Chapter 21
NOW
My fingers find Harvey’s card before my brain catches up.
It’s still in my pocket – crumpled now, soft at the edges from being handled too many times.
I pull it out and try to read the numbers.
The red letters swim in my vision every time I blink.
I’LL GET YOU NEXT TIME. Like they’ve been burned into my retinas and I’ll see them forever now, no matter where I look.
I dial. The phone rings twice, and I’m already convinced he won’t answer – that I’ll get voicemail and will have to leave some stammering message about paint and threats and please, please, someone help me—
‘Harvey.’
His voice is clipped. Professional. The voice of a man interrupted mid-task.
‘It’s Kelly Reynolds.’ I sound like I’m being strangled. ‘Someone’s been here. At my house. While I was at the hospital. They left a message on the boards. A threat.’
A pause. I can almost hear him shifting gears, recalibrating.
‘Are you inside the house right now?’
‘No. I’m outside it. I followed footprints and I found the message and I don’t know if they’re still here. I don’t know if someone’s inside.’
‘Right. Don’t go in. Don’t touch anything. Stay exactly where you are.’ I hear movement on his end – keys, a door closing. ‘I’m on my way. Ten minutes. Can you get to a neighbour’s house? Somewhere you’ll feel safer?’
The thought of knocking on Caroline’s door, of explaining this to anyone in East Hampton, makes something in me recoil. I’ve been finding it hard to trust anyone around me – my entire adopted community is nothing more than a snake pit, and I’m tired of feeling like a mouse.
‘I’ll wait by the front gate.’
‘Good. Stay on the line with me until I get there.’
I make my way back, phone pressed to my ear, every sound amplified to painful clarity. The scrape of my shoes on gravel. The distant bark of a dog. My own breathing, too fast, too loud, like someone hyperventilating through a paper bag.
The minutes stretch endlessly. I stand at my gate, watching the empty street and trying not to imagine every possible horror lurking behind hedges and in parked cars.
Harvey keeps talking – about traffic, about how close he’s getting – and I understand what he’s doing.
Filling the silence so I don’t have to be alone with my fear.
At least he believes me, I can’t help thinking.
When his car finally appears round the bend, the relief is so intense I nearly drop the phone.
He pulls up directly outside, engine off in seconds.
He’s out of the car and moving towards me before I can even lower the phone from my ear, his face set in an expression I haven’t seen before. Concern. Genuine, unguarded concern.
‘Show me,’ he says.
I lead him round the house, explaining as we go – the open gate, the footprints, the message scrawled across the plywood.
He listens without interrupting, his expression growing grimmer with each detail.
When we reach the boarded window, he studies the red lettering.
His jaw tightens. Something flickers across his features – anger, maybe, or frustration – before he schools his expression back to neutral.
‘Did you touch anything?’
‘No. I saw it and I called you.’
‘Good. That was the right thing to do.’ He pulls out his phone and takes several photographs, the flash stark against the grey morning light. ‘I’ll get forensics out here. See if they can lift anything from the paint, the boards, the surrounding area.’
‘Will that help? Will it tell you who did this?’
‘It might. These things take time, but we’re building a picture.’ He turns to look at me properly. ‘Ms Reynolds, I need to check inside the house. Make sure no one’s in there. Would you be comfortable with me doing that, and you waiting out here while I do?’
I open my mouth to answer, but movement catches my eye.
Across the fence, through the gaps in the hedge, I can see figures gathering.
Caroline, unmistakable in her navy coat, standing with two other women I vaguely recognise.
They’re not even pretending any more – just standing there, watching, their faces arranged in expressions of politeness that don’t quite mask the avid curiosity underneath.
One of them has her phone out. Taking pictures, maybe. Or texting the rest of the town about the latest drama at number seven.
‘No,’ I snap. ‘I don’t want to wait out here. Can I come with you?’
Harvey follows my gaze to the watching neighbours. Something shifts in his expression – understanding, maybe. Or sympathy for a woman who can’t even fall apart in private any more.
‘Stay behind me. Don’t touch anything. If I tell you to get out, you get out. Understood?’
‘Understood.’
We enter through the front door. Harvey moves differently now – alert, hand near his belt, checking corners and doorways with the trained awareness of someone who’s done this many times before. I follow close behind, my pulse loud in my ears, half-expecting someone to leap out of every shadow.
The hallway is empty. The living room, empty. The dining room, empty. Each space we clear feels like a small victory, a room reclaimed from the threat that’s been hanging over me.
In the kitchen, Harvey pauses by the boarded window. From inside, you can’t see the message – just plywood and nails and the absence of light. But I know what’s on the other side. Can feel its presence.
‘When did you leave for the hospital?’ he asks.
‘Yesterday morning. Around seven.’
‘And you’ve been there since?’
‘Yes. Sitting with Richard.’
‘Has he woken up?’
‘Not yet.’
Harvey nods, makes a note. Then continues his sweep.
Upstairs, we check each bedroom. The spare room where I first saw the figure in my garden. The bathroom with its too-bright tiles. My own room, the bed still unmade from the night everything went wrong. Richard’s side of the mattress still shows the indent of his body.
Everything is as I left it. No signs of entry. No evidence that anyone has been inside.
‘House is clear,’ Harvey says finally. ‘No one’s here but us.’
I should feel relieved. Instead, I feel drained. Hollowed out by adrenaline that has nowhere to go.
We return to the kitchen. Harvey fills the kettle without asking and switches it on, moving around my space with a familiarity that should feel intrusive but somehow doesn’t.
