Chapter 7 #2
“Time of year. Location. Victim age range, from what Brady said. And there’s the fact that Henry showed up at my window the same night a body turned up at the Falls.
” She chews her lower lip. “He’s not subtle.
That’s his whole thing. He likes the anxiety.
The speculation. He likes watching people scramble. ”
She looks at me then, eyes darker than they were an hour ago.
“He came to tell me he’s playing again,” she says quietly. “He wanted me to know.”
My hands curl on my knees. “Then we make sure he regrets the invitation.”
A flicker of something almost like satisfaction crosses her face.
“That’s the spirit, Tiny Tim,” she says.
“Please don’t call me Tiny Tim.”
“Not you.” She waves a hand at the laptop. “Him. Our serial killer. You’re more…Big Tim.”
“Terrible,” I say.
“You’re welcome.”
We spend the next two hours establishing what I mentally file under “rules” and she files under “tyranny.”
Rule one. She doesn’t go anywhere alone. Not the coffee shop, not the sheriff’s office, not Karla’s, not the stupid storage unit she insists she needs to visit “sometime this week, maybe, no rush.”
Rule two. We route her camera alerts to my phone and to Jack’s. She grumbles but doesn’t fight it as hard as I expected once I show her how to encrypt the pipeline.
Rule three. When we go out, she listens to me. Period. If I say move, she moves.
“Do I get a safe word?” she asks.
“This isn’t a kink negotiation,” I say.
“You say that like you’ve never read Fifty Shades,” she mutters.
I pretend I don’t hear that.
By mid-morning, the apartment has started to feel too small again. Tallulah’s attention starts to flicker, her leg bouncing hard enough to shake the coffee table.
“You’re going to rattle the screws loose,” I say.
“That would be a gift from God,” she says. “This table came from Goodwill in nineteen-seventy-eight, and it knows it.”
“I meant the screws in your brain, but still,” I say, “you need air.”
“I have air.” She gestures vaguely. “It’s right there. In the…atmosphere.”
“Outside,” I clarify. “Sunlight. Movement. You told Cotton she could come over. I heard you.”
She glares. “You eavesdrop now?”
“You text loud,” I say. “Get your boots. We’re going for a walk to Karla’s. Ten minutes out, ten back. We’ll sit by the window, you can watch people be stupid about powdered sugar.”
“That’s very judgey for someone who probably drinks protein shakes out of a blender bottle,” she says.
“I like donuts just fine,” I say, voice mild.
She stares. “You like donuts.”
“Yes.”
“You, Bran Kelly, Kael’s personal wrecking ball, like donuts.”
“Do we need to have a dissertation about macronutrients,” I ask, “or are you going to put on your coat?”
She mutters something that sounds like “bulky sugar goblin” under her breath, but she gets her coat.
The street outside is busier than it was at dawn. Lucy Falls comes alive in layers—first the locals who have actual jobs, then the tourists who think a small town with a waterfall is an aesthetic, not a place where people live.
Karla’s shop sits on the corner like it’s always been there: big front windows fogged at the edges, neon donut sign already lit even though it’s barely ten. The smell hits us half a block away—sugar, yeast, hot oil, coffee.
“Stay close,” I say out of reflex.
“Where else am I going to go?” Tallulah asks. “I have the stride length of a hobbit.”
She walks fast for someone small, but it still takes fewer strides for me to keep up. I’m acutely aware of how visible we are. Big guy, tiny woman, both tense in different ways.
Inside, Karla’s is noise and warmth. People are stacked three deep at the counter. Toddlers on sugar highs bounce in the line. Someone’s baby is crying. The radio plays something country, and I have to fight the urge to put my back to a wall.
Tallulah stiffens almost imperceptibly beside me, shoulders creeping toward her ears. Too much sound. Too many bodies. Too many moving parts.
“You okay?” I murmur.
“I’m fantastic,” she says through clenched teeth. “I love small talk and being breathed on by strangers.”
