Page 128 of Death Valley

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I need to go back to Sacramento, deal with the Bureau. They’ll want a full debrief. I doubt I’ll even be allowed to return after this.”

“Will you tell them everything?” There’s no judgment in his question, just curiosity.

“Not everything.” Some truths belong only to us, to the darkness we survived together.

“Will you tell them about Lainey?”

I shrug, though it makes me wince. “I don’t know that I can. I can’t explain to them what really happened to her. Even if I blamed it on Adam, which I would love to, there’s no proof of anything…”

Suddenly I remember Lainey’s journal and the documents. I sit up straighter. “I have her journal. Don’t I still?” I try to remember but my brain is too slow. It was in my jacket pocket, but we went into the water, and then after that…

Jensen nods over at the desk. “They took a few days to dry out but we have them.”

My heart flutters with relief. I still have a piece of her, even though I can’t use any of that as evidence either.

“She’ll remain a cold case,” I eventually say. “But at least I know now the truth.”

He nods, accepting this. “And after you deal with your job? What are your plans?”

The question hangs between us, loaded with possibility. I think of my empty apartment, of the life I built around finding Lainey. Now that quest is over—painful and unresolved, yet finished.

What comes next?

I look at Jensen, at the man who carried me through hell and brought me back, who’s watching me now with those yellow-green eyes that see too much.

“I don’t know that either,” I say honestly. “But I’d like to figure it out.”

His hand finds mine again, fingers intertwining. “Together?”

The word holds a promise neither of us is ready to fully articulate. But it’s a start.

“Together,” I agree, and something settles in my chest—not quite peace, not after everything we’ve seen, but something close to it.

A foundation to build on, once the dust clears.

Outside the window, the mountains loom in the distance, their peaks still snow-covered and forbidding. They hold our secrets now, buried deep in caves and darkness. But here in this room, with Jensen’s hand warm in mine, the monsters seem far away.

For now, that’s enough.

38

AUBREY

The air is warm and heavy with the scent of jasmine as I sit on my apartment balcony in Sacramento, case files spread across the small table before me. My resignation letter, printed and signed this morning, sits on top. The sight of it still sends a flutter of uncertainty through my stomach—a sensation I’ve become intimately familiar with over the past four months.

Four months since we escaped the mountains. Four months since I’d found my sister and lost her again. Four months of nightmares and healing, of trying to find my way back to some version of normal that no longer exists.

My phone buzzes with a text from Jensen.

How’d it go?

Three simple words. He knows today was the day I planned to hand in my resignation. I stare at the screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard. I haven’t done it yet. The letter sits in my bag, waiting. Part of me still can’t believe I’m walking away from the career that defined me for so long.

It’s getting there, I text back.

I set the phone down and lean back in my chair, closing my eyes against the afternoon sun. Every day for the past four months, we’ve talked. Sometimes brief texts checking in, sometimes hours-long phone calls that stretch deep into the night, sometimes sex over Zoom when talking won’t do. Once a month I’ve driven up to Lost Trail Ranch, spending weekends in his bedroom, helping out at the ranch.

We haven’t put a name to what’s happening between us. Haven’t made promises or plans. But something has shifted, settled. The ghosts that haunted him—Lainey, Marcus, his own guilt—have begun to fade. And my own demons—the ones I drowned for so long—no longer scream quite so loudly.

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