They left the compound in Desmond's rental, Cruz driving now while Desmond took the passenger seat with his laptop balanced open, working the phone and email chains that would, within the day, turn a twelve-year buried secret into national news. Wren sat in the back, watching Ashford Hollow slide past the window — the church steeple, the diner, the Rusted Anchor with its darkened windows still hours from opening — and felt an unexpected ache at leaving a town she'd known for barely a week but had somehow, impossibly, begun to think of as home.
"You'll come back to it," Cruz said, catching her expression in the rearview mirror, reading her the way he'd learned to over the last seven days. "Whatever happens today, this isn't the last time you see Ashford Hollow."
"I know." She did know it,
