Page 61 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)

MAEVE

I drove away from my parents feeling both better and worse than when I’d arrived. Better because my family always made me feel better. We’d been to hell and back, but we’d done it together, and that was something Ethan Todd could never take away from us.

Worse because I knew they were still hurting, and I really, really hated that.

I wound my way out of the back streets around Blackwell Falls and headed toward Main Street, but instead of turning left toward Southside and the loft, I turned right.

I followed Main out of town to Old Mountain Road, stopped at the red light, and started up the mountain, following the directions I’d plugged into my GPS.

Most of the mountain houses were second homes, owned by city people who came to escape the heat of the city in summer, to get their fill of apple picking and take pictures for their social media profiles in fall, and to ski in winter.

I didn’t know the area well. I didn’t ski and other than the few times Bailey and I had gone hiking with friends in college, I’d never had any reason to be on the mountain.

It was dark beyond the street lights that illuminated the road, the Blackwell Preserve stretching wild and ominous into the distance. Hikers routinely got lost in the summer — and sometimes even in the winter — and at least one person drowned in the Blackwell River every summer.

I felt utterly alone as I wound my way up the mountain, and for the first time since I’d found out the Butchers were tracking me, I was glad for the app on my phone. At least if something happened to me, they would know where to start looking.

I’d planned to remove the app from my phone, but I’d searched high and low and had never been able to find it, so whatever they’d installed was hidden from view.

I approached the final turn on the GPS and slowed down. There wasn’t a single other car on the road, and I hesitated before turning onto the narrow road winding up the mountain, feeling like one of those too-dumb-to-live heroines I screamed at in bad horror movies.

Except I wasn’t here to do something stupid. I wasn’t here to do anything at all.

I just wanted to look.

I reached the bottom of a paved driveway, the only one I could see on the deserted mountain road, and stopped my car. The house was barely visible at the top of a rise beyond the gate, nothing but winking lights through the trees.

There was no name on the mailbox out front, just a plaque on a stone pillar with the house number and an electronic keypad mounted at car level. Above the keypad, a red light blinked on a security camera.

I stopped the car and put it in park, then reached for my phone.

I’d saved the listing: the house — a “luxury mountain getaway” that had been “built for privacy” — had just sold for nearly three million dollars.

I couldn’t prove it had been sold to Ethan Todd, but when I’d checked with the county clerk’s office, the deed had been registered to a company, not a person, and when I’d looked up the company online, it had been registered not in the United States, but in Hungary.

I stared at the lights through the trees, wondering if Ethan was inside, recording another hate-filled podcast, riling up all the men out there who thought their problems were the fault of the women around them, most of whom were just trying to stay alive in a world that sometimes seemed to want them dead.

Getting to Ethan Todd inside the compound on the top of the hill would be even more impossible than trying to reach him in a throng of people outside his hotel, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with frustration.

Ethan Todd was right here in Blackwell Falls, and he was still untouchable. People like June had to hope and pray they could stay safe just living their lives, while the rich and powerful — the evil — were protected behind armed guards and security gates.

Same as it ever was.

I put the car in gear and made a U-turn, then started back toward Old Mountain Road.

I didn’t have the answers yet, but one thing was certain: Ethan Todd was as close as he’d ever be.

And this time, I wasn’t going to let him get away.