His expression didn’t change. “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what we do.”
The fire crackled softly in the stone hearth. Leah sat wrapped in a knitted throw, the tea on her lap already cooling. Her fingers still held the mug, but she hadn’t taken a sip in a while.
She couldn’t stop staring at the flames. From the kitchen, Kyle asked in that low, steady voice if she needed anything. Leah shook her head, then remembered he couldn’t see her and answered out loud that she was fine. He came back carrying a plate of crackers and sliced apples and set it on the coffee table.
Then he sat down again, relaxed but alert, like a man used to reading people. Leah looked at him and managed the faintest smile. “You don’t have to babysit me,” she said. “I’m not about to roll back into the woods.”
Kyle’s face stayed neutral. He only said he didn’t like leaving people alone after shock.
She asked if that was training talking. He nodded and said partly, yes. The rest came from personal mistakes. Leah didn’t press. There was enough tension in the room already. Instead, she looked around and asked how long he’d been living there.
Kyle said he bought the place a few months ago after leaving the department.
“Left, or were you pushed?” Leah asked.
That got a small smile out of him—the first real one since the woods. He said she still had no patience for small talk.
Leah shrugged. “Some of us don’t have much use for polite fiction anymore.”
Something softened in his eyes. He said the official reasons were early retirement, burnout, and injury.
“What kind of injury?” Leah asked.
“Not the kind that shows up on an X-ray.”
She nodded slowly. She knew exactly what kind of pain he meant.
A long pause settled between them, broken only by the fire. At last Leah admitted she never thought she’d see him again.
Kyle looked up. “Small world. Especially out here.”
She gave a quiet laugh, surprising herself.
After a moment he added that she looked good—different, but good.
Leah raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
“You apologize less.”
The words landed deeper than she expected. Her throat tightened again.
She told him that for a long time she apologized for taking up space and needing help. She still needed help now, but she had stopped saying sorry for it. Kyle nodded, the corner of his mouth twitching as if he wanted to say more and thought better of it.
Leah took a slow breath and came back to the subject of the police, admitting she wasn’t sure it would do any good.
Kyle leaned forward slightly. “You think they won’t believe you?”
“Daniel knows how to perform,” she said. “He’s a polished attorney. He’ll twist it.”
She said he’d claim she wandered off, or had some kind of breakdown, and that she had no proof.
“You don’t need proof to make a report,” Kyle said. “You just need to speak.”
Leah studied him. “Do you believe me?”
“I didn’t carry you half a mile through mud and brush because I had doubts.”
Something warm moved through her chest. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to be believed right away, without suspicion or cross-examination.
Kyle went on. He agreed Daniel would lie, and move fast, and try to get his version of events out first. So they needed to move smart and fast too.
“We’re not letting this slide,” he said.
Leah watched him for a long moment, trying to understand why he was helping her this way after more than ten years.
Kyle tightened his jaw. He said he knew what it looked like when somebody lost themselves under another person’s control. “I’ve seen it before. Lived some of it too.” He didn’t elaborate, but the room went quieter.
And besides, he reminded her, she had been the only one in high school who stood up for him in the parking lot when his father was tearing into him.
“I was scared to death,” Leah said softly. “But you looked like you might disappear right there.”
Kyle told her he had never forgotten it.
The warmth she felt then was old and familiar. For a while they sat without speaking.
Eventually she picked up a cracker and took a bite, more to keep her hands busy than because she was hungry. Kyle checked the time and asked if there was anyone she wanted to call—an attorney, maybe, or a sister.
Leah said she didn’t have an attorney, and she hadn’t spoken to her brother in years.
He nodded. “Then we start with the truth. Tell me what happened after the accident.”
