Page 2 of The Ashes of Summer

“She's just twenty-one.”

The number lands harder than it should.

Twenty-one. The same age as Summer.

“Mr. Moore has her,” he continues, and now the words are spilling out faster than he can control them. “She spent some time at Rivers Ridge. That was the last place I saw her before he moved her somewhere else.” His breathing becomes uneven. The composure that defined him when he walked into this room is gone now, stripped away layer by layer until all that's left is a frightened old man.

“She told me she was staying with a friend. I believed her.” His voice cracks. “God help me, I believed her. By the time I understood what was happening—by the time I realized what he does there⁠—”

The sentence dies in his throat. His hand begins to shake. He clenches it into a fist like he can force it to stop. He can't. Because this isn't a butler standing in front of me anymore. It's a father.

And I think he's telling me the truth.

“I serve Mr. Moore because I have to,” he says, quieter now. “I did what I was told. Because if I didn’t—” His throat tightens. “He’d kill her.”

Silence settles. I look at him properly and take in every emotion he wears. Not the suit. Not the posture. The fear. The kind that doesn’t leave a man. He’s terrified of me, but he’s more afraid of Jackson Moore. That tells me everything. Something cold shifts under my skin.

“You serve the bastard his wine while he carves up women,” I say, voice low. “You left your daughter under his control.”

His face crumples. “I didn’t have a choice⁠—”

“There’s always a choice, old man.” I don’t raise my voice. I don’t need to. He feels it anyway. “You lie to me,” I say quietly, stepping closer, pressing the barrel harder into his forehead. “I’ll come back.”

He nods rapidly, relief and fear colliding across his face. “I understand. I swear—I understand.”

I hold his gaze, searching for any sign that he's feeding me bullshit. All I find is desperation. The kind that comes from living with fear for too long. The look I've seen on the faces of parents sitting across from me in interview rooms when their children don't come home.

Slowly, I pull my phone from my pocket and unlock it. The screen illuminates the space between us as I open the maps app and shove it toward him.

“Show me.”

His fingers shake as he works. The screen slips slightly beneath his grip before he catches it, swallowing hard as he zooms further into a stretch of land that looks completely empty. No roads. No buildings. No markers. Nothing but wilderness stretching endlessly in every direction.

Except it isn't nothing. Whatever sits hidden in the middle of that wasteland is important enough that Jackson Moore disappears there when he doesn't want to be found.

“There’s no record,” he says quietly, his gaze fixed on the screen. “They made sure of that.”

The location sits in front of me and somehow tells me absolutely nothing. No access roads. No nearby properties. No indication that people even live there. It looks like a dead patch of earth forgotten by the rest of the world. Which means it's exactly the kind of place a man like Jackson would choose.

“The feds⁠—”

“Don't go near them.” His interruption is immediate.

For the first time since he entered the room, there's no hesitation in his voice.

I look up from the screen. The old man is already shaking his head.

“They don't touch it,” he says, and whatever fear drove him before seems to have been replaced by something else. Resignation. “Whatever arrangement exists between Mr. Moore, Mr. Vale, and the federal department...” His throat works as he swallows. “It holds.”

Silence settles between us. I stare back down at the map. At the empty patch of land hiding something worth protecting. Something worth burying. The implications crawl beneath my skin. If he's telling the truth, this goes deeper than I thought. Deeper than money. Deeper than influence. The kind of protection he's describing doesn't happen because somebody made a few phone calls. It happens because powerful people benefit from looking the other way.

Good. A humorless smile threatens to pull at the corner of my mouth. Because that means when I burn the place to the ground, there'll be more than one monster caught in the flames.

“You won’t take it with a handful of men,” he adds, quieter now. “It’s built to withstand more than that.”

I let out a slow breath. Not frustration. Not doubt. Something darker. My gaze remains fixed on the map between us as I picture Summer out there somewhere beyond that stretch of empty wilderness. Every mile between us feels like a living thing. Every second she's in Jackson Moore's hands twists something deeper inside my chest.

“Then I’ll get more.”