Chapter 4
Liam
The problem with holding someone's hand is that your body remembers.
Not the act itself — the geometry of it.
The specific calibration of pressure required to communicate this is for show versus this is something else entirely.
My thumb found her pulse point yesterday.
Settled there like it had coordinates. And now, in the parlor chair with the ceiling fan clicking overhead in a pattern that isn't quite random enough to ignore, I'm running a mental diagnostic on my own nervous system and coming up short.
The chair is a wingback that was probably comfortable during the administration it was purchased under.
My neck has an opinion about the angle. My lower back has filed a formal complaint.
None of this matters, because the alternative is upstairs in a brass bed with yellow flowers on the sheets, and I'm not going there.
I catalogue exits instead. Front entrance — my deadbolt holds. Back door, original hardware, functionally decorative. Window casings on the ground floor, three of which don't latch. Upstairs, Kari's bedroom door, her window over the porch roof with the sash lock that a firm sneeze could defeat.
The ceiling fan clicks. Upstairs, the floorboards creak once — Kari shifting in her sleep.
I don't move.
Perimeter check before sunrise, before the street wakes up, before Nina opens her shop and starts watching me through the window with the enthusiasm of a woman who has found a new hobby.
The garden gnome in the front garden bed — ceramic, chipped nose, unsettling smile — has not been moved.
I check anyway. Position relative to the doorframe, angle of the head, exact placement on the flagstone.
Back door: undisturbed. Window casings: undisturbed. Side alley where the recycling bins create a natural blind spot: clear. The cellar hatch on the east side: my padlock holds.
The notes don't follow a clean pattern, which bothers me more than a pattern would.
First note was under contact paper near the kitchen sink — could have been placed anytime during the three years the inn sat empty, or minutes before Kari arrived.
She told me about finding it during the hardware store walk, her voice going flat and factual in a way that told me she'd already rehearsed this version for her own benefit.
The second note is the one that matters. It appeared on the parlor floor while Kari was upstairs on the phone. Doors unlocked. Front door latch broken. Someone walked into an occupied building, placed the note, and left without making enough noise to alert a woman one floor above.
That's not opportunity. That's confidence. Someone who knows the layout, knows how sound carries, and isn't afraid to be inside while she is.
I pull up the satellite view of the block on my phone.
Nina's coffee shop directly across the street, clear sightline to the inn's front door.
Oren's place two doors down. Residential units opposite with second-floor windows facing the property.
A parking area behind the shops connecting to the alley.
Not a large suspect pool. Not small enough to be comfortable.
Nina has my coffee ready before I reach the counter.
"Large. Black. No conversation." She slides the cup across. "How's the renovation going?"
"Fine."
"Kari's doing the upstairs bathroom next, right? She was telling me about the tile. Very bold choice. I told her bold is good, because most people play it safe with bathrooms and end up with beige. Acres of beige." Nina leans on the counter. "You know what she said about the tile?"
I do not know what Kari said about the tile.
"She said it reminded her of a bathroom she saw in a magazine when she was a kid, and she ripped out the page and kept it in a folder. A folder, Liam. She's been carrying a picture of a bathroom for most of her life."
This is information I didn't need, don't want, and will absolutely not think about later when I'm watching Kari tear out subflooring with a level of focus that borders on devotional.
"Enjoy your morning," I say.
Nina grins. "Tell your girlfriend I said hi."
I take my coffee and leave.
By the time I get back, Kari is already demolishing a wall.
Not the structural wall — I checked the renovation plans taped to the kitchen counter, covered in sticky notes and highlighter and at least one doodle of a cat in a hard hat.
The wall she's attacking is a non-load-bearing partition between the future dining room and what she keeps calling "the lounge area, but with intention. "
"Morning," she says, without turning around. Safety goggles on her forehead, flannel shirt more drywall dust than fabric. Gerald sits on the floor beside a claw hammer and a pry bar she hasn't named yet. "There's coffee cake. Oren brought it."
"I have coffee."
"Coffee cake isn't coffee. It's cake. The coffee part is aspirational." She swings the hammer. A chunk of drywall surrenders. "Can you hold that piece? The big one. It's about to — "
It falls. I catch it.
"Thanks. Lean it against the other wall. The one I'm not destroying." She points with the hammer. "Also the drawer in the kitchen is sticking again. The one by the stove."
I don't respond. I go to the kitchen. Rail alignment issue — left runner seated too high, creating drag on the pull stroke. Multi-tool from my bag. Simple fix.
When I come back, she's up on a step stool pulling insulation out of the wall cavity, talking to it.
"You have been in there since what — the seventies? Longer? You've earned your retirement, Harold. Don't fight me on this."
Harold is the insulation.
I hold the trash bag open while she fills it. This is not in my operational scope. Holding trash bags while a client narrates the emotional journey of fiberglass batting is not a service HPG offers.
"The good news," Kari says, stepping down and pushing her goggles up further, "is that the wiring behind this wall is newer than I expected."
"That is good news."
"The bad news is that I found a bird's nest in the wall cavity. Not recent. But still."
"Noted."
"I named the bird Edgar."
"Of course you did."
She grins at me. Drywall dust on her cheekbone, goggles askew, flannel hanging off one shoulder. Something behind my sternum recalibrates without permission.
I pick up the pry bar and start on the next section.
By afternoon, I've pulled more drywall than I care to quantify, re-seated three cabinet doors, and located a draft in the hallway — a gap in the baseboard wide enough to see daylight through.
