Page 145 of At First Spark
Holt exhales slowly, dragging one hand down his face before looking back at me. “Now we stop pretending this is random.”
“Mac’s already looped in the marshal,” he continues. “Deputy’s going to file this as attempted arson. They’ll start putting things together.”
“They’ll start,” I repeat.
He hears it—the lack of confidence in that word.
His jaw tightens slightly. “Yeah.”
Kenzie doesn’t feel like someone who waits for official processes to catch up to her.
The storm shifts outside, thunder rolling farther off now, the worst of it moving on but not fully gone. The air in the house still feels charged, like something lingering at the edges waiting to decide whether it’s finished.
I stare at the window for a long second before speaking again.
“She knew exactly where to go.”
Holt’s gaze sharpens. “Yeah.”
“The haystack. The carriage house. The tree line…” I shake my head slowly. “She’s not guessing.”
“No,” he agrees. “She’s not.”
The implication settles heavy in my chest.
“She’s been watching longer than we thought.”
His silence confirms it.
I press my lips together, forcing myself to keep going. “And if she’s been watching, then she knows when we’re here. When we’re not. When the house is empty. When the barn is—”
“Lark.”
His voice cuts through the spiral before it can take hold completely. I look at him. Really look this time. At the tension in his shoulders. The restraint in his expression. The way he’s holding himself just this side of something I don’t think he wants me to see fully.
“She’s not getting closer,” he says.
“How do you know that?” I ask quietly.
His eyes hold mine.
“I don’t,” he admits.
I lean back against the couch, dragging a hand through my damp hair, feeling the weight of everything pressing in from every direction. The inn. My mother. Nolan. The fire. Kenzie.
Holt.
“You should stay somewhere else,” he says after a moment.
Nolan’s voice echoes in the back of my head when he says it. Not the words exactly, but the way he said them.
Careful.
Measured.
Like he already knew something he didn’t want to hand over yet.
I laugh, and it’s not a kind sound.
