Chapter 1
Dear Reader,
If you enjoy my books please vote for them in the Comfort Read: Cozy Romances 2025 competition
The bus smelled of stale cigarette smoke, disinfectant, and the damp wool of a hundred coats. To Sonam Kham, it was the scent of anonymity, and for the moment, that was all she desired. She sank into a cracked vinyl seat halfway down the aisle, its springs groaning in protest. The sigh that escaped her was not one of relief, but of exhaustion so profound it felt like a physical weight in her bones. It was the sound of a string pulled too tight finally snapping.
She did not know where the bus was going. She had chosen the 7:15 PM departure from the terminal on a whim, her eyes scanning the destination board not for a place, but for a time. The soonest leaving. The name—‘Cedar Falls’—meant nothing to her. It was a collection of syllables, a dot on a map she’d never seen. All that mattered was the motion, the putting of distance between her and the man with the quiet eyes.
He had been there for three days. A presence, at first peripheral, then insistently central. She’d seen him outside the modest brick building that housed both their small apartment and the smaller studio where the looms stood silent. He was just a man in a beige coat, leaning against a lamppost, seemingly engrossed in his phone. But the first time, a cold trickle of instinct had traced its way down her spine. The second time, outside the grocery store, he was examining apples with an intensity they did not deserve, his gaze flicking towards her as she passed. The third time, last night, he had been standing in the rain-slicked street, directly under her window, looking up. Not smoking, not waiting for anyone, just looking. And in that moment, Sonam was certain. He was going to kill her.
The bus engine rumbled to life, a vibration that travelled up through the floor and into her soul. She risked a glance out the grime-filmed window, half-expecting to see the beige coat materialize on the pavement, a calm, unstoppable figure. But there was only the tired-looking station attendant and a teenager with oversized headphones. The bus pulled away from the curb, and the city lights began to slide past, blurring into streaks of gold and white against the deepening twilight.
Away. She was getting away.
Her hands, resting in her lap, were trembling. She looked down at them. These were her mother’s hands. Long fingers, capable and strong, yet possessing a innate grace. Weaver’s hands. For centuries, the women in her family had possessed such hands. They had knotted carpets in the high, thin air of Tibet, their work telling stories of snow leopards and lotus flowers, of Buddhist deities and the endless, wind-scoured plains. Her parents, Pema and Tenzin Kham, had carried that legacy with them when they fled, not as refugees of poverty, but as custodians of an art. They came to America to start a company, ‘Kham Carpets,’ to sell not just rugs, but heirlooms, each one a tapestry of their history.
And for a long while, it had worked. Their small studio became a haven, filled with the earthy scent of raw wool and the rhythmic, meditative clack-clack of the looms. Sonam had grown up amidst a forest of colored threads, learning the language of the knots before she could properly read English. Her mother’s voice, soft as the pashmina they sometimes used, would guide her. “Each knot is a prayer. A moment of intention. The pattern is not just a design; it is a map of the soul who wove it.”
Six months. It had only been six months since the map of her own soul had been torn to shreds. A slick road, a late-night drive back from delivering a custom order, a truck that had crossed the median. The police officer who came to her door had used words like “instantaneous” and “no suffering,” but they were empty sounds. The loss was a void, a silence in the studio that was louder than any loom. The grief was a knot she could not untie, a tangled mess of sorrow and anger and a loneliness so vast it terrified her.
She was alone now. Twenty-four years old, the last of the Kham weavers in this foreign land, surrounded by the silent, accusing looms and half-finished carpets that held the ghostly imprint of her parents’ hands.
The bus lurched around a corner, jolting her back to the present. They were on a highway now, the city receding into a distant constellation. Darkness pressed against the windows. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass, watching her own pale reflection superimpose itself on the rushing blackness. Was the man connected to her parents? To the business? It seemed absurd. They were weavers, artists. They had no enemies. Their lives were one of quiet dedication, not intrigue.
Yet, the fear was a cold, sharp stone in her gut. It felt ancient, inherited, as if the persecution their ancestors had fled had finally tracked them across the ocean, patient and dogged. The fear that had made her run. A persistent voice deep inside saying............RUN......NOW
An hour passed. The bus made few stops, disgorging passengers into the night in small, anonymous towns. Soon, there were only a handful of people left. An old man snoring softly a few rows ahead. A woman with a brightly colored knitted hat, staring resolutely ahead. The driver, a silhouette against the dashboard lights.
Sonam’s eyelids grew heavy, the adrenaline that had fueled her flight finally ebbing, leaving behind a numb fatigue. She slipped in and out of a fitful doze, her dreams a chaotic collage of running through endless corridors hung with unfinished carpets, the face of the man in the beige coat appearing in the patterns, and the sound of her mother’s voice, urgent and warning, though the words were lost.
She was jolted awake by the bus slowing drastically. They weren’t at a station. They were pulling off the highway onto a narrow, poorly lit service road, heading towards a lone, dilapidated gas station that looked like it had been abandoned for a decade. A sign, bleached by sun and rust, swung creakily in the wind. The bus’s interior lights flickered on.
“Ten-minute rest stop, folks,” the driver announced over the intercom, his voice crackling with static. “Bathroom break if you need it.”
This was not on the schedule. A cold dread seized Sonam. Was this a trap? Had the driver been paid? Her eyes darted to the other passengers. The old man stirred, grumbling. The woman in the knitted hat gathered her purse. It seemed normal. But the fear, once awakened, was a predator in its own right.
She had to get off. To move. To not be a sitting target. She stood, her legs unsteady, and made her way down the aisle. The night air that hit her as the door hissed open was cold and clean, scented with pine and damp earth. It was a shock after the bus’s stale atmosphere. She hurried towards the gas station, her sneakers crunching on the gravel. The building was dark, the bathrooms around the back marked by broken doors. It was utterly deserted.
She used the foul-smelling bathroom quickly, her heart hammering against her ribs. When she emerged, the bus stood alone under a single flickering sodium light, a giant, sleeping insect. The other passengers were still inside. And then she saw it.
