The engine of the old Ford pickup rumbled to life, a guttural cough in the suffocating silence of the evening. Cole sat behind the wheel, his hands clenched so tightly the worn leather was a slick, sweaty second skin.
He hadn’t packed. There was nothing to pack.
The few worn clothes he’d brought were a costume, and the man he had pretended to be was a ghost. All that was real was the hollowed-out ache in his chest where Maya’s trust used to be.
He looked at the main lodge one last time, a silhouette against the bruised purple of the twilight sky, and felt the bitter irony. He had come here to assess a property and had ended up losing a part of himself.
He was about to shift the truck into reverse when a frantic pounding on the passenger-side window made him jump. It was Maya.
Her face was a mask of sheer panic, her eyes wide, the fury from their confrontation swallowed by a new, more primal fear.
He killed the engine and threw the door open. “Maya? What is it?”
She didn’t waste time with accusations or recriminations. The words spilled out of her, raw and ragged.
“The workshop. Ben saw it. There’s a fire.”
The world narrowed to those two words. A fire.
He saw it in his mind instantly: the old, tinder-dry wooden structure, the cans of paint thinner and oil, and worst of all, its proximity to the main propane storage tanks. This wasn’t sabotage anymore.
This was annihilation.
“The tanks,” was all he said.
She nodded, her breath coming in shallow pants. “Jed.”
The name hung between them, a confirmation of the evil they had both underestimated. Cole vaulted from the truck, his mind already calculating, assessing, shifting from heartbroken exile to tactical problem-solver.
The betrayal still throbbed between them, an open wound, but the flames licking at the heart of Whispering Pines were a more immediate threat.
Without another word, they ran.
Their strides fell into a familiar rhythm, a grim echo of the partnership they’d forged in crisis. Side-by-side, they raced down the gravel path, the smell of woodsmoke growing thick and acrid in the air.
Cole’s mind was a flurry of logistics—water sources, wind direction, points of entry. Maya’s thoughts were a chaotic prayer, a desperate plea to the universe not to let this be the end.
Not like this. Please, not like this.
She hated that she was running alongside him, hated that his presence was the only thing keeping the terror from completely overwhelming her. But as she watched him run, his body coiled with purpose, she saw the man she’d come to rely on.
The competent, steady presence that had pulled her through every other disaster. Cal. Cole.
It didn’t matter. He was the only one who could help her now.
They rounded the bend, and the sight stole the breath from her lungs. An angry orange glow pulsed from within the workshop, silhouetting the towering pines against a flickering, hellish light.
Smoke billowed from the roof, a thick, black plume climbing into the darkening sky. The crackle of burning wood was a hungry, living sound.
“The main hose is on the east wall of the lodge,” Maya gasped, pointing. “There’s a hydrant by the kitchens.”
Cole didn’t reply. He was already veering off, his eyes scanning the scene.
“No time. The fire’s too close to the door. We need extinguishers first, clear a path to the source.”
He pointed to the emergency station mounted on a post halfway between the workshop and the lodge.
“Get those. I’ll try to get inside.”
“It’s too dangerous!”
He finally looked at her then, his eyes boring into hers. In their depths, she saw not the calculating billionaire from the photograph, but a man making a stand.
“He’s trying to blow the tanks, Maya. If we don’t stop it now, there won’t be a lodge left to save.”
His words, stark and brutal, galvanized her. While he sprinted toward the workshop, she ran to the emergency station, her fingers fumbling with the latch on the metal box.
She pulled out two heavy red extinguishers, their weight a strange comfort in her trembling hands.
Cole reached the workshop door and kicked it open, a wave of heat and smoke washing over him. He dropped low, his eyes stinging, and saw the source.
Jed had piled oily rags and doused them with accelerant near a stack of dry lumber, creating a furnace in the center of the room. The flames were already climbing the walls, inching toward shelves laden with flammable chemicals.
