By the time Redcreek finally appears through the windshield, my back is numb and my knuckles are white on the steering wheel.
The town rises out of the pines like a bad memory. Sun-bleached storefronts. Tilted porches. A gas station that looks more like a skeletal art installation than a functioning business. I relax my grip, flex my fingers once, then tighten again as my grandmother’s house appears at the end of the road—perched where the last cracked strip of asphalt crumbles into dirt and forest.
Home, a voice in me whispers.
Absolutely not, I answer it.
I roll the car to a stop in front of the house. The porch sags in the middle like it’s given up, the paint peeled down to tired gray boards. The upstairs window on the right is cracked; someone taped cardboard over the missing corner. The willow in the yard has grown wild, branches trailing like fingers against the roof.
“This is a transaction,” I mutter. “Sign papers. Sell. Leave.”
Saying it out loud doesn’t make the air any easier to breathe.
I kill the engine. Silence presses in, thick and expectant. There’s no hum of traffic, just wind moving through pine and the faint creak of the front steps in the breeze. I hear my heart a little too clearly in my ears.
I open the car door. Heat rolls over me—late-summer, resin-scented. The forest that surrounds Redcreek is closer than I remember, trees crowding the town like it’s something they’re holding in place.
The slam of my car door echoes down the empty street.
That’s when I see him.
There’s a black SUV parked beside the house, dust dulling its shine. A man leans against the hood like he’s been there a while. Dark jeans, button-down rolled to his forearms, badge at his belt catching the light. Shoulders relaxed, but there’s a tension under it, coiled and contained.
He watches me like he’s been watching the road for hours.
“Rhea Harper?” he calls, voice low, carrying easily.
My spine straightens. Instinct: don’t let them see they scare you. “Depends who’s asking.”
He pushes off the SUV and closes the distance in a few long strides. He’s tall. Up close, the word seems inadequate. His shadow stretches over the cracked drive, almost touching my boots.
“Grey Maddox,” he says. “Sheriff.”
He waits a beat, like he expects that to mean something to me. It doesn’t. Not consciously, anyway. But his name lands somewhere under my ribs, stirring up dust.
He holds out a hand.
I look at it, then at his face. His features are clean lines and angles—straight nose, sharp cheekbones, mouth set in something that isn’t quite a smile. His eyes are the kind of gray that would usually read as cold, but on him they’re…steady. Assessing. Like storm clouds that chose not to break yet.
I take his hand because not taking it would be more of a statement than I’m willing to make.
His palm is warm, calloused. The contact sends an odd flicker through me, like touching an exposed wire without quite getting shocked.
“Sorry for your loss,” he says.
There it is. The line people rehearse in the mirror.
“Thanks,” I reply, pulling my hand back. “I’m here to meet the lawyer tomorrow, get everything sorted, and then—” I make a vague outward gesture. “I’ll be out of your hair.”
One of his brows lifts, the smallest movement. “Redcreek’s hair?”
“Yours. The town’s. My grandmother’s ghost. Take your pick.”
Something like amusement brushes his mouth, gone almost as soon as it appears.
He glances at the house, then back at me. “Place isn’t exactly move-in ready. I wanted to be here when you arrived. Make sure you got in safely.”
“That in the sheriff job description?”
His hand dips to his belt, thumb hooking near the badge casually. “Out here? Sheriff’s job is whatever keeps people breathing.” His gaze lingers on my face a second too long. “Especially you.”
Heat crawls up my neck, part irritation, part something I don’t name.
“You don’t even know me,” I say.
“I know your name.” His voice lowers, almost a hum. “I know your blood.”
My chest goes tight. I take a half-step back without meaning to. “That’s not creepy at all.”
He seems to realize how it sounded; his jaw flexes once. “Marla talked about you,” he adds, more human. “She made arrangements. Left instructions that the day you came back, I’d meet you here.”
There’s a beat where the world tilts. “She…what?”
Grey nods toward the porch. “Let me get the door. We can talk inside.”
I should say no. That’s my first clear thought. I should tell this stranger with the badge and the too-quiet eyes that I don’t need his help, that I can stand in my own ruined doorway just fine.
Instead, I hear myself say, “The lock’s probably stuck. It always used to stick.”
“We’ll see.”
