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She fought too.

Of course she did.

My girls fought like hell.

I move again.

The drag marks continue another twenty yards, then widen where the ground dips near a service road half hidden by brush. Tire tracks cut deep through the mud.

The drag marks end there.

My body goes cold.

I step onto the road and stare down at the tracks. Wide tires. Heavy vehicle. Truck, probably. The mud has hardened at the edges.

They left hours ago.

Not minutes.

Hours.

Gone.

The panic hits so hard I almost drop Poppy’s bow. My mouth tastes like metal. My vision keeps narrowing to the tire tracks, then snapping back to the blood. Every ugly possibility I spent years burying rips through me at once.

Clair with a gun to her head.

Poppy crying.

Hands on them.

A truck door slamming.

Distance growing while I was searching for supplies and listening to Joanie and Carlos argue about cows like tomorrow was guaranteed.

I should have been here. I should have stayed. I should have known.

Mom grips my face.

I blink, and she’s there in front of me, eyes wet and fierce, refusing to let me fall apart.

“Leon,” she says. “Look at me.”

I can’t.

“Look at me.”

I do. Barely.

“You are no good to them if you lose yourself right now.”

My hands shake around Poppy’s bow.

Her thumbs press against my cheekbones, the way they did when I was thirteen and the world had already stolen too much. “Breathe. Then hunt.”

Hunt.

The word cuts through. Yes. I drag air into my lungs.