Chapter 1
The blacktop ended three miles back.
Ivy Mae Bennett noticed the exact moment asphalt surrendered to dirt—the way her Honda Civic shuddered over the transition like a body crossing into cold water, the steering wheel jerking in her hands as gravel pinged against the undercarriage. The GPS on her phone had gone dark two turns ago, the little blue dot spinning uselessly before disappearing altogether, leaving her with nothing but a blank screen and the sinking certainty that she’d driven beyond the reach of satellites and cell towers and anything resembling civilization.
Now there was only the narrow road climbing into the Appalachian mountains, hemmed in by trees so thick they swallowed the afternoon sun whole.
She should turn around.
The thought arrived calm and certain, the way her mother’s voice used to cut through Sunday dinner conversation. A lady knows when she’s gone too far, Ivy Mae. A lady knows when to retreat with grace.
But Ivy’s hands stayed steady on the wheel, knuckles white against the black leather, and she kept driving.
Behind her, folded in the trunk beneath two suitcases and a box of her grandmother’s china—the only things she’d managed to take when she left Charleston in the dead of night—was everything that remained of her old life. In front of her was a town she’d found on a map at a rest stop in North Carolina, circled in blue pen because the name sounded like something from a fairy tale, like a place where broken things could hide and heal.
Black Briar Hollow.
The kind of place nobody looked for you. The kind of place that swallowed people whole and kept their secrets buried in mountain dirt.
The road curved sharply, and Ivy eased off the gas, her heart hammering against her ribs. Through the windshield, the forest pressed close—oak and pine and something else she couldn’t name, their branches tangled overhead like clasped hands or grasping fingers. The canopy was so dense that the light filtering through came green and strange, turning everything the color of deep water. Kudzu crawled up telephone poles that leaned at drunken angles, the vines so thick they looked like they were strangling the wood. Wildflowers she didn’t recognize bloomed in violent purple clusters along the roadside, beautiful and somehow threatening, their petals the color of fresh bruises.
The air that seeped through her car’s vents was different here. Heavier. It smelled like pine sap and wet earth and something darker underneath—decay, maybe, or just the accumulated weight of too many years, too many secrets rotting in the soil.
This was nothing like Charleston.
Charleston was wrought-iron gates and historic homes with brass plaques. Garden parties where women wore pearls and smiled with their mouths closed, their voices soft and their judgments sharp. Church every Sunday in the same pew her family had occupied for four generations, her mother’s hand on her wrist—gentle and unyielding, a velvet manacle. Sit up straight, darling. People are watching.
People were always watching.
Especially Preston.
Ivy’s hands tightened on the wheel until her fingers ached. She wouldn’t think about Preston. Not his smile that never reached his eyes, cold and calculating even when he was pretending warmth. Not the way his fingers had bruised her arms when she’d tried to leave the first time, his grip so tight she’d felt the bones grind together. Not the sound of his voice on the phone three days ago, soft and poisonous as oleander: You can’t hide from me, Ivy. I’ll find you wherever you go. You’re mine. You’ll always be mine.
The Honda’s engine coughed.
Ivy’s stomach dropped like a stone. “No. No, no, no—”
The car shuddered again, harder this time, the whole frame rattling. The steering wheel jerked under her hands. She managed to guide the vehicle to the side of the road—barely, the tires skidding on loose gravel—before the engine died completely, leaving her in sudden, shocking silence.
For a long moment, Ivy just sat there, hands still gripping the wheel, staring at the dashboard like it might offer answers.
Then she pressed her forehead against the steering wheel and laughed—a sharp, slightly hysterical sound that echoed in the car’s interior and sounded nothing like her mother’s carefully modulated tones. Of course. Of course her car would die here, in the middle of nowhere, on a road that probably didn’t even have a name, miles from anything resembling help.
She’d driven eight hours to disappear, and now she was stranded.
Perfect.
Ivy took a breath. Then another. Her mama’s voice again, cool and controlled even in memory: A lady never panics, Ivy Mae. She assesses the situation and makes a plan.
Right. Assess and plan.
She was maybe five miles from Black Briar Hollow proper, according to the last road sign she’d passed—weathered wood with hand-painted letters, half-obscured by kudzu. The sun was starting to sink behind the mountains, painting the sky in shades of orange and gold that would’ve been beautiful if they weren’t also a countdown to darkness. Her phone had one bar of service—flickering, uncertain—and twelve percent battery.
And she was alone on a mountain road in a town where she didn’t know a single soul.
Ivy grabbed her phone and climbed out of the car.
The heat hit her first—thick and wet and suffocating, nothing like Charleston’s coastal humidity. This was mountain heat, heavy with the smell of pine sap and wild earth and something darker underneath. Something old and patient and watching. The forest around her was alive with sound: insects singing in the underbrush, their chorus rising and falling like breathing; birds calling from hidden branches, their cries sharp and somehow mocking; the distant rush of water over stone, constant and indifferent.
And underneath it all, so faint she almost missed it—dogs barking.
A lot of dogs.
Not the friendly yapping of house pets. These were deep, aggressive sounds that echoed through the trees and made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Guard dogs. Attack dogs. The kind of dogs that weren’t kept as companions but as weapons.
Ivy turned slowly, trying to pinpoint the direction. The barking came from somewhere up the mountain, echoing through the trees in a way that made it impossible to judge distance. It could be a mile away. It could be just beyond the tree line.
A chill ran down her spine despite the heat.
She looked down at her phone. Still one bar, flickering like a dying heartbeat. She pulled up the contact for roadside assistance and waited while it rang. And rang. And rang.
“Come on,” she whispered, her voice too loud in the heavy silence.
The call dropped.
Ivy tried again. Same result. She was about to try a third time when she heard an engine approaching from the direction she’d come—a deep, rumbling sound that spoke of age and hard use. Relief flooded through her so fast it made her dizzy, made her knees weak. She stepped closer to the road, shading her eyes against the slanting sunlight.
A pickup truck rounded the curve—old, rust-spotted, with a Confederate flag bumper sticker and a gun rack in the back. She raised her hand in a tentative wave, trying to look helpless and harmless and worth stopping for.
The truck slowed, then stopped, the engine idling rough. The driver’s window rolled down with a grinding sound, revealing a man who looked to be in his sixties, weathered and lean as jerky, with a gray beard and suspicious eyes that assessed her with the cold calculation of someone who’d learned not to trust strangers.
“Car trouble?” His accent was pure Appalachian, vowels stretched long and lazy, consonants soft as worn leather.
“Yes, sir.” Ivy automatically slipped into her sweetest voice, the one she’d perfected at a thousand church socials and garden parties, the one that made men feel protective and women feel superior. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but my engine just died. I don’t suppose you know a mechanic nearby?”
The man studied her for a long moment. His gaze traveled from her face—carefully made up, even after eight hours of driving—to her sundress and sandals, to her pearl earrings, to her car—still clean despite the dirt road, obviously not from around here, obviously expensive. She watched him catalog every detail, watched him place her in some mental file marked outsider or trouble or doesn’t belong.
“You lost?” It wasn’t really a question.
“Not lost exactly. I’m heading to Black Briar Hollow.”
Something shifted in his expression—not quite alarm, but close. His eyes narrowed. “What business you got in the Hollow?”
