Chapter 9
Chapter nine
Mac
And Eamon had been two hours away.
I sat by the living room window and stared into the gray. Fog turned the familiar street strange, dark, and foreboding.
My phone buzzed. Not a text—just the security app refreshing. All clear. All quiet. All wrong.
Then: headlights.
They cut through the fog like a promise, growing brighter, resolving into the shape of Eamon's rental truck. I was out the door in seconds.
The driveway was slick under my feet, the cold cutting through my sweatpants. I should have grabbed shoes. Should have kept some dignity and let him come to the door while I played it cool.
Fuck cool.
The truck stopped, and Eamon climbed out, moving like a man who'd driven straight through the night without stopping. He saw me and stopped.
We stood there in the fog, ten feet of driveway between us.
"You made it back," I said. Stupidly. Obviously.
"Always."
The word landed in my chest and stayed there. Always. Like it was that simple.
I closed the distance and reached for his hand. My fingers touched his in the cold morning, skin on skin.
Eamon's hand was warm. Solid. Real. His fingers closed around mine and held on.
"Let him breathe, Mac."
Marcus's voice came from the porch, dry and amused and completely unsurprised to find me out in the fog, holding hands with my bodyguard like some Victorian novel heroine.
I didn't let go.
Eamon's thumb brushed across my knuckles—once, slow and intentional—before he released me. "Marcus."
"Eamon." Marcus came down the steps. "We need to talk about last night."
"I know." Eamon's jaw ticked. He was furious. At himself, probably. For not being here when someone had tested Ma's door. His job was keeping me safe, and he'd been at Michael's instead.
The front door opened, and Ma appeared, small and fierce in her bathrobe. "Inside. All of you. Food first, talking second. You look like death on toast, Eamon Price, and Mac's been waiting up being ridiculous. Everyone inside. Now."
She didn't wait to see if we'd obey. Ma didn't wait for anything.
I looked at Eamon. Found him already looking back at me.
"Come on," I said quietly. "You know she means it."
The kitchen smelled like fresh-brewed coffee and something baking—Ma's nervous cooking reflex. Marcus had his laptop open, security footage queued up.
Eamon sat across from me, both hands wrapped around the mug Ma had shoved at him. He stared at the laptop screen.
"Ready?" Marcus asked.
Eamon nodded once.
Marcus clicked play.
The timestamp read 3:07 AM. A figure appeared at the side gate—dark hoodie, face hidden in shadow. They moved with careful deliberation. Not rushed. Not afraid of being seen.
My stomach dropped.
This was her. The person who'd bumped into me at Pike Place. Who'd been documenting me for eighteen months. Who'd touched me.
She tested the gate latch. Found it locked. Moved along the fence line, checking, assessing. Methodical. Patient.
"She's casing the house," Eamon said quietly. "Looking for weaknesses."
The figure disappeared around the corner. Marcus clicked to the next camera angle—back door, 3:14 AM. She returned. Reached for the door handle.
Tested it once.
Twice.
The methodical patience was somehow worse than violence would have been. She wasn't frantic or desperate. She was systematic. Professional.
She knew Ma was inside. Knew I was sleeping upstairs. Came anyway.
My throat closed. I couldn't look away from her hands on Ma's door—the same hands that had touched me in a crowd, that held a camera to document my "deterioration," and had been analyzing me like a specimen for a year and a half.
The figure paused. Head tilted slightly, listening. Then she moved off-screen. Gone.
Like a ghost.
Except ghosts didn't leave scratches on locks.
"Play it again," Eamon said.
"Eamon—" Marcus started.
"Again."
We watched three more times. Each replay made my skin crawl worse. By the fourth viewing, I had to stand up, walk to the sink, and grip the edge until my knuckles went white.
Eamon stepped up beside me. Close but not touching. "You okay?"
"She was right there." My voice came out rough. "Ten feet from where Ma was sleeping. Twenty feet from where I was."
"I know."
"If she'd gotten in—"
"She didn't." He touched the small of my back—steadying pressure. "Marcus scared her off. New locks go in today. Cameras. Sensors. She won't get that close again."
I wanted to believe him.
Behind us, Marcus's phone rang. He answered, voice dropping into professional tones, then: "Mac, it's Michael."
I crossed to take the phone. "Yeah?"
"Found her." Michael's voice was tight with satisfaction.
"Vanessa Kensington. Thirty-four, former registrar at the Seattle Art Museum.
