Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Sees us. Like we’re specimens in a collection. Like we’re art she acquired.
My skin crawls.
“Here’s the thing, though.” The shift happens so fast I almost miss it. One second she’s gushing, and the next her eyes have gone flat and cold without her smile moving at all. “I want the Snowflake Diamond. You’re going to tell me where it is. In exchange, you’ll be free to go. I’ll provide transportation back to civilization, money for your trouble, glowing references if you ever need them.” She pauses. “But I should be honest with you, because I feel like we’ve established a rapport. If you refuse, or if you lie to me, I will hurt you. I’ll hate doing it. It’ll feel like vandalizing a Vermeer. But I will.”
“So much for being our biggest fan,” I say.
“I am your biggest fan. That hasn’t changed.” She spreads her hands. “But I’m also a collector, and the Snowflake has been on my list for five years. At a certain point, admiration has to become secondary to acquisition.” Her smile softens again, almost tender. “I really would prefer not to damage either of you. Please don’t make me.”
She glances at something off-screen, then back to the camera. “I’ll be in touch soon with more details about how this is going to work. In the meantime—” And just like that, her whole demeanor flips again, warm and bright like a hostess at a dinner party. “Make yourselves at home! There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen and the shower pressure is divine. Bye for now!”
The screen goes dark.
Liam and I stand there in silence, staring at the fireplace where Marlena’s face was a moment ago.
“What,” Liam says, “the fuck.”
“She organized the firewood like a museum security system.”
“She knows what sheets you like.”
“She told us to make ourselves at home.”
“After threatening to hurt us.”
“And then said the shower pressure is divine.”
Liam turns to look at me, and for the first time since I’ve known him, he seems genuinely at a loss. “I’ve dealt with a lot of criminals in my life, Hailey. Mobsters. Oligarchs. A guy in Monaco who collected human teeth. But this?” He gestures at the blank screen. “This is new.”
“She’s going to kill us if we don’t give her what she wants.”
“Yeah.” He runs a hand through his hair. “That part I understood.”
I look around the cabin. The crackling fire. The gourmet kitchen. The one bed. Our insane captor who just told us to enjoy the shower.
“So,” I say. “What now?”
Chapter Sixteen
Knox
She didn’t even tell me she was leaving.
That’s what I keep coming back to as I push through the doors of the Aurora Lodge, Hailey’s photo pulled up on my phone. She spent the night in my bed, let me hold her, let me promise we’d figure things out together. And then she vanished without a word. Not a text. Not a note. Just a cold pillow and a coffee mug in the drying rack and silence where she should have been.
I noticed within hours. I texted her, called her, got nothing back but dead air.
A year. I’ve been watching this woman for a year, and I still can’t predict when she’s going to slip through my fingers.
The first time I saw her, she was laughing at something Sloane said in the studio, her head thrown back, those silver rings catching the light as she gestured. Something in my chest just . . . stopped. Rearranged itself. I’d been walking through my life like a soldier on patrol, checking boxes, completing objectives, and then Hailey Parker looked up and met my eyes and I forgot what the objective even was.
I told myself it was temporary. A distraction. An inconvenient attraction that would fade once I got to know her.
Instead, I learned that she takes her coffee black but steals sips of other people’s lattes when she thinks no one’s looking. That she hums off-key when she’s concentrating. That she bites her thumbnail when she’s nervous and cracks her knuckles when she’s bored. That she talks to herself when she thinks no one can hear, little running commentaries on whatever she’s working on.
I notice everything.
Twelve months of noticing, and the obsession hasn’t faded. It’s metastasized. Spread into every corner of my life until there’s no part of me that isn’t thinking about her.
So I checked the tracker.
Yeah. The tracker. The one I hid in the sole of her Doc Martens three months ago, back when I was still telling myself that following her home every night was “protective” and not “deeply unhinged.” In my defense, I’d planned to tell her about it eventually. In my defense, she always wears those boots, and I needed to know she was safe, and I wasn’t thinking clearly because—
There is no defense. I know that. I put a GPS tracker in a woman’s shoes without her knowledge or consent. That’s not romantic. That’s not protective. That’s behavior that gets you a restraining order and a spot on a true crime podcast.