Page 66 of Claimed on the Ridge

Alex sets the phone down and looks at me across the dark kitchen. The version of him who was drinking coffee and deciding how much to tell me is gone. What's left is the operator who built a perimeter around this property and put his brothers on it.

"You need to go upstairs," he says.

"No."

"Kendall."

"I said no." I pick up my notepad from the table. "I know how Gary's people work, what they'll say and how they'll say it. I'm more useful down here than hiding in a bedroom."

"This isn't about useful."

"It is about useful. If those men come to this door, they're going to be polite. They'll say they're looking for a friend or a family member in danger. They'll have a cover story good enough to fool anyone who hasn't heard it before." I don't let my voice waver. "I've heard it before. I've watched Gary rehearse it."

He's weighing it. I can hear the conflict in his breathing, the pause before he decides.

"If they have a photo of you," Alex says, "what am I looking at?"

"A gala. My hair was past my shoulders and styled. I was wearing makeup and a dress that cost more than my truck. I don't look like that anymore."

Alex is quiet for a long moment. The vehicle is still climbing. Bryan estimated a mile, and on that grade, at that pace, it will take a few minutes.

"You stay in the kitchen," Alex says. "Out of the main room. If they come to the door, I open it. You don't speak, you don't show yourself, you don't exist unless I bring you in."

"Agreed."

"If it goes wrong, you go out through the mudroom. Your truck is in the shed. Keys are in the ignition. You drive south until you hit the highway."

"It won't go wrong."

"If it does."

I face him in the darkness. He's giving me an exit instead of locking me in a room. Gary never gave me an exit.

"I hear you," I say. He catches the difference between hearing and agreeing, and lets it stand.

The beams reach the top of the grade and level out as the road straightens for the last stretch to the lodge. Through the window, I can see the outline of the vehicle now. It's a dark SUV, just like Bryan said.

My hands aren't shaking. I stood in Gary's living room for years while his associates discussed things I wasn't supposed to hear. I memorized voices, phone numbers, the exact cadence of a conversation about locating someone who had run. That training is the only thing keeping my hands steady now.

The SUV slows. Headlights wash over the front of the lodge, illuminating the porch, the parked trucks, the sign that reads SAWYER'S LODGE in carved letters older than I am. For a long second, the vehicle just sits there with the engine running and the lights on. Whoever is inside is doing what I would do. They're reading the building and counting vehicles, deciding whether to approach.

Alex stands beside the front window with the rifle held low against his thigh, barrel pointed at the floor, patient and still.

The SUV's engine cuts. The headlights die.

In the sudden darkness, the lodge feels smaller. The embers in the hearth throw shadows across the walls, slow and alive. I press my back against the wall beside the doorway, close enough to hear everything at the front door but out of sight from the porch. My breathing is shallow and controlled, the way I learned to breathe in Gary's house when the wrong sound at the wrong moment could change the temperature of an entire room. I flatten my palms against the wall behind me. The wood is cold and rough under my fingers, and I let the texture anchor me to something solid while the rest of my body prepares to run.

Two doors open. Two doors close. I hear footsteps on the frozen ground, the crunch of boots on packed snow, then the wooden steps of the porch, one set heavier than the other. I count the steps. Two men. The heavier one leads.

Then someone knocks.

Three measured raps land against the front door of Sawyer's Lodge, polite and unhurried, exactly how Gary would coach his men to announce themselves at a lodge in the middle of nowhere.

Alex sets the rifle against the wall beside the door, within arm's reach but out of sight. He flips the porch light on and opens the door.

"Evening." The voice is male, mid-range, with the practiced warmth of someone who makes first impressions for a living. "Sorry to bother you this late. We're looking for a lodge or rental where a friend of ours might be staying. She's been out of touch and her family's worried."

I press my shoulders against the wall and close my eyes. I don't need to see his face. I know the script. Gary wrote it, and his people deliver it the same way every time. "Family" is a weapon. "Friend" means target. I've heard every version of this pitch, standing in Gary's kitchen while he practiced onspeakerphone. The words were always softer than the intentions behind them.