And there, in the far corner, a shadowy figure was struggling with something against the wall. It was Jed, trying to wrench open a valve on a secondary gas line that fed the workshop’s heating system.
“Jed!” Cole roared, his voice cutting through the roar of the fire.
Jed spun around, his face illuminated by the flames, twisted into a snarl of manic desperation. He was no longer the charming guide; he was a cornered animal.
“Sterling! You should have stayed away!”
Just then, Maya appeared at the doorway, one of the extinguishers raised. “Cole!”
“Stay back!” he yelled, but it was too late.
Jed abandoned the valve and lunged for a heavy iron crowbar leaning against the wall. He raised it, his eyes wild. “This all ends tonight!”
Cole didn’t hesitate. He charged forward, tackling Jed around the waist just as the crowbar came swinging down.
They crashed to the floor, a tangle of limbs amidst the smoke and spreading fire. The crowbar clattered away.
Cole landed a solid punch, but Jed was fueled by a frenzied adrenaline. He thrashed and clawed, trying to throw Cole off.
Maya saw her opening. With a scream of pure rage, she pulled the pin on the extinguisher and unleashed a thick, white cloud of chemical foam, aiming for the base of the fire.
The roar of the flames subsided to an angry hiss. She emptied the first canister, then grabbed the second, her movements precise and efficient, dousing the burning lumber and the threatening shelves.
The smoke was choking, but the immediate threat was lessened. Cole used the distraction to gain the upper hand, pinning Jed to the floor just as a familiar, weathered figure appeared in the doorway, wielding a large fire axe.
It was Ben.
“I called the sheriff,” Ben yelled, his voice a gravelly boom.
“They’re on their way.” He took in the scene—Cole holding down a struggling Jed, Maya standing amidst the smoldering mess, her face smeared with soot.
The wail of a siren grew louder, cutting through the night. The fight went out of Jed. Defeated, he slumped beneath Cole’s weight, muttering curses.
Cole dragged him to his feet just as two deputies stormed into the workshop, weapons drawn. Ben pointed a trembling finger.
“That’s him. He’s the one.”
The world became a blur of flashing red and blue lights, of orders being shouted, of Jed being cuffed and read his rights. His face was a mask of impotent fury as they led him away, his final, desperate act of destruction thwarted.
And then, silence.
The adrenaline drained away, leaving a bone-deep exhaustion in its place. Cole and Maya stood in the center of the ravaged workshop.
The air was thick with the stench of wet ash, chemicals, and smoke. Water dripped from the scorched ceiling, hissing on the hot metal of a workbench.
The flashing lights of the sheriff’s car pulsed through the open doorway, bathing them in alternating strobes of red and blue.
They were both soaked, filthy, and breathing heavily. Cole had a cut on his cheekbone, a thin line of blood he didn’t seem to notice.
Maya’s hair was matted with foam, her hands black with soot. For a long moment, they didn’t speak.
Their actions had said everything. He had protected her home.
She had trusted him to do it.
Finally, she looked up, her gaze meeting his across the few feet that separated them. The anger was gone from her eyes, replaced by a devastating, hollow ache.
The fire was out, but the ruins of their trust lay smoldering between them.
She saw him then. Not Cal, the simple handyman who had fixed her water heater and made her laugh.
Not Cole Sterling, the calculating billionaire who had deceived her. She saw the man who had just charged into a burning building for her.
The man who had faced down their enemy without a moment’s hesitation. The raw truth of their situation was exposed in that single, silent gaze.
He had lied about who he was, but he had never lied about what he was willing to do for her and for this place.
“Cole,” she whispered, the name feeling foreign and heavy on her tongue.
He took a half-step toward her, his expression stripped of all pretense, revealing a vulnerability that mirrored her own. “Maya,” he said, his voice raw. “I…”
He didn’t finish. There were no words that could bridge the chasm his lies had created.
There was only the quiet hum of the emergency vehicles, the drip of water on ash, and the two of them, standing together in the wreckage, finally facing the impossible truth of who they were.