Chapter Thirty-Eight
Unknown POV
She is clever.
I knew she would be.
The snow around the cabin is new—clean, unmarred. She must have slipped out while I was distracted, quieter than I expected. Quieter than she ever was before.
Her absence is not surprising.
It is only temporary.
I stand at the edge of the clearing, coat hanging open, cold brushing my chest through a thin shirt. The cold never bothers me. Not really. It sharpens everything. Makes the world clearer.
The forest stretches before me in tall, dark columns. Endless, tangled, familiar. I know these trees. I know the patterns of their shadows. I know where sound carries and where it dies.
She has not gotten far.
She can’t.
The snow is breathing her in with every step she tries to take.
I close my eyes and listen.
The forest is full of noise if you know how to separate it—wind from movement, settling branches from disturbed ones, the quiet tremor of something alive. I can hear her heartbeat in my memory, fast and frantic under my palm.
She is afraid.
That is good.
Fear keeps her moving.
Moving keeps her within reach.
I walk.
Not hurried.
Hurried implies doubt.
And I am not doubtful.
If anything, I am curious about how long she will last on her own. She never put up a fight before.
I can't help to wonder what's changed to make her do so now.
My steps leave neat prints in the snow. Easy to follow—if someone knew to look.
Someone is looking.
That stupid, cocky cop who can't leave well enough alone.
Jackson Jones.
His name tastes familiar in my mouth, like something I’ve said many times in rooms where no one else could hear. He is relentless. I will give him that.
He thinks he loves her.
He doesn’t understand her.
Not the way I do.
He loves the surface—her laugh, her warmth, the easy parts.
He does not love what she hides.
What she fears.
What she is when she breaks.
But I do.
I love all of it.
There is no love without knowing.
And I know her.
I hum softly, the tune drifting through the trees. It is an old lullaby. One I used to put her to taunt her with.
The song is a reminder:
I found you once.
I will find you again.
I tilt my head, listening.
The snow is heavier now. Her tracks are nearly gone. The forest is becoming smooth and new again, erasing what shouldn’t be erased.
But not to me.
I see it—the faintest impression near the base of an old fallen tree. A scrape. A shift in snow. A small indentation where someone knelt or hid.
My pulse warms.
She was here.
Close.
Very close.
The storm muffles the world, but I can almost hear her breathing. Fast. Thin. Quiet.
Hiding like prey.
I smile.
“Brooklyn,” I murmur to the trees, my voice soft and patient. “You’re doing well.”
I brush my fingers over the faint track in the snow.
“But I will always find you.”
I stand and continue walking, unhurried, humming, the cold closing behind me like a door.
The game is still unfolding.
And she doesn’t know yet:
It was never a game she could win.
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