Chapter 8
Liam
The law offices of Prescott & Yates occupy the third floor of a limestone building on Carver Street, wedged between a bail bondsman and an accountant whose window sign promises discretion.
My phone buzzes. March.
"Prescott & Yates registered their DBA through a service in Wilmington," she says, no greeting. "Same registered agent as three of the Halcyon Ridge shells. The Carver Street address is a mail drop — month-to-month, cash. No employees on file."
"So a ghost."
"A well-funded ghost. The incorporation docs are nested — LLCs inside LLCs, at least four layers deep. Whoever built this wanted to stay buried. I'll have more by end of week."
I file it. "Vance wants an update?"
"He says you're supposed to be assessing, not investigating."
"Tell him I'm assessing aggressively."
She almost laughs. "Be careful, Cade."
I stand in the hallway with its scuffed tile and humming fluorescents, and what hits me isn't the dead end. Dead ends are data — they tell you someone paid to build a wall, which means there's something worth walling off.
What hits me is that I've been gone almost ninety minutes and the back of my neck won't stop prickling.
The front door of the Foxglove is locked. Deadbolt engaged. Good. My chest loosens half an inch as I turn the key.
The smell hits first — coffee and something baked. Normal. The parlor is empty, the staircase quiet.
Then the kitchen doorway.
Kari stands at the counter with her back to me, wet hair dripping onto a flannel shirt that's too big — mine, I think, before I can stop the thought.
Her hands are wrapped around a mug. She's not drinking.
She's holding it the way someone holds something solid when the rest of the room has gone liquid.
"Hey." Rougher than I intend.
She turns. The expression on her face is careful. Assembled.
"Someone was in the house."
Everything inside me goes cold and still.
"When."
"While I was in the shower." She sets the mug down. Her fingers are steady but her jaw is tight. "I came downstairs and that chair — " She points to the wooden chair that was near the front window, moved to the center of the kitchen. Turned to face the front door.
Positioned like someone sat in it. Waited. Watched.
"And that." She nods toward the counter.
Heavy stock, cream-colored. Typed. A logo: HALCYON RIDGE DEVELOPMENT.
Dear Ms. Engstrom,
We are writing to extend a final courtesy offer for the property at 412 Sycamore Lane. Our client is prepared to offer $340,000 — a generous valuation given the outstanding permits, deferred maintenance, and recent code concerns.
We understand you've been enjoying the blueberry muffins at Nina's shop most mornings around eight-thirty. We hope you'll consider your future comfort and safety with the same attention you've given to your Thursday afternoon hardware store visits.
This offer will not be extended again.
Prescott & Yates, representing Halcyon Ridge Development
My blood goes volcanic.
They know her schedule. The muffins at Nina's. The hardware store. They've been watching long enough to build a pattern, and they put it in writing because they wanted her to understand exactly how seen she is.
And they waited for me to leave. Less than two hours, and they moved like they had a clock running.
The paper trembles in my hand. Not fear. Rage.
"The front deadbolt was locked when I went upstairs," she says. "Locked when I came down."
Seven entry points. Ground-floor windows that don't latch. The cellar hatch. Her bedroom window over the porch roof.
I move.
Sweep the ground floor — every room, every closet. Check window locks, the cellar hatch, the back porch. Upstairs, room by room. Kari's bedroom window is closed but unlatched. The porch roof below shows a scuff mark in the gutter debris.
It's not nothing.
Vance picks up on the second ring. I lay it out — the letter, the timing, the chair, the surveillance details.
"What do you need?"
"Cameras. Four exterior, two interior. Motion-activated, feeds to my phone. Today."
"Done. What else?"
"Run Prescott & Yates against every property transaction in the county. Evie's pulling threads, but I want purchase records, permit applications, code complaints."
"You want a rotation? Reese or Tanaka by tonight."
My jaw tightens. The correct answer is yes.
"No. I've got it."
"If this escalates again, we're having a different conversation."
Cameras go up at every corner. One covering the front porch, one aimed at the cellar hatch, one watching the back door, one angled at the porch roof below Kari's window. Two interior: front hallway, kitchen. Every feed routes to my phone.
