Page 60 of Without a Trace
I didn’t respond.
Because I was wondering the same damn thing.
The man didn’t give anyone a chance to explain. He didn’t wait for introductions. He looked straight at Trace, then at Alden, like we weren’t even there.
“Can we talk?” he said. “Just us.”
Trace didn’t even glance my way. Neither did Alden.
They just nodded, turned, and walked inside. Rhett and Kane followed without a single word.
The screen door slammed shut behind them, and that was it.
Silence.
Me, Sloane, and Lena were left standing on the porch like we were extras in a movie we didn’t know we’d been cast in.
Sloane let out a breath. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but my voice felt thin. Disconnected.
Lena looked at me, wide-eyed. “You’ve never seen him before?”
“No. Never.”
But he’d looked at me like he had. Like heknewme. Like he’d been expecting something entirely different.
My skin crawled.
Sloane was still pacing. “Seriously, what the fuck? That guy gives me mob vibes. Did you see the tattoos?”
I blinked. “Yeah.”
And the eyes.
And the way Alden stepped in front of me the second he looked at me like that.
The way Trace had gone so still it was like he’d turned to stone.
None of this was normal.
None of it felt like coincidence.
We sat there in the quiet, pretending not to hear the muffled voices coming from the other side of that door. No words, just tones. Serious. Low. The kind of voices people used when somethingbigwas happening.
And for the first time since we got to the lake house, I felt like I wasn’t just in the dark—I wasbeing keptthere.
Like whatever they were talking about… was me.
Trace
The door shut behind us with a finality that felt like a trigger.
Zeke didn’t waste time. He leaned back against the wall, arms crossed like he hadn’t just dropped a bomb out there and we were supposed to thank him for showing up unannounced, cracking everything wide open.
“She looks good,” he said, eyes sharp. “You’ve been taking care of her.”
Alden stepped forward. “Say what you came to say. Then leave.”
