Page 107 of When the Smoke Clears

Gabe scrubs a hand over his face. “That partial belongs to a contract hitter they call ‘Ares’. He leaves those red stones as a signature. No legal name. Just bodies.”

I’m still trying to process those words as he continues.

“And there’s this.” With a flick of his wrist, he throws Nathaniel’s phone onto the granite counter, disgust visible in the tightness of his jaw. I glance at the phone, then back at Gabe. His stare doesn’t budge, heat coiled tight behind it.

“Did you get in?”

He lets out a derisive scoff. “I got in.”

“And?” My stomach knots with apprehension.

He hesitates for a split second. “There’s nothing on the phone except for two phone numbers. One is a number I’m still working to trace. Probably another burner that will never be found.”

My heart pounds in my chest. “And the other?”

Gabe releases a breath. “The other number is Isla’s.”

The revelation hits me like a punch, leaving me reeling. Anger and confusion collide in a storm that clouds my mind and chokes my voice.

Gabe continues. “There are no messages on the phone currently. Nathaniel must’ve deleted them. But there’s no doubt in my mind that this is the phone that sent Isla the threatening text.”

My hands clutch my hair, a futile attempt to ground myself as the pain in my shoulder fades into insignificance. “Nathaniel is responsible for threatening Isla?”

Saying it aloud feels like sealing it in reality, turning it from a horrible suspicion into an undeniable truth. “Why? Why would he do this?”

The room tilts. For a second, all I can hear is Isla’s laugh from last night, the way she curled into my side like this cabin is the safest place on earth. My father has been using a secret phone to threaten the woman I love.

“I wish to hell I had the answers, Luke. We need more time to investigate.”

“We don’t have time.” My voice cuts through the air as I spin on my heel, heading briskly to my room.

“Where are you going?” Gabe’s voice trails after me, tinged with concern.

“I need to confront him,” I declare. “Nathaniel Wild is going to answer for his role in all of this.”

CHAPTER 26

LUKE

“You can’t just go over there like this,” Gabe calls after me, his tone sharp but threaded with something dangerously close to fear. “Think it through.”

Think? The word hardly penetrates. Any tether to reason snapped the moment he told me Isla’s number was hidden in my father’s phone.

Nathaniel didn’t just deceive my mother. He didn’t just deceive me. He threatened the one woman I can’t lose again. And something deep in my gut tells me this isn’t the first time.

As a sheriff, I know better. I should be biding my time, collecting evidence, and building a case. But reason and training have bled out of me, leaving nothing but a single, burning truth:

If Nathaniel knows something that’s keeping Isla in danger, he answers for it. Today.

I crouch low in the bedroom, careful not to wake her. Isla is curled into the blankets, hair spilling across my pillow like sunlight across fresh snow. The sight of her nearly breaks me in half.

My fingers fumble through the scattered clothes on the floor, dressing in silence. Before I leave, I steal a final glance at her peaceful face. She shifts, sighing in her sleep, and that small sound becomes my anchor.

If I don’t unravel this, I risk losing her again.

The door clicks softly shut behind me.

Gabe is pacing the living room like a caged animal. He stops when I step into view, scanning my face the way a medic checks for signs of trauma.