We walk up the path together, weeds brushing my jeans, the smell of damp earth rising with every step. The porch groans under his weight, then under mine. Up close, the wood shows the scars of years—claw marks in the railing.
I freeze.
They’re old, faded with weather, but unmistakable. Four deep gouges, parallel, spaced like fingers that ended in knives.
“Dogs,” I say, too quickly.
Grey follows my gaze, then looks at me, unreadable. “Sure,” he says, like he’s agreeing to a lie because he doesn’t want to scare me. Or because he’s not ready for that conversation.
He takes out a ring of keys. The metal scrapes in the lock, then turns with a reluctant clack. He shoulders the door open. Dust gusts out, dry and sweet with the faintest hint of lavender—my grandmother’s soap.
The smell hits me in the chest like a physical thing.
I stand on the threshold, every part of me wanting to run and go in at the same time. Memories lurk behind the shapes of furniture: the hall table with the chipped corner, the staircase banister smoothed by a lifetime of hands.
I remember another smell layered under the lavender and dust, something metallic and wild. A night with raised voices. The sound of howling far too close.
My mind slams a wall down over it.
“Rhea?” Grey’s voice is softer now.
I swallow, step inside.
The house sighs around us. Floorboards creak. Light slants through dirty windows, catching floating dust. It feels like walking into a mausoleum someone forgot to seal.
Grey closes the door behind us with a soft thud. I feel it in my spine.
“You all right?” he asks.
“Fine.” My voice comes out thin. I clear my throat. “Just…weird being back.”
He studies me for a moment, then nods. “The place has been empty a while. I had someone check on it once a month. Make sure it was still standing.”
“You have someone for that? ‘Town Structural Integrity Deputy’?” I try for dry. It mostly works.
“Something like that.” A ghost of a smile. “You’re planning to sell?”
“Yes.” The word leaves no room for argument. “I have a life. A job. An apartment with a view of a brick wall that leaks when it rains, but it’s mine. I just have to…clear this place out, sign things, and go.”
His gaze sharpens at that, almost flares. “You’re not staying.” It’s not a question.
“No offense, Sheriff, but Redcreek isn’t exactly advertising itself. Your tourism board needs work.”
He steps closer. Not invading, not quite, but close enough that I become acutely aware of the breadth of his shoulders, of the heat radiating off his body in the cool interior of the house.
“You were born here,” he says quietly. “Some places don’t let go that easy.”
“Then it’s going to have to learn.”
We stand in the narrow hallway, dust and history pressing around us. I can hear something outside—wind, maybe. Or something else. The hairs on my arms lift.
“What did you mean,” I ask slowly, “about knowing my blood?”
Grey’s expression shifts, the easy small-town sheriff fading at the edges. Something older peeks through, hard and certain.
“Not here,” he says. “Not yet.”
“Why? Is the wallpaper bugged?”
He huffs out a breath that might be a laugh. “There are things in these walls you don’t remember. Things Marla didn’t want you to remember.” His eyes hold mine. “You can hate me for this later if you want, but right now, you need rest more than answers.”
“Don’t tell me what I need,” I snap.
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t back down. “You drove eight hours. Your pupils are blown. Your hands are shaking.” His gaze drops briefly to my fingers; I force them to still. “If I start handing you the truth now, you’re going to break yourself against it.”
Something hot and furious surges up, because who the hell is he to measure my breaking point? But underneath that, quieter and more dangerous, is the tiny, traitorous part of me that wants someone else to take the wheel for one goddamn second.
I shove that feeling away.
“What are you, some kind of trauma sommelier?” I say. “You pair grief with a nice, withholding cabernet?”
He stares at me, and then, briefly, his mouth curves. It changes his whole face, that almost-smile, like the sun fought its way out from behind the clouds and decided to stay a minute.
“You’re a lot like her,” he says.
My throat tightens. “Don’t.”
“Stubborn,” he corrects, the warmth gone, leaving something like respect. “She fought everyone, including me, when she thought it was to keep you safe.” He takes a breath. “She left something for you at the station. A box. I’ll bring it by tomorrow.”
“Why not now?”
“Because once you open it, there’s no going back.”
The way he says it makes my skin prickle.
