Chapter 2
Liam
The file lands on my desk early, which means Vance has been awake since before dawn. The man runs on black coffee and whatever keeps former FBI agents vertical when normal people sleep — spite, probably, or a classified supplement the Bureau never declassified.
I flip it open. Thin. A few photos of a Victorian property that looks like it lost a fight with the last century, a scan of two handwritten notes, and a client intake form filled out by someone named Del Tsao on behalf of someone named Kari Engstrom.
"Threat assessment," Vance says from the doorway, because he doesn't sit down for conversations that take less than a minute. "Stalker-adjacent. Two notes, no direct contact, no digital trail. Friend called it in. Client's alone at the property."
I study the notes. Block letters, generic stationery. You don't belong here and Leave while you still can. No escalation pattern yet — just repetition with proximity. The second one appeared inside the residence while the client was present.
That part gets my attention.
"Law enforcement?"
"Local PD took a report. No prints, no leads, no urgency." Vance leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. Same shirt as yesterday, which confirms the insomnia he'll deny if asked. "Friend wants a professional opinion. Quick assessment, security recommendations, done."
"Where?"
"South end of the city. The Foxglove Inn."
I look at the photos again. A B&B on a block of older buildings, renovation in progress, one woman alone in a property with more access points than a federal courthouse.
The garden gnome in the front garden bed stares at the camera with the dead-eyed confidence of something that's seen things and chosen not to intervene.
"Simple job," Vance adds. He says this the way a surgeon says routine procedure — technically accurate, strategically dismissive. "Drive down, walk the perimeter, write it up. If the threat's credible, we escalate. If not, we recommend a locksmith and move on."
I close the file. "Give me twenty minutes."
Vance nods and disappears into his office. The Glasshouse hums around us — mirrored ops floor reflecting early light, the elevator making its slow mechanical groan between floors. Four years in this building, and the elevator still sounds like it's processing trauma.
I grab my go bag, check the deadbolt kit in the truck, and pull out before the rest of the team clocks in.
The drive south is uneventful. Highway, then surface streets, then the older grid where development thins out and buildings show their age.
I run the file through my head. Two notes, escalating access, no known suspects.
The client is renovating alone. No security system, no cameras, no prior threats.
The intake form lists Kari Engstrom as late twenties, former event planner, currently converting a neglected Victorian into a bed-and-breakfast. No romantic partner.
No enemies flagged. The friend — Del — described her as "stubborn, optimistic, and terrible at taking threats seriously," which tells me more about the next few hours than the threat profile does.
I find the Foxglove at the end of a gravel drive that crunches under my tires like a warning system designed by someone who gave up halfway through.
The property is worse in person. The photos captured the peeling paint and the sagging porch, but missed the way the whole structure leans slightly left, as if the house has been losing an argument with gravity for decades.
Two ground-floor windows propped open with paint cans.
The side gate hangs on one hinge. The front door is cracked open.
I sit in the truck and count entry points from the driver's seat.
Seven. And that's just the front facade.
I get out, lock the truck — because at least one of us has standards — and start toward the porch. The garden gnome watches me approach with an expression that suggests it's already judged my tactical assessment and found it lacking.
Three steps from the front door, I hear the argument.
One-sided. A woman's voice from somewhere inside and above — second floor, based on the acoustics. She's not yelling. She's reasoning. With something that is clearly not responding.
"— don't care what the wiring diagram says, you are going to cooperate, because I have already driven to the hardware store twice today and I am not doing it a third time, do you understand me?"
A pause. Then: "That's what I thought."
I push the front door all the way open. It gives without resistance — the strike plate is misaligned by a solid quarter inch, and the deadbolt is decorative at best. I could open this door with a firm suggestion.
The foyer smells like fresh paint and old wood and something floral that's either wallpaper paste or an ambitious air freshener losing its battle with a century of dust. Tools are scattered across a drop cloth near the stairs — a drill, a box of screws, a level optimistically placed against a wall that hasn't been level since the Roosevelt administration.
