Chapter 17 · Park Edge

His hand closes around my wrist before I even see him coming.

"Let go of me," I say, yanking back, but he doesn't. Cade Vane never lets go of anything he's already decided is his.

"Where's Maya." Not a question. His eyes are already scanning the playground behind me, jaw tight, like I'd hide her in a sandbox.

"On the swings. Where she's supposed to be. Where normal five-year-olds are on a Tuesday." I pull my arm free and step between him and the fence. "You don't get to grab me in a public park, Cade."

"I don't get to." He laughs, short and ugly. "That's rich, coming from the woman who's been running my daughter's name off the internet since six a.m."

That stops me cold. "What."

He holds up his phone. Doesn't hand it over. Just tips the screen toward me, close enough that I can smell the cedar and cold air on his coat, close enough that if I leaned an inch I'd be against his chest instead of his phone. I don't lean. I look.

It's a photo. Maya, at her school gate, backpack half off one shoulder, laughing at something off-camera.