He finds mugs, instant coffee, milk. Performs the small domestic ritual of making coffee while I sink into a chair and try to remember how to breathe normally.
‘Here.’ He sets a mug in front of me. Strong, creamy, exactly how I take it. ‘Drink.’
I wrap my hands around the warmth and obey. The coffee is too hot, scalding my tongue, but the pain is grounding. Real. Something to focus on besides the terror that’s become my constant companion.
Harvey sits across from me. His notebook stays in his pocket. He’s just watching me now, his expression unreadable but somehow less sharp than before. Less like an interrogator and more like someone who’s finally seeing me as human rather than a suspect.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he says quietly.
I blink at him over my mug. ‘What?’
‘At the hospital. I was pushing you. Suggesting things. Making implications about your past.’ He shakes his head. ‘That wasn’t fair. You’d just watched someone you care about get attacked in your own home. That wasn’t the time for the kind of questions I was asking.’
‘You were doing your job.’
‘Maybe. But there’s doing my job and there’s being a decent human being, and I’m not sure I managed both.’ He meets my eyes directly. ‘I’ve been in this work a long time. You see patterns everywhere. Start treating everyone like a puzzle to solve rather than a person to help. It’s a bad habit.’
I don’t know what to say. This is so different from our previous interactions – from his probing questions and knowing looks and the constant sense that he was waiting for me to slip up.
‘Thank you,’ I manage. ‘For saying that.’
‘Don’t thank me. Just tell me the truth – is there anything else I should know? Not as an investigator. Just… as someone trying to keep you safe. Is there something you’re holding back that might help me understand who’s doing this to you?’
The question sits between us. I consider the notes.
The ring. The things I’ve been hiding because revealing them means revealing everything else.
But looking at Harvey now – at the genuine concern in his brown eyes, the weariness around his mouth that suggests he’s lost sleep over this case – I wonder if maybe I’ve been wrong.
Maybe not everyone is an enemy. Maybe some people actually want to help.
But I can’t. Not yet. Not until I understand more about who’s doing this. Because once I start telling the truth, I can’t take it back. And the truth is complicated. Damning. The kind of thing that could turn Harvey’s sympathy back into suspicion in a heartbeat.
‘I don’t know who’s doing this,’ I say. Which is true, if incomplete. ‘I don’t know why they’re targeting me. I just know I’m scared.’
He studies me for a moment. Then nods slowly, as if accepting my answer even though he doesn’t fully believe it.
‘Right. Then here’s what we’re going to do.
’ He leans forward, elbows on the table.
‘First, I’m having a patrol car drive past this street every hour.
Anyone sees anything suspicious, they’ll be here in minutes.
Second, please consider staying somewhere else for a few nights.
A hotel. A friend’s house. Somewhere this person doesn’t know about. ’
‘I don’t have anywhere else to go.’
‘What about family?’
‘My parents are dead. Daniel’s family…’ I trail off. His father passed. I haven’t spoken to his mother since it happened. ‘That’s not an option.’
‘Friends?’
I think about Emma and Natasha, their messages of hollow concern.
About Caroline and her endless surveillance.
About the whole town that’s been watching me fall apart without lifting a finger to help.
How am I supposed to trust people who can’t even be honest with themselves?
As far as I can see, every one of them is about the packaging.
Nobody has a clue what’s inside and – if I had the means to find out – I’d certainly hate what I saw.
‘No,’ I say quietly. ‘I don’t have friends here. Not really.’
Something shifts in Harvey’s expression. A softening I haven’t seen before. He looks at me the way you might look at a stray animal – with a kind of helpless compassion that knows it can’t fix everything but wants to try anyway.
We sit in my kitchen while forensics are called and arrangements are made.
Harvey is different now – looser, more human.
He mentions a daughter. A wife who left years ago and how he still hasn’t got the hang of cooking for one.
Small details of a life that exists outside investigations and suspicion.
And slowly, incrementally, something loosens in my chest. Not the fear – that’s still there, coiled tight and ready to spring. But something else. The isolation, maybe. The sense that I’m completely alone in this nightmare.
The afternoon fades into evening. Forensics come and go, dusting the boards, taking casts of the footprints, photographing everything from angles I wouldn’t have thought of. Harvey coordinates it all, his presence a steady anchor in the chaos.
When the last technician leaves, the house feels too quiet. Too empty. The thought of being alone here – of lying in bed listening to every creak, every rustle, every imagined footstep – makes something in me seize up.
‘Would you…’ I stop. Start again. ‘This is probably inappropriate. But would you stay? Just for a while. Until I fall asleep.’
Harvey looks at me. I expect him to refuse – to cite protocol, or propriety, or any of the dozen reasons why a police officer shouldn’t be babysitting a woman who might still be a suspect in his mind.
‘It’s not technically legal while I’m on duty.’
‘What about off duty?’
‘Hmm…’ he says, glancing at his watch. ‘I’ll be right here.’
The relief that floods through me is embarrassing in its intensity. I don’t have the energy to feel ashamed of it. Don’t have the strength to pretend I’m anything other than exactly what I am: a woman at the end of her rope, desperate for someone – anyone – to help her hold on.
‘Thank you.’
‘It’s nothing.’ He glances towards the kitchen. ‘I don’t suppose you have any more coffee? It’s been a long day.’
‘I think I can manage that.’
It’s too early for sleep anyway. The clock on the wall shows barely half past seven, and my body is still humming with residual adrenaline.
The thought of lying alone in the dark, replaying everything that’s happened, feels unbearable.
But sitting in my kitchen with another person, doing something as mundane as making coffee – that feels possible.
Almost normal.