Chapter 7 JACE
JACE
The new lock is installed by eight. Industrial grade, keypad entry, reinforced frame. My guy texts me when it’s done and I respond with a thumbs up I don’t feel.
I’m at my desk pulling up Garrett’s latest check-in notes, when my phone rings. It’s Dawson.
“She’s pissed at me,” he says. No greeting, same as always.
“About what?”
“You showing up. She called me last night and spent ten minutes telling me she doesn’t need a babysitter and she’s not a kid and I need to stop sending people to check on her.”
“You told me to put eyes on it.”
“I told you to be discreet.”
He’s right. Walking into her shop, buying flowers, having a new lock put on her door—none of that was discreet.
I don’t tell him about the three seconds my hand was over hers when we both caught the vase. Or the way she looked at me afterward.
Dawson trusts me with a lot of things. His sister isn’t one of them.
“I’ll pull back,” I say. “Keep it to Garrett.”
“No.” He exhales. “She already knows you’re involved. If you pull back now, she’ll think she’s won, and she’ll stop being careful.” A pause. “Just—keep an eye on things. I don’t care if she’s mad at me. I care that she’s safe.”
“She will be.”
I hang up and pull up Garrett’s logs. He’s been doing his regular check-ins and periodic passes by her apartment. Everything clean. No Tyler sightings in the last forty-eight hours, which should be reassuring and isn’t.
When someone like Tyler goes quiet, it doesn’t mean he’s stopped. It means he’s adjusting.
I scroll through the logs from yesterday and this morning. Wren opened at her usual time. Sasha came in at ten. Two deliveries before noon. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Then I see it.
A delivery that wasn’t on her supplier schedule. Eleven-fifteen AM. Small box. No company branding. Hand-delivered by a local courier.
Garrett’s notes barely mention it. Wren accepted the package, opened it at the counter, then slid it under the register and went back to work.
He didn’t flag the delivery.
I call him.
“The delivery at eleven-fifteen. What was in the box?”
“I’m not sure. Looked like a personal item. Maybe jewelry. She didn’t seem alarmed.”
“You didn’t check.”
Silence on the other end.
“Find the courier service. Trace it back.”
“Jace—”
“Trace it back.”
I hang up.
An hour later Garrett texts me the courier company’s name and the pickup location they gave him. Cash payment. No sender listed. The courier picked it up from a FedEx drop box in Prospect Heights.
Less than a mile from her shop. Tyler’s neighborhood.
I grab my jacket.
By the time I reach her block in Brooklyn, my jaw aches from grinding my teeth the entire drive.
The front door to the shop is propped open before I even cross the street, held in place by a bucket of sunflowers like the new lock I had installed means absolutely nothing.
My mood darkens instantly.
Wren is at the counter working on an arrangement, her hands moving fast and steady, and she doesn’t look up when the door chimes.
“One second,” she says.
She ties off the stem in her hand and looks up, and whatever she’s feeling when she sees me, she doesn’t hide it fast enough. That makes two of us.
“Three times in two weeks,” she says. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you liked flowers.”
“I need to talk to you.”
She sets the shears down. “Okay.”
“You got a delivery this morning. Small box, no label, hand-delivered.”
Her expression doesn’t change, but something behind it does. A door closing. I’ve seen that move before.
“How do you know that?”
“Wren.”
“It was nothing.”
I wait.
She exhales. “A necklace. One I left at Tyler’s apartment when I moved out. I thought I’d lost it.”
“No courier service. Someone walked it to the shop.” I hold her eyes. “Why now?”
She doesn’t have an answer for that. I can see her working through it, trying to find the version of this that’s harmless.
“I need to see it,” I say.
“No.”
“Wren—”
“You don’t get to walk in here and demand to see my things, Jace.”
She’s right. I know she’s right. And I’m still standing here, planted in front of her counter like I own the ground.
Because she opened that box, put it under the counter, and went back to trimming stems like an anonymous delivery from her ex was just another Tuesday. That’s the part that gets me.
“I’m not the enemy here, Wren.”
“Then tell me how you knew about the delivery.” She crosses her arms. “I didn’t call you. I didn’t tell Dawson. You showed up with details nobody just has. How long have you been watching me, Jace?”
I don’t answer.
Something shifts in her face. She stops fighting and just looks at me, and that’s worse.
“Dawson,” she says. Not a question.
“He’s worried about you.”
“He’s six thousand miles away and he’s got you watching me like I’m a case file.” She shakes her head. “What are you trying to do here, Jace?”
“Keep you safe.”
“Tyler is not dangerous. He’s annoying and he doesn’t know when to stop, but he’s not —” She stops herself. Presses her lips together.
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“Then show me and prove me wrong,” I say.
She stares at me. Then she rolls her eyes, lets out a sharp breath, and reaches under the counter for the box. Small. White. No markings. She opens it and sets it between us.
A silver necklace with a small pendant.
“It was my grandmother’s,” she says quietly. “Tyler knew that.”
I pick it up carefully. Turn the pendant over. Nothing engraved, nothing attached, no tracker that I can see.
I set it back in the box and close the lid.
He held onto it for four months and sent it now.
“Thank you,” I say. “For showing me.”
She nods. She doesn’t argue this time.
The shop is quiet. She’s standing across the counter from me and I can’t stop looking at her face.
My hand moves toward hers on the counter. I catch it, redirect it to the box, slide the lid closed. Smooth enough that she might not have noticed.
I noticed.
“I’ll check in tomorrow,” I say.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