Page 18

chapter

twelve

The drive home from Valor Ridge felt like a retreat from a battlefield, with Nessie’s heart still thundering in her chest long after Jax’s words had faded behind her.

I won’t be around long enough…

What did he mean by that? Was he planning to run? To turn himself in for a crime he didn’t commit?

The uncertainty gnawed at her as she stopped at the store for some groceries.

She couldn’t forget the look on Jax’s face when she’d offered him that ridiculous monster muffin, like he’d been handed something radioactive instead of baked goods.

The look in his eyes had been worse. He was a man who’d already accepted his fate and was just waiting for the executioner to swing the ax.

By the time she pulled into the alley behind the bakery, her head was pounding.

The familiar brick exterior rose two stories above the sidewalk—bakery on the bottom, their apartment perched quietly above.

The second-floor window boxes overflowed with cheerful blooms Oliver insisted they plant every spring.

But today, the whole building felt different.

Heavier. Like it had absorbed her anxiety and was pressing it back down on her.

She sat in the car for a long moment, trying to steady her breathing. Oliver wouldn’t be home for another few hours. Mariah had promised to drop him off after lunch, which gave Nessie time to shower, change, and figure out what the hell she was going to do about Jaxon Thorne.

She unlocked the back door to the bakery and stepped inside, groceries balanced awkwardly in one arm. The smell of coffee and sugar clung to the air, even with the ovens off and chairs flipped onto tables.

The place was so silent that her footsteps echoed on the stairs up to her apartment.

Her skin prickled.

It had been so long since she’d last experienced this creeping paranoia, she almost forgot it was how she was supposed to be living her life. Maybe she’d become too comfortable here, too complacent.

She set the groceries on the kitchen counter and placed the muffin tin in the sink. Complacency was dangerous. Complacency got people killed.

“Get it together, Nessie,” she muttered and set about unpacking the groceries.

Bread. Milk. Eggs. Peanut butter. Apples, which Oliver would only eat sliced, never whole.

Boxed mac and cheese. All the regular, unremarkable things that normal people bought every week.

Sometimes she still marveled at the simplicity of it—just walking into a store, filling a cart, and walking out.

No fear. No looking over her shoulder for Alek or his friends.

Except today, she had looked over her shoulder. The whole time at the grocery store, she’d felt watched. Exposed.

And she still couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes on her.

She crossed the open space of the apartment and pulled the blinds down over each of the four tall windows.

Then she checked the smaller windows in the bathroom and bedrooms. All locked.

Down below, the only movement was one of the Dumpster cats—Socks—sitting on the hood of her car, cleaning himself.

Only then did she exhale.

“You’re being paranoid,” she whispered to herself. But paranoia had kept them alive this long. Old habits, and all that.

The apartment felt bigger without Oliver’s constant chatter filling the corners.

Emptier. His drawings still covered the side of the fridge, fluttering slightly in the warm breeze from the floor vent.

A portrait of Toothless, the bearded dragon, with sunglasses.

She remembered Jax’s confusion at Oliver’s declaration that he had a dragon and smiled.

Niblet the chinchilla wearing a crown. Honkules the duckling with a red cape and a suspiciously muscular chest. And the newest one—Meatball, a lopsided brown dog with one eye and a wide, hopeful grin.

There were speech bubbles, too. Oliver insisted on those lately.

“I’m real!” one read.

“I love you!” said another.

Her throat tightened. They’d never had a pet. Not really. Just the strays behind the bakery and the imaginary menagerie Oliver insisted were theirs. A coping mechanism, she knew. He made up animals he could love because people had always been so dangerous.

She reached out and smoothed a corner of Meatball’s page where it had curled.

“We’re safe,” she told it softly. Like maybe the words would stick if she said them out loud. “We’re safe. We’re staying. We’re okay.”

But her fingers still trembled.

It had been almost four years since they’d fled. Four years of looking over her shoulder, of flinching at unexpected sounds, of teaching Oliver to answer to a new name. Four years of building a life from scratch, and now she’d potentially ruined everything by getting involved with Jax.

“Stupid,” she muttered, closing a cabinet with more force than necessary. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

She checked her watch. Still hours until Mariah was bringing Oliver home. The emptiness of the afternoon stretched before her, vast and daunting, and she considered, for a split second, driving the half mile to Mariah’s house on the outskirts of town.