A handwritten label on the drill reads Gerald.
She named her drill.
I file this under client behavioral profile and start up the stairs. The steps groan under my weight — structural fatigue, not charm.
I find her on the second-floor landing, standing on a stepladder that's too short for the ceiling height, wrestling with a light fixture that has no intention of cooperating.
Auburn hair piled in a knot that's lost half its structural integrity.
Paint-stained overalls over a t-shirt that might have been white before the renovation got personal.
She's holding a screwdriver in one hand and a wire nut in the other, addressing the fixture with the disappointed patience of a kindergarten teacher dealing with a repeat offender.
"I'm giving you one more chance," she tells it. "One."
"Ms. Engstrom."
She startles. The stepladder shifts. I cover the distance in two steps and get a hand on the frame before it can commit to the wobble.
She looks down at me.
The rapid-fire catalog. Threat level: zero.
Late twenties, five-six, slight build, no visible weapons unless you count the screwdriver.
Freckles across the bridge of her nose. Brown eyes that manage to look simultaneously startled and curious, which shouldn't work as a combination but apparently does.
She also has a smudge of paint on her jaw, and I don't know why my brain decides to catalog that, but here we are.
"Oh," she says, recovering faster than most people do when a stranger appears in their unsecured house. "You're early."
"I'm — what?"
"For the reservation. I don't have any bookings yet, technically, but I did put the listing up last week, so if you found it through the website — " She waves the screwdriver at the crumbling building around us. "Obviously, we're still in the soft-launch phase. Very soft. Aggressively soft."
"I'm not here for a reservation."
"Are you sure? Because you look like someone who drove a long way to be somewhere specific."
She's not wrong, which irritates me.
"My name is Liam Cade. I'm with Halo Protective Group. Your friend Del Tsao contacted us about a security concern at this property."
The warmth in her expression shifts. Not to fear — which would be the appropriate response for a woman alone in a house with a stalker — but to mild exasperation.
"Del called a security company."
"She did."
"A security company."
"That is what I said."
Kari lowers the screwdriver and looks at me the way someone looks at a package they didn't order but are too polite to send back. "She told me she was making some calls. I thought she meant the police. Maybe her lawyer. Not — " She gestures at me. At the general concept of me. "This."
"I'm here to conduct a threat assessment and evaluate the physical security of the property. It shouldn't take long."
Optimistic, given what I've seen so far, but I'm still working under Vance's simple job framework. Walk the perimeter, catalogue the vulnerabilities, write the report. In and out.
"Would you like some coffee?" she asks.
"No."
"The coffee maker is the one thing that functions reliably in this entire building, which I think says something about priorities."
"I don't need coffee. I need to walk the exterior and check the access points."
"Sure. Okay." She climbs down from the ladder, and I let go of the frame once she's on solid ground. She leaves the screwdriver on the top step — unsecured tool, elevated surface, I note it and say nothing. "I'll make you a cup anyway. In case you change your mind."
She disappears down the stairs before I can object, and I hear her talking to something in the kitchen moments later. The coffee maker, presumably. Her tone is encouraging, the way you'd speak to a nervous animal.
I stand in the second-floor hallway, recalibrating.
Then I start the perimeter walk.
The exterior is a masterclass in vulnerability.
The side door off the kitchen has a lock that could be defeated with a credit card.
Three ground-floor windows don't latch. The back porch has a door with a glass panel — one sharp elbow from a clean entry.
The garden runs to a tree line with no sight barriers, no motion lights, no cameras.
The crawl space access under the porch isn't secured.
There's a cellar entrance on the east side with a padlock that’s rusted but functional.
I circle to the cellar window on the east wall — small, ground-level, half-hidden behind overgrown boxwood.
I push through the branches far enough to check the glass.
Intact. The latch is stiff but functional.
The boxwood obscures the full frame, and the light is bad at the foundation line.
I note it for follow-up — not an immediate concern, but worth a second look with a flashlight.
Back at the front, the garden gnome is still judging me.
