago, and a random assortment of office supplies.

I’m about to close it when I stop. There’s something else, chucked into the back of the drawer like an afterthought. It’s a phone—a cheap flip phone.

Probably ancient. Left here and forgotten. I pick it up and flip it open.

The screen lights up, asking for a passcode.

I catch my breath. Not an ancient phone—a disposable one.

The murmur of voices jerks my attention back toward the door. I quickly slide the drawer shut with my foot, slipping the phone into my pocket, and scurry back to the chair. I lean back just as footsteps approach, and a moment later the door opens.

It’s Connor, and he’s a mess. His hair is disheveled, his clothes damp, and he hasn’t taken off his boots, a fact that his grandmother, standing behind him, looks horrified about.

“You’re all right,” Connor says with evident relief.

“She’s fine,” Louise says. She could at least try to sound a little happier about it. “As I told you. What, did you think we were going to have her put down like a lame horse?”

Connor turns to her. “Can we have a moment?” he asks.

She purses her lips. And then she turns, walking with a clipped gait back down the hall. Connor shuts the door, closing the two of us inside alone. The lump of the phone digs into my thigh. I watch him, mouth dry.

“I’m so sorry,” Connor says. His head is bowed, his hand still on the knob. “I didn’t see you.” He turns then, and I see the glistening moisture in his eyes. My first thought is to wonder if those tears are real or if it’s the cold.

He walks to me slowly and then bends, kneeling to put his hands on my knees. My whole body thrums with fear. It tells me to run. It tells me that the hunter is here, and I am prey. I have always been prey.

I don’t want to feel this way. Like a knife has slit its way up to the notch of my rib cage, and even that is cracking open. It would be easy if I didn’t love him. I wish that what I knew would blot out how I feel, but it hasn’t. It can’t.

“Please,” Connor whispers, his voice a raw ache. “I don’t know what’s going on with us. With anything. But I need you, Theo.”

I cover one of his hands with my uninjured one. I lean forward. He puts a hand around the back of my neck and presses his brow against mine, shutting his eyes.

There’s only him. Only Connor.

Connor, who lied to me. Who sought me out and brought me here to dangle in front of his family. Who had to have known. Who saw me—maybe—standing there in the woods. Every fearful part of me is screaming that he is dangerous. Telling me that I need to get away from him, that it’s a matter of survival.

But I don’t know how to lose him and still survive.

“We need to leave,” I say. It’s a plea. It’s a test.

He sits back. “All right,” he says. The ache in my ribs eases. “You’re right. We need to get out of here, if there’s any chance…” He doesn’t finish the thought. If there’s any chance of us making it through this. If there’s any chance to keep us from falling apart.

“Can we leave today?”

He runs a hand through his hair. “Tomorrow,” he says. “First thing in the morning. Give me today to try to smooth things over. Make it about…” He gestures at my arm.

Make it seem like I fled because I was hurt and wanted to go recuperate, not that they’d scared me off. Not that anyone would be fooled.

They won’t let you leave. The thought squirms through my mind. I silence it.

“Come on. Let’s get back to the cabin,” Connor says, putting out a hand, and I fit mine to it. He helps me to my feet and walks me toward the door.

I tell myself that it was an accident. That in the morning he will take me home, as promised, and I’ll be safe. I’ll be gone from here and never have to return.

The animal inside me bares its teeth.

She never got away from here, either , it whispers, and Connor slides his arm around my waist.