But the last thing she wanted to do was worry Oliver, and picking him up just hours before he was meant to come home would definitely do that. Even though he’d been only three when they left LA, he remembered that night clearly. She couldn’t traumatize him again just because she was anxious.

She crossed to the living room window and adjusted the blinds just enough to peek out without being seen from the street.

A car drove by, slowing slightly as it passed her bakery.

Her pulse quickened, but it continued on.

Just a neighbor, probably. Or a tourist checking to see if she was open. Or...

Or someone watching. Someone reporting back to Alek.

She let the blinds snap shut and pressed her forehead against the cool brick of the wall. This was ridiculous. Alek was in prison. He couldn’t touch her here. Couldn’t find her. Marshal Brandt had assured her of that when she met him at the quarry the other morning for their yearly check-in.

She was safe. Oliver was safe.

But Hank Goodwin could poke into her background if he wanted to. Could unravel the careful fiction she’d built around herself and Oliver.

And all because she’d tried to help a man who looked like he needed it.

This life she’d built was fragile. Tenuous. One wrong move and it would all come crashing down.

She checked her watch again. Three hours and fifty-eight minutes until she could hold her son again. Until she could breathe properly. Until she could stop feeling like the world was collapsing in on her.

The phone rang, cutting through the silence like a blade. Nessie jumped, her hand flying to her chest as her heart hammered against her ribs. She checked the caller ID: Unknown Number.

She let it ring.

And ring.

And ring.

Finally, it stopped. The silence that followed felt heavier than before, crushing her like a weight. She counted to ten, then twenty, willing her pulse to slow. It was probably just a telemarketer. Or someone with the wrong number. Nothing to panic about.

The phone rang again.

This time, she snatched it up before the second ring. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?” she said again, louder this time.

Still nothing.

She hung up and threw it down, staring at it, mentally daring it to ring again.

It did.

She snapped it up. “Leave me alone!”

“Nessie, what’s wrong?” the voice was male, deep, and alarmed.

And familiar.

She froze, looking at the name on the screen. Corbin Brandt. Shit. The universe had a sick sense of timing.

She sucked in a soothing breath and raised the phone to her ear again in time to hear him shout, “Vanessa!”

“I’m here. I’m okay.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” she lied, cursing her own jumpiness. “Just had a couple of hang-up calls. Got me spooked.”

“Hang-up calls,” Brandt said, flat and skeptical. “You want to try again with something I might actually believe?”

Nessie closed her eyes and leaned against the kitchen counter.

Marshal Corbin Brandt had been her lifeline when she’d fled LA, the one person who’d believed her when she’d said Alek would kill her if she stayed.

He’d arranged her new identity, found her this town, kept tabs on her ex from a distance.

He’d never once treated her like she was overreacting or paranoid.

Which meant he wouldn’t start now.

“Sheriff Goodwin came by the bakery yesterday asking questions,” she admitted. “About a murder victim they found on Ridge Road.”

“Bailee Cooper.” His voice was grim. “I heard. That’s why I’m calling. Is this something we need to be concerned about?”

Of course, he had heard. Brandt had ways of knowing things before the rest of the world caught on.

“No. Goodwin thinks one of Walker Nash’s guys did it. A new resident at Valor Ridge.”

Brandt growled. “If I’d known about that place, I never would’ve put you in Solace.”

“Walker Nash is a good man,” Nessie said quickly. “He’s doing a good thing with that ranch, helping people who need it.”

“And one of those people might be a killer.”

“He’s not.” The words came out sharper than she’d intended. “I met him, Corbin. He’s not a killer.”

Silence stretched across the line.

When Brandt finally spoke, his words were deadly quiet. “You. Met. Him.”

Shit. She’d walked right into that one.

“It’s not what you think?—”

“What I think,” Brandt interrupted, “is that you promised me you’d stay out of trouble. What I think is that you swore you’d keep your head down and your mouth shut. What I think is that you just told me you’re personally acquainted with a murder suspect. What if he has ties to Alek or his family?”

“He doesn’t.”

A pause. “How did you meet him?”

She winced. This was the part she’d been dreading. “I gave him a ride. I found him walking along the road after our last meeting.”

“Jesus Christ, Vanessa.” The exasperation in his voice made her flinch. “What were you thinking?”