Page 43 of Without a Trace
I blinked smiling like nothing was wrong. “Uh—gold.”
But something was different.
Scarlett
The dock stretched into the lake, a quiet secret exposed under the sun—burning high and hot enough to sting.
Warmth clung to my skin, making me feel half-awake, half-dreaming. The water shimmered with that late-summer glint, and the yacht—because that’s exactly what it was—looked like something out of a movie. Sleek, white, too polished to belong here. It appeared as if someone had dropped it from a billionaire's daydream, leaving it in the wrong place for the wrong people.
Trace stood near the edge of the dock, talking quietly to the captain, his dark shirt hugging his frame, tight across his shoulders.
He didn’t turn when we approached, but I felt him clock me anyway.
Lena gasped. “Trace. Are you secretly a billionaire?”
Kane slung an arm over her shoulder. “Plot twist. Trace is Bruce Wayne. But like… the emotionally repressed version.”
“So, theactualBatman,” Sloane said, already pulling her sunglasses down dramatically.
Lenas eyes lingered on the yacht a second too long, before she said, half to Rhett, “Kind of wild what money can cover up, huh?”
Rhett looked away as I walked past them, tugging my cover-up tighter.
I stepped onto the deck. There were lounge chairs arranged like a magazine spread, drinks already set out on a shaded table, music drifting from speakers built into the railing playing something soft and expensive sounding.
“You good?” Sloane asked, sliding her sunglasses into her hair.
“Fine,” I lied.
Because I saw Alden leaning against the upper railing, sunglasses on, arms crossed, tension coiled beneath his posture.
And Trace?
He was drifting towards the railing, nursing a glass of something dark—whiskey, maybe, breeze tugged at the hem of his shirt while he took a slow sip.
His head tilted slightly subtle, automatic. His grip tightened on the glass. A knuckle touch. A breath drawn too long.
And when he looked—
It was a slow, deliberate drag.
His gaze tracked the knot of my cover-up, down my bare legs, up again like I was something he shouldn’t touch but couldn’t stop studying.
He didn’t smile.
Didn’t speak.
Just exhaled—sharp, like the sight of me stung—then turned, taking his drink with him as he disappeared down to the lower deck.
I wasn’t going to let them break me today.
Rhett handed me a drink. “You need this more than anyone.”
“Accurate,” I muttered, sipping.
This wasn’t going to be just another ride. This was a fuse being lit.
The boat started to hum beneath our feet.
