For the first time in a long time, Dakota didn’t feel like a ghost haunting her own life.

She parked the Ranger at the edge of Millbrook’s main street, killed the engine, and listened. Crickets. A dog barking somewhere distant. A screen door slapping shut.

Not from the law, or a bad marriage, or the debts she’d left scattered across three states like breadcrumbs for a bird that had long since given up. She was running from the quiet. The kind that settles into a small town after dark, the kind that makes you hear your own heartbeat like a guilty verdict.