Inside, I check each room systematically.
Ground floor: kitchen, dining area mid-renovation, sitting room with furniture under drop cloths, and a small room being used as storage for paint cans and what appears to be a taxidermied owl.
I don't ask. Second floor: three guest rooms in various stages of demolition, Margit's private rooms at the end of the hall, and one livable suite at the front with cheerful yellow flowers on the bedspread and a window overlooking the street.
The window doesn't lock.
The room where the client is sleeping has a window that doesn't lock. Second floor, street-facing — better than ground level, but the porch roof sits directly below it. Anyone with upper-body strength and a reason could make that climb in under ten seconds.
I go back downstairs, pull the deadbolt kit from my truck, and install a proper lock on the front door. The doorframe is old-growth oak under three layers of paint — the only structurally sound thing on this property. I drill, set the plate, test the bolt. It catches clean.
When I turn around, Kari is standing in the foyer holding two mugs.
"You're installing a lock on my door," she says.
"The existing one didn't function."
"I know it didn't function. I've been meaning to fix it."
"Now you don't have to." I hold out my hand. She blinks, then places a mug in it. The coffee is black, which saves us a conversation. Decent.
"Do you just carry deadbolts around in your truck?"
"Yes."
She processes this. I can see the exact moment she decides to find it charming instead of alarming, and I want to tell her that instinct — the one that converts red flags into quirky anecdotes — is going to be a problem. But I'm here for the assessment, not the lecture.
"The second note," I say. "The one that appeared inside. Where exactly did you find it?"
Her amusement fades. For a moment I see something underneath it. Not panic. Something quieter. The particular stillness of a person who lay awake in an unfamiliar house, listening to every sound the walls made.
"Parlor doorway," she says. "I'd been upstairs. Maybe twenty minutes, maybe longer. When I came back down, it was there."
"Doors were open at the time?"
"Some of them. The house had been closed up for three years. It needed air."
Every open door and window in this building is an invitation, and she's been issuing them freely.
"I need you to keep the doors locked," I tell her. "All of them. Even when you're working. The ground-floor windows stay latched, and the back porch door needs a secondary bolt, which I'll install before I leave."
"Before you leave. So you're staying for a while?"
That was supposed to be a statement, not a question. I was supposed to walk the perimeter, write the report, drive back. Simple job. But the property has more holes than a threat assessment can cover in a single visit, and the client —
The client just handed a stranger a cup of coffee in a house where someone left her threatening notes yesterday.
"I'll be here for the rest of the day," I say. "Possibly longer, depending on what the full assessment turns up."
"Well." She raises her mug, something warm and unguarded in her expression that I file under operational variable, unresolved.
"Welcome to the Foxglove. The hot water's unreliable, the third step from the top sounds like it's crying, and the Wi-Fi works if you stand in the northeast corner of the kitchen and believe in it. "
She heads back toward the kitchen, already talking to the light fixture from across the house — something about patience, how she hasn't forgotten about it.
I pull out my phone and call Vance.
"Assessment?"
"Threat level low-grade. Notes are concerning but unsophisticated. No escalation beyond proximity access, which could be opportunistic given the property layout."
"Sign off and come back."
I look at the front door, where the new deadbolt gleams against the old oak. Down the hall, Kari's talking to the coffee maker again.
"The property security is nonexistent," I tell him. "Every ground-floor access point is compromised. No alarm, no cameras, no exterior lighting. The client is sleeping in a room with an unsecured window over the porch roof."
Vance is quiet. "You want to stay."
"I want to complete a full assessment. A couple of days."
The cost-benefit analysis that runs behind everything he says. "Approved. Keep me updated."
He hangs up. I pocket the phone and take another sip.
From the kitchen, a crash. Then: "We're fine! Everything's fine. Gerald slipped."
The drill. She's talking about the drill.
I set the mug down, roll my shoulders, and head for the back porch door with the deadbolt kit.
The threat is manageable. The property is a disaster. And the client is going to be a problem.