Got let go two years ago after an incident involving a loaned painting.
No criminal record, but she filed a wrongful termination suit that went nowhere.
Alex is digging deeper, but Mac—she's real. There's a face now."
My chest loosened slightly. A name. A face. Something concrete instead of shadows and fog.
"Send me everything," I said.
"Already in your email. Eamon too. We've got her employee photo from the museum, her employment records, and her last known address. I'm sending it to local cops, harbor patrol, anyone who needs to know."
"Thanks, Michael."
"We're going to find her. Before she tries this again."
I ended the call and pulled up my email. The photo loaded slowly.
Vanessa Kensington. Straight dark hair. Pleasant features. Professional smile for the camera. Completely unremarkable. The kind of face you'd see in a grocery store and forget immediately.
She'd been outside Ma's door five hours ago.
I stared at the photo until the stranger's face started to feel familiar. Started to imagine seeing it in crowds, in cars, in windows.
"That's her?" Eamon's voice came from over my shoulder.
I showed him the screen. "Vanessa Kensington. Museum registrar. Conservation background."
His jaw ticked. "I should have seen her face. At Pike Place. When she—"
"You couldn't have known." I turned to face him. "None of us knew what she looked like."
"That's not good enough." He took my phone, studied the photo with professional focus. Memorizing every detail. "Conservation background. It tracks with the language. The clinical assessment. She's applying conservation vocabulary to—"
"To me. She thinks I'm something that needs to be preserved."
"Not anymore." He forwarded the photo somewhere—police contacts, probably. His network of people who could actually help. "Now she has a face. Now everyone who needs to know her is looking for her."
I just stood there staring at my phone. At the woman who thought I was deteriorating. Who'd stood at Ma's door with lock picks and patience.
Who looked like absolutely nothing.
That was what made it terrifying. She could be anyone. Anywhere.
Marcus cleared his throat. "Contractors arrive in an hour. We'll have this place completely locked down by tonight."
Eamon nodded, already shifting into professional mode. "I want cameras on every entrance. Motion sensors on windows. Deadbolts that no one can pick."
"Already ordered."
"And I need to walk the property. Check sight lines, access points—"
"You need to eat something first," Ma said from the doorway. None of us had heard her come in. "Both of you. Before you pass out from running on spite and coffee."
Eamon opened his mouth to argue.
"Eat," Ma said. It wasn't a request.
We ate.
The security installation took all day.
I tried to help around eight—held a level for one of the contractors while he drilled camera mounts into Ma's siding. My hands shook, and the bubble drifted. The drill bit went in crooked.
"Sorry," I said. "I can—"
"It's fine." He was already filling the bad hole with wood putty. "Just stay back a bit. Let me get this squared away."
I stepped back. Tried not to feel useless.
Eamon appeared, said something quiet to the contractor, then touched my elbow. "Come here a second."
I followed him away from the noise.
"You don't have to help," he said.
"I should be—"
"Staying out of the way so we can work." It wasn't unkind. It was honest. "This is what I'm good at, Mac. Let me do it."
"And what am I good at? Standing around while everyone else protects me?"
"You're good at staying alive." His voice dropped. "That's the job. Mine is keeping you that way. Yours is letting me."
I didn't have an answer for that.
By noon, the house was crawling with people, and Ma's kitchen had become a staging area for cables, brackets, and power tools. I stayed out of the way. Watched Eamon work—directing contractors, checking equipment, transforming Ma's home into something defensible.
He was good at it. Competent and calm, the person you'd want between you and danger.
He'd stripped down to a henley sometime around eleven, sleeves pushed up, forearms showing. I let myself look. Let myself want. After everything—after the fog reunion and his thumb on my knuckles and the way he'd said "always"—I was done pretending I didn't.
Around one, my mother, Claire, arrived.
She moved through the chaos like water around stones and found me in the living room watching Marcus program camera feeds. She pressed a mug of tea into my hands.
It was Genmaicha. Roasted rice and green tea. The smell of childhood.
We sat on Ma's couch while contractors drilled and hammered around us.
"I put everyone in danger," I said finally. "Ma. You. The whole family."
"You brought someone dangerous into our orbit," she corrected. "That's not the same thing as creating the danger."
I turned the mug in my hands, feeling the warmth seep through the ceramic. It was one of hers—thrown and glazed in her studio, slightly lopsided, lovely. "Feels the same."