Ground-floor windows get pin locks — aluminum rods cut to length. The courier brought a window lock for Kari's bedroom. I install it with Gerald while she sits on the bed behind me.
The silence between us has a texture. Dense. Pressurized.
"You're scaring me."
My hand stills on the trigger. "Good."
"Not the stalker. You."
The drill bit is halfway into the frame. My reflection stares back — gray eyes, set jaw. Not the boyfriend who holds her hand at the hardware store. The operative.
"This version of you," she says. "I haven't seen it before."
"This is the version that keeps you alive."
She flinches. Small. I catch it the way I catch everything about her now — involuntarily, compulsively.
I finish the lock. Test it twice. Turn around.
Kari sits cross-legged on the yellow bedspread. Chin up. That stubborn, impossible chin.
"You left this morning without telling me where you were going."
"I was following a lead on Prescott & Yates."
"And while you were out, someone walked into my house. Sat in my kitchen. Read my schedule off a piece of paper like a grocery list."
"That's why I'm installing cameras."
"That's why you should have told me." She's on her feet. "I'm not a client, Liam."
"You are, though."
The words come out before I can stop them. Her expression shifts — hurt, then fury, then something walled off that's worse than both.
"Right. I'm the job."
"You're not the job." My voice drops. Rough. "That's the problem."
She lifts that chin and I want to cup my hand around the back of her neck and pull her close and tell her that no one is ever going to sit in her kitchen again without going through me first.
But that's not professional. That's a man who has spent over a week watching a woman talk to plumbing and name power tools and leave the pillow wall down, and somewhere between the snickerdoodles and the way she taps her thumbnail against her teeth, he lost the plot entirely.
"I don't need a bodyguard who keeps me in the dark," she says. "I need someone who treats me like I can handle my own life."
"You can handle your own life. You can't handle someone who breaks in while you're in the shower."
"So what — you never leave? You stand at my door until they get bored?"
"If that's what it takes."
"That's not a plan, that's a cage."
"It's not a cage, it's a perimeter."
"Liam." She says my name like she's holding it between her teeth. "You don't get to decide what risks I take."
She's right. And the fact that my instinct is to lock down and control without consulting the person at the center of it — that's not training. That's fear wearing a tactical vest.
"Okay." Her eyebrows lift. She wasn't expecting surrender. "I should have told you where I was going. From now on, you know what I know."
"All of it?"
"All of it."
She studies me. The tension in her shoulders doesn't fully release. But she nods.
"I'm making dinner," she says, which is not forgiveness but adjacent. "You're helping."
She walks past me — close enough that the coconut scent of her shampoo cuts through the smell of drill dust. Close enough that my hand almost reaches for her.
I let her go.
In the kitchen, she bangs pots around with pointed authority.
I chop vegetables because she told me to and because the alternative is standing there cataloguing the way anger makes her move faster, sharper, more precise.
She's reaching for the colander when her bare foot catches the exposed pipe under the sink — the one she was negotiating with days ago.
She hisses. Grabs her foot. Looks down at the pipe.
"Sorry," she tells it. "That was my fault."
The pipe she kicked. She apologized to it.
Something in my chest cracks. Not breaks — cracks. The way concrete cracks before it gives.
The cameras feed green. All angles covered. Pin locks on every window. Her bedroom finally secured. The Foxglove is as locked down as a Victorian B&B can be without a moat.
It's not enough.
Because whoever walked in today didn't force a lock. They moved through this house like they knew something about its bones that even Kari doesn't — a loose hatch, a window with a trick, a way in I haven't found.
And they waited. Watched me leave. Counted the minutes. The kind of patience that separates amateurs from people who do this for a living.
The letter in its zip-lock bag. This offer will not be extended again. Not a purchase offer. A deadline.
My phone screen glows. Six camera feeds, all green, all clear.
I should call Vance. Tell him I'm compromised. Tell him to send anyone whose chest doesn't constrict every time this woman laughs at something only she finds funny.
My thumb hovers over his contact.
The thing that keeps me up isn't the stalker. Stalkers I understand. They operate on patterns, escalation curves, predictable psychology.
The thing that keeps me up is simpler. What happens when I'm standing right here — cameras live, locks engaged, every window pinned — and it's still not enough?