Author's POV
The morning light came thin and gray through the trees, filtering across the surface of the lake in pale ribbons.
Inside the cabin, Lina stood frozen, her back pressed against the wall, watching Andy Reese fill the doorway like a shadow that had learned to walk.
He didn't speak right away. He simply looked at her, the way a man might study a specimen pinned under glass, and Lina felt every hair on the back of her neck rise.
There was no lust in his gaze, no obsession, none of the twisted tenderness she'd learned to fear in his son. Just cold, patient calculation. The look of a predator who already knew he'd won and was simply deciding what to do with his kill.
"You've grown into yourself," Andy said at last. His voice was smooth, cultured, edged with a faint a