We move through the house in a reluctant tour. The living room: sheet-draped furniture, a fireplace choked with old ashes. The kitchen: the same table where I once sat swinging my feet, watching my grandmother slice herbs with hands that never shook.
I touch the back of one of the chairs. The wood is cool under my palm.
A sound echoes in my head that isn’t in the room. A low whine. The thud of something heavy hitting the floor. My grandmother’s voice, sharp with a language I don’t know.
“Rhea.” Grey’s voice cuts through it, pulling me back.
I blink. The kitchen is just a kitchen again. My nails have bitten crescents into the chair.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asks, softer now.
“No,” I admit, before I can stop myself.
The word hangs between us, raw and too honest. His expression shifts, something protective flashing across it so fast I barely catch it.
“Then let me do my job,” he says. “You’re not alone here.”
I almost laugh. “You, the whole of Redcreek, my grandmother’s box of horrors at the station—really selling the vacation destination vibe.”
He leans against the counter, crossing his arms. The move pulls his shirt across the plane of his chest. It would be distracting if I wasn’t irritated.
“Redcreek isn’t gentle,” he says. “But it’s still your town. Whether you like it or not.”
“I don’t.”
His gaze drags down my face, pausing on my mouth, then returns to my eyes. The look isn’t obscene. It’s…assessing. Weighing. Like he’s measuring what I’ll do if he pushes.
“You might,” he says quietly. “Once you remember what you are here.”
A chill slices through the summer air.
“I’m not—” I start, and then stop, because I don’t even know how to finish that sentence. Not one of you? Not like her? Not whatever you’re hinting at?
He watches the struggle on my face. His next words are so soft I almost miss them.
“They will come for you,” he says. “Old debts. Old laws. People who think your last name makes you theirs.”
My heartbeat stutters. “People like you?”
His eyes flare, but his voice stays even. “I’m the line between you and the wolves at the door.”
“Wolves,” I repeat, because the word wraps around something in my chest and squeezes.
A howl rises in my memory—high and mournful, close enough to rattle the windowpanes of my childhood bedroom. My grandmother’s hand on my hair, rough and urgent. Her whisper in my ear: Don’t answer them this time, baby. Please don’t answer.
My lungs forget how to work for a second.
“It’s a metaphor,” I say, a little too fast.
Grey doesn’t correct me.
He pushes off the counter. “I’ll leave you to settle in for tonight. Lock the doors. Windows, too.” His gaze flicks toward the tree line visible through the kitchen window, where the forest waits, dark and thick. “If you hear anything, you call me. No matter the hour.”
“You think the squirrels are going to mug me?”
His jaw works, like he wants to say more and doesn’t. “Some things out here don’t care that you don’t believe in them,” he says instead.
He moves past me toward the front door. As he does, his arm brushes mine, just a whisper of contact.
It’s like touching a live current this time, sharp and bright under my skin. The room narrows to the space where our bodies almost, almost align.
I exhale slowly after he passes, forcing my shoulders not to tense.
Grey opens the door, then pauses with his hand on the frame. “Rhea?”
“Yeah?”
He looks back at me over his shoulder. His eyes are darker in the doorway’s shadow, storm gray gone almost black.
“Whatever you think you know about why you left,” he says, “it isn’t the whole story.”
Anger flashes, hot and reflexive. “And you’re going to be the one to enlighten me?”
“If you let me,” he says simply.
The honesty of it throws me more than any threat would have.
He steps out onto the porch. “Stay inside tonight,” he adds. “You’ll hear things. Don’t open the door to any of them.”
“Sheriff’s orders?”
“Something like that.”
He descends the steps. Gravel crunches under his boots. I watch from the shadowed hallway as he walks to his SUV. Before he gets in, he stops, lifts his face toward the tree line as if scenting the air.
The wind picks that moment to rise, sweeping through the pines. A sound follows it—so faint I could almost convince myself I imagined it. A long, low howl, threaded through the rustle of branches.
My heart lurches against my ribs.
Grey’s shoulders go very still. Then he opens the SUV door, slides in, and drives away without looking back.
I stand in the doorway of my dead grandmother’s house, the sound of the distant howl still vibrating somewhere under my skin.
For a long moment, I can’t tell if the shiver running through me is fear…or recognition.