“You want to bounce?” I ask. “We can go back. I’ll bribe you with eggs at home.”
“Ew,” she says automatically. “No. We’re here. I’m fine.”
Her tells get louder the longer we stand in the crush. She fiddles with the zipper on her hoodie. Rakes her fingers through her hair. Rapid eye movements, then hyperfocus on one point on the menu like if she looks away, she’ll fall.
“Hey!” a voice calls from behind the counter. “Twiggy! Who is that fine hunk of man you have with you? I was beginning to think it was never gonna happen.”
Karla herself, retro apron and pink hair, waves a flour-dusted hand. Behind her, a conveyor belt of donuts glistens under the lights.
Tallulah lifts a hand. “Hey. We’re—uh—”
“Bran,” I say, saving her a stammer.
Karla’s gaze flicks to me. Her eyebrows go up a notch. She gives Twiggy the kind of look that says she’s mentally updating a group chat.
“New boyfriend?” she asks.
Twiggy makes a noise like a balloon losing air. “Bodyguard.”
Karla’s smile doesn’t dim. “Mmm-hmm. You want your usual?”
“Yeah,” Twiggy says. “Two maple long johns, one chocolate sprinkle, one plain glazed, and whatever Bran wants.”
I open my mouth to say one glazed is fine. Then I catch the way she’s standing—stiff, jaw set, eyes too bright.
She needs this. The normalcy. The ritual.
“Half a dozen,” I hear myself say. “Whatever’s fresh. And a large coffee.”
“Make it two,” she adds.
Karla eyes me for another second, then nods. “You got it. Go grab a table. I’ll bring it over when it’s ready.”
We weave through the crush to a small two-top near the window. I take the chair that gives me line of sight on the door. Twiggy slides into the other one and immediately pulls her feet up, knees to her chest, like she’s trying to make herself smaller.
“How many exit routes do you see?” I ask, partly to keep her brain occupied.
She glances around. “Back door by the bathrooms to the alley. Front door. Window if we really want to make a statement. The kitchen’s probably a maze. And there’s a fire exit in the back right corner. You can see the sign through the doorway.”
“Good,” I say.
“I hate that this is a pop quiz,” she mutters.
“Welcome to my head,” I say.
Karla brings the donuts and coffee over a minute later. Twiggy’s shoulders loosen a fraction as soon as the plate hits the table. Sugar therapy.
“So,” Twiggy says after her first bite, powdered sugar dusting her upper lip. “Let’s set expectations.”
“About?” I ask.
“You watching me,” she says. “How much you watch. Where you watch. What you do when you’re not glowering in my living room and judging my snack choices.”
“I don’t glower,” I say. “That’s just my face.”
“It’s a very intense face,” she says. “Especially for a guy who allegedly likes donuts.”
She licks sugar off her thumb. My brain notes the gesture before I can tell it not to.
“Expectations,” I say, forcing myself back on track. “Okay. You sleep at your place. I sleep at mine.”
“Good start,” she says.
“I’ll be in or near your building when you’re home,” I continue. “In your apartment if Jack or I deem there’s an immediate threat. Outside if it’s quiet. I’ll have a room down the block by tonight.”
“Don’t you have, like…” She waves her hands. “Other crime to do? People to kneecap? This can’t be your whole docket.”
“It is for now,” I say.
“That seems like a waste of your skillset,” she says.
“Keeping you alive is my skillset,” I say. “Every other job is just practice.”
Her throat bobs as she swallows. She looks away, out the window, where frost still clings to the cars at the curb.
“You talk like you’ve done this a lot,” she says.
“Job like mine?” I shrug. “Some version of this, yeah.”
“You ever screw it up?” she asks. The question is casual. The way she grips her coffee cup isn’t.
I consider lying.
“Yes,” I say.
She looks back at me. Really looks. “They die?”
“Yeah.”
“How long ago?”
“Long enough that I should be over it,” I say. “And not long enough that I am.”
