Chapter 4: Sunstone Ridge

The transmitter had been dead since Wyatt pulled its battery, and I still woke up listening for it.

Shea had heard everything until that moment: the clinic, the lobby, the word "motel."

She had not heard which one, because I had picked it after the battery came out.

The motel on the edge of town had one working lamp and a door that stuck.

I slept eleven hours with the dead wire in my fist and the sun jacket folded under my head.

A text from Wyatt was waiting when I woke up.

"Eat something. Real food. Don't use your own phone for the ride."

I ate a gas station breakfast burrito on the curb and ordered a ride to Sunstone Ridge on the motel clerk's phone.

Shea knew I would go to the ceremony site eventually, so I wanted to get there first.

In daylight, without Shea's camera in my face, I could see why I had picked it.

The ceremony site was a flat shelf of red stone with a drop on one side and nothing behind it but sky.

I had cried the first time I stood on it.

The coordinator met me at the gate with a tablet against her chest.

She was a brisk woman in her forties with a lanyard and a nervous smile.

Her eyes went to the clinic bracelet still on my wrist.

"Ms. Tressler. We saw Shea's post. I'm so sorry. Are you all right?"

"I need to see the contract and every email about Saturday," I said. "Today, before Shea knows I asked."

Her smile slipped. "That's an unusual request."

"It's my wedding. And my name is the only one on the booking."

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