Patched it with caulk from Kari's supply shelf, which is organized by what she calls "vibes" rather than any system a reasonable person would recognize.
The sticky drawer operates smoothly now. She hasn't noticed. I don't mention it.
The stalker thread runs under everything like a second operating system.
While Kari strips wallpaper in the front hall — narrating its removal to the wallpaper itself, which she has named Millicent — I run searches on my phone.
Block capitals, deliberate and even, the kind of lettering that strips out anything identifiable.
Cheap notebook paper from any dollar store.
No forensic value. The local department isn't going to prioritize what they'd classify as low-level harassment.
But it's not low-level. The second note appeared inside an unsecured building while the occupant was present. That's not a warning. That's a demonstration.
Someone is proving they have access.
I call Vance from the back porch while Kari runs the power sander upstairs — Patricia, who apparently has "strong opinions about wood grain."
"Pattern's consistent with someone local," I tell him. "Familiar with the property, familiar with her schedule. Both notes placed during windows when she was distracted or absent."
"Contractors? Previous owner?"
"Running those down. She's doing most of the work herself."
"Of course she is."
"The property sat empty for three years. No alarm, no caretaker. Anyone could have walked through a hundred times and learned every room, every entry point, every blind spot."
"Cover story holding?"
I hesitate a beat too long. Vance, who reads silence like a polygraph, says nothing. Which is worse.
"It's holding," I say.
"Good. Stay on it."
He hangs up. I stand on the back porch watching the alley, running patterns. The alley is quiet. My pulse isn't, but that has nothing to do with the alley.
Night comes fast. One minute the street has the warm amber wash of late sun. The next, it's blue-dark and quiet, and the inn settles into its particular arrangement of creaks and sighs.
Kari finds me in the parlor, wedged into the wingback with my laptop, and stops in the doorway.
"You can't sleep in that chair again."
"The chair is fine."
"The chair is from the Coolidge administration and you're shaped like a person, not a coat rack." She folds her arms. "There's one working bed. We're adults. This is ridiculous."
She's right. This doesn't make it a good idea.
"I'll take the floor."
"You'll take half the bed and stop being dramatic about it."
She disappears upstairs before I can construct an argument, which I suspect is the point.
One bed. Brass frame. Cheerful yellow flower sheets. Her renovation binder on the nightstand. My tactical bag against the far wall, zipped and squared.
She takes the window side. I take the door side. Professional rationale: I'm between her and the primary entry point. The personal rationale is something I am not examining.
Kari emerges from the bathroom in an oversized T-shirt and plaid sleep shorts, hair damp, smelling like whatever shampoo she uses — something clean and sharp that has been steadily eroding my ability to think in straight lines since I arrived.
She looks at the bed. She looks at me.
"Okay," she says. "We're doing this properly."
She opens the closet. Four pillows. A bolster. A rolled-up quilt.
She constructs the wall.
Bolster first, lengthwise, dead center. Pillows staggered for coverage. Quilt rolled tight along the base to prevent structural failure.
"There," she says. "The Great Wall of Appropriate Professional Boundaries."
"It's very thorough."
"Thank you. I considered adding a moat, but the clawfoot tub was too heavy to move."
She climbs in. The mattress dips — the springs have the tensile strength of wet pasta — and the pillow wall shifts toward me. She adjusts the bolster. Pats it.
"This is your side," she tells the bolster. "Hold the line."
The bolster does not respond. This is the first inanimate object in the building that has declined to engage in conversation with her, and I find its restraint admirable.
I lie down. Back straight. Arms at my sides. Staring at the ceiling fan.
"Goodnight, Liam."
"Goodnight."
She turns off the lamp. Darkness, and every other sense compensates. The creak of the mattress as she settles. The whisper of sheets. Her breathing — slow, steady, gradually deepening toward sleep.
The pillow wall holds. For a while.
Her body shifts in the night — incremental, inevitable. One hand migrates over the bolster. Her knee finds the gap between two pillows. The wall is breached. Not dramatically — just slow encroachment. The way a vine grows through a fence.
I don't sleep.
Not because of the threat. Perimeter secured, deadbolt engaged, windows checked. The stalker isn't coming tonight — the pattern suggests daytime access, not nocturnal entry. Professionally, there is nothing keeping me awake.
Personally, there is a woman six inches from me who talks to power tools and names insulation and built a pillow fortress on a shared bed like it was a load-bearing renovation project, and my hand remembers the width of hers, and my thumb remembers her pulse, and I am in significant operational trouble.
I should call Vance in the morning. Recommend a rotation. Reese is available — solid operator, no personality to speak of, which in this case would be an asset. Kari would be safe. The cover story could be adjusted. It's the correct tactical decision.
The ceiling fan clicks.
Kari's fingers curl against my forearm in her sleep. Light. Unconscious. Like her hand went looking for something in the dark and found it.
I don't move.
I'm not going to call Vance. I already know that. The decision was made somewhere between holding drywall and fixing a drawer she hasn't noticed yet — somewhere in the long, ordinary hours of a day that had no business rearranging my priorities.
The correct tactical decision is obvious. The correct tactical decision is someone else. And I'm lying in the dark with a pillow wall collapsing against my ribcage, running threat assessments on my own judgment like it's a perimeter I can secure.
The ceiling fan clicks. Kari breathes. My thumb remembers her pulse.
I am in so much trouble.