She nods slowly, like that makes sense in the equation she’s building.
“Okay,” she says.
“That’s it?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She takes another bite, chews, swallows. “You know what it feels like to be the one left. You also know what it feels like to be the one who didn’t stop it. That’s…useful data.”
“Useful,” I echo.
“In the sense that you’re not going to treat me like a job with legs,” she says. “Because if I die, it won’t just be a mark on a report.”
I swallow before I answer. “You’re not just a mark, Tally.”
Her eyelashes flutter over her cheeks as she looks down.
Karla drops a coffee refill off without being asked. Outside, a couple with a toddler in a puffy red coat walk past, the kid’s hand sticky with glaze. The town looks deceptively normal.
“This feels wrong,” she says suddenly.
“What does?”
“Being here,” she says. “Eating donuts. Making small talk. Like Henry didn’t just knock on my life and say ‘I’m back, bitch.’”
“That’s why we do it,” I say. “You can’t live in defcon one forever. You burn out. You make mistakes. Then guys like him win.”
She squints at me. “You’re not supposed to be insightful, you know.”
“Came free with the blunt instrument package,” I say.
She snorts.
A notification buzzes on her phone. Then mine. Same tone.
She fumbles for it, thumb flying over the screen. Her face tightens.
“What?” I ask.
She swivels the phone so I can see.
It’s a news alert from one of the local stations. HEADLINE: STATE POLICE RELEASE INITIAL FINDINGS IN LUCY FALLS FALLS DEATH.
Under it, a line of text: Authorities now investigating possible connection to previous incidents.
“They didn’t say his name,” I point out.
“They didn’t have to,” she says.
Her fingers are already moving, tapping, swiping, chasing the link.
“Come on,” I say, pushing back from the table. “We’ll read it at your place.”
She looks up, eyes sparking. “You think I’m going to sit here and calmly finish my donut while the state police start fumbling my case in the press?”
“Yes,” I say. “Because you’re going to eat while I pay, and then we’re going to walk home like functioning humans, not like we’re fleeing a crime scene.”
Her mouth opens. Then snaps shut.
“Fine,” she grinds out. “But only because I hate walking and reading. I always trip over my own feet.”
“You’ve got good instincts,” I say.
“Don’t patronize me, Goliath,” she mutters, stuffing the rest of the donut in her mouth.
I drop bills on the table, nod at Karla, and follow her out into the cold.
On the way back, she slips once on a patch of black ice, and her feet skid out from beneath her. Her weight goes sideways.
I catch her without thinking—one hand wrapping around her upper arm, the other bracing at her lower back. She weighs nothing. Less than the duffel I brought.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Ugh,” she groans. “Yes. My pride’s bruised. That’s all.”
“We’ll ice it,” I say.
She tilts her head back to look up at me, cheeks pink from the cold, hair escaping her knot in wild curls.
“Was that another joke?” she asks.
“Maybe,” I say.
Her mouth curves, quick and sharp.
“Look at you,” she says. “Developing a sense of humor. Next thing you know, you’ll be letting me drive.”
“Not a chance.”
“I have an excellent driving record.”
“You also admitted you trip when you read,” I say. “I’m not giving you two thousand pounds of moving metal.”
“Wow,” she says. “Body-shaming my car now.”
“You don’t have a car,” I remind her.
“Semantics.”
She slips again, less dramatic this time. I tighten my grip until she steadies, then let go.
Big and small, I think. The monster and the hummingbird. Bodyguard and gremlin.
But when we reach her building, and she keys in the door code with cold-reddened fingers and a Rudolph-nose, and turns to look at me like she’s weighing whether letting me into her space again is a good idea, I know one thing with absolute clarity:
Whatever Kael said about keeping my hands to myself, about keeping my head clear—he underestimated how hard that was going to be.
She holds the door open a fraction wider.
“You coming, or what?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, stepping in after her. “Let’s see what the state cops just set on fire.”