17. Ryder
RYDER
The footage should show Preston Lee walking across my yard.
It should show him crossing the fence line, moving through the rain, opening a can of black paint, and putting his hands on my property while Alex is inside my house wearing my hoodie and tasting like everything I’ve spent years teaching myself not to touch.
Instead, the screen gives me the same stretch of wet grass every time I drag the timestamp backward.
Rain cuts through the frame in thin silver lines.
The side gate stays shut. The pine at the back corner sways hard enough to blur the edge of the fence, and beyond it, exactly where the message is, the camera doesn’t reach.
I play the clip again anyway.
Alex stands near the dining room table with a towel around her shoulders and my sweatshirt hanging almost to her knees.
Her jeans are in the dryer. Her sweater is draped over the back of a kitchen chair.
She hasn’t said much since I got her inside, which bothers me more than if she were yelling.
Anger would give me somewhere to put my attention.
This silence leaves me with footage, rain, and the knowledge that Preston found a blind spot in a system I built specifically because I don’t trust anyone to respect my privacy.
The recording hits 10:47 p.m. again. The floodlights flash on, empty yard. No figure. No shadow. No movement except rain and the pine branch cutting across the corner like a curtain being pulled shut after the show is over.
Alex comes close enough that I feel her behind me before she speaks. “That’s where he stood.”
I pause the frame. The far-right fence panel sits half-visible on the screen, the rest cut off by the camera angle and the tree. Her reflection appears faintly in the black edge of the monitor, pale face, damp hair, the towel clutched in both hands.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s where he stood.”
She reaches past me and touches the timestamp on the monitor, not the blank place where he should be. “So he watched the house first.”
I don’t answer because we both know it. Preston didn’t stumble into that corner.
He didn’t spray-paint a threat in the middle of a thunderstorm and accidentally land outside every useful angle.
He came close enough to study where my protection ended, then wrote on the line like he was proud of himself for finding it.
My phone is already in my hand. Remy answers sounding tired, but the tired disappears before I finish the first sentence.
I put him on speaker and set the phone on the mantel under the framed Fourth of July photo I still haven’t moved, then take pictures through the back window while I give him the details.
Alex stays beside the table instead of retreating upstairs.
She watches me tell him about the message, the fence, the angle, the camera missing it, and she doesn’t flinch until Remy asks if she’s hurt.
“No,” she says before I can answer for her. Her voice is thin but steady. “I’m not hurt.”
Remy is quiet for a few seconds. When he speaks again, he uses the voice he keeps for victims and people standing too close to a bad edge.
“Stay inside until the responding officer gets there. Don’t touch the fence.
Don’t go back out for better pictures. Ryder, I mean that last part is mostly for you.
And don’t let Alex go off half-cocked and try to leave. My priority is keeping her safe.”
The responding officer arrives twenty-two minutes later.
Alex sits at the dining room table through the report with both feet tucked under the chair and her hands around the mug I made her after we came in.
The coffee has to be cold by now, but she keeps holding it because temperature isn’t the point.
I stand near the back door while Logan Pierce, one of the lieutenants on the Birch PD force asks questions Remy already asked over the phone.
Alex gives Preston’s name without looking at me.
That does something to my chest I don’t have time to deal with. I want to be her safety. I want to be the one she turns to. The one who eliminates anything that makes her afraid.
When Logan leaves, rainwater dripping from the brim of his hat onto the mudroom mat, Alex gathers the scattered cards from the rug and puts them back in the box one by one.
She doesn’t look at the monitors. I do. I watch the empty yard until the cruiser disappears down the drive, then I pull up the security app and start adding equipment to a cart with the kind of focus that feels reasonable as long as I don’t look too closely at the total number of items I’m buying.
Two exterior cameras for the back fence.
A third for the tree line because one gap is already too many.
Battery backup for the router and monitor station.
Door sensors. Window sensors. Replacement floodlights with a wider range.
A cellular camera in case Wi-Fi drops. A second sensor kit for the garage.
I add each item, check the delivery time, and move to the next before any part of me realizes that I’m overreacting.
Because right now, I feel like I could build a bunker and that wouldn’t be too much.
Alex finishes with the cards and walks into the kitchen.
She doesn’t ask what I’m buying right away.
She rinses her mug, sets it in the dishwasher, wipes the counter where she spilled a few drops, and only then comes to stand beside me.
Her shoulder barely brushes my arm as she looks down at the screen.
“That’s a lot of boxes you’re going to be getting here soon,” she says.
I scroll back to the top of the cart. “It covers the gap.”
She studies the list for a long time. The storm pushes rain against the windows behind us, and outside, the fence waits in the dark with Preston’s words still bleeding down the boards. “And after that?”
I stop with my thumb hovering above checkout.
Alex reaches across me, not to take the phone but to rest her hand over my wrist. Her touch is light enough that I could ignore it. I don’t.
“After the next gap?” she asks. “Do you move the cameras into the house too? What about when I’m gone, and you’re here alone again?”
The question lands harder than an argument would have. I look at the order again and see it the way she must: cameras, sensors, locks, lights, batteries. More ways to watch. More proof that my answer to being afraid is to build until there isn’t any room left for the fear to move. For her to move.
“He got close,” I say, because it’s the only defense I have. “He could have hurt you if I wasn’t here.”
“I know.” Her thumb moves once against the inside of my wrist, careful and warm. “I saw the fence too.”
“He came to my house while you were inside it.”
“And I’m still inside it.” She steps away from the counter and picks up the towel from the chair, folding it even though it’s too damp to be useful. “I’m not saying don’t make things safer. I’m saying I can feel you turning every wall into a warning sign and something you need to watch.”
I set the phone facedown. The cart stays open. I don’t check out, but I don’t delete anything either.
“All I’m saying,” Alex whispers before brushing her hand over mine. “Is that you should make your list of what you need to fix it now, and that’s it. No more after this. Don’t let his actions start something that’s unhealthy in response.”
At that, I pick up my phone and place the order, promising myself that’s it. No more after this. It’s the best I can do right now.
For the next hour, I move through the house with a flashlight, a screwdriver, and the sensor kit I already own because Alex was right about the emergency shelf.
She follows me around for part of it, not hovering, not helping, just watching me test locks and battery backups with the towel now gone and her hands tucked into the long sleeves of my hoodie.
At the mudroom door, I replace the old sensor and note the delay between contact break and phone alert.
In the living room, I unplug the monitor station and count how long the backup takes to kick in.
In the hallway, I check the flashlight charging dock and put a spare on the small table by the stairs.
Alex stops there. Her gaze stays on the flashlight so long that I don’t even have to wonder what she’s thinking.
“You want one upstairs?” I ask, already reaching for another from the drawer.
Her answer takes a beat. “Maybe.”
I hand it to her butt-end first, like the tool it is.
She takes it the same way. “This isn’t because I think you can’t handle the dark,” I tell her while tightening the loose screw on the hall table leg because if I look at her too directly, my face will say too much.
“It’s because the power’s been flickering all night. ”
“I know.” She rolls the flashlight in her palm, tests the weight, then sets it on the table instead of carrying it upstairs. “I wasn’t arguing.”
That should be the end of it, and for a while, it is.
The power goes out at exactly 12:11 in the morning.
The whole house drops at once. Lamp. monitors, refrigerator, the low hum of the dryer in the hallway.
The storm fills the absence immediately, rain slamming the roof and thunder dragging over the house hard enough to make the windows tremble.
The backup under the media console clicks, fails, then clicks again while I’m already reaching for the flashlight I left on the coffee table.
“Alex,” I say, aiming the beam at the floor.
She doesn’t answer.
I find her near the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the banister and the other clenched around the sleeve of my hoodie.
The emergency light in the hall gives off a weak amber glow, not enough to reach the living room, and her face is turned toward the dead windows as if the dark outside has leaned in close to the glass.