Page 49 of Oliver

We returned to the safe house by lunch. Faron had stocked the fridge with Emery’s favorite oat milk and four boxes of chocolate-chip granola bars. She didn’t ask how he knew—probably better not to.

Olly, blissfully unaware of the threat, was outside building a fort with Raven and a pile of fallen branches.

Emery was pacing in the kitchen, her arms crossed, a tension in her shoulders I hadn’t seen since the night we found her.

“River’s team didn’t find anything,” I said carefully.

“That doesn’t mean nothing’s there,” she replied without stopping. “Someone got close enough to my house to put a note in my mailbox. No one saw them. No neighbors heard a car. Which means—”

“Which means it was a pro,” I said. “Not a copycat, trying to scare you.”

She finally stopped pacing. “Victor named all the men involved.”

“He named the men heknewwere involved,” I corrected. “There could’ve been one more. Someone who never got caught. Someone who knew about the compound. About you.”

Emery looked at me. Her expression had shifted—less scared now. Sharper. Focused.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

I sighed, reaching into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulling out a photo River had sent me last night. I placed it on the table.

The man in the photo had close-cropped hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a smile that never reached his eyes.

“His name is Anthony Vale,” I said. “Ex-intelligence, ran European ops for a private security firm that went dark two years ago. Tied to arms deals, underground transport, and according to River, he had access to the training facility where you were taken.”

Her brows furrowed. “Why wasn’t he on the list?”

“Because no one could prove he wasreallythere,” I said. “He used aliases, changed his face. But River just confirmed it this morning—Anthony was in southern Spain during your abduction.”

Her face went pale.

“He was the one,” she said quietly. “I only saw him once at the pool. I thought he was just another coach. He watched me.”

Oliver nodded. “He knows who you are, Em. And now he knows you survived.”

31

Emery

It was like a switch flipped.

I wasn’t scared—I was furious.

“You’re telling me this man helped orchestrate what happened to me. He disappeared. And now, after everyone says it’s over—he shows up and drops me a postcard?”

Oliver winced. “I wouldn’t call it a postcard.”

I grabbed the photo off the table. “We need to find him.”

“You don’t need to do anything,” he said firmly. “That’s my job.”

I stepped closer, voice low. “If he’s watching me, then I want him to see meliving. I want him to see me building something, loving someone, raising a kid who’s not afraid to hug people with sticky syrup fingers.”

“I get that. I do,” Oliver said gently. “But we need to be smart.”

I exhaled hard. “So what now? What about my wedding?”

“We track him, we're still getting married, no one is going to stop that,” Oliver said. “River’s pulling surveillance. Beatrice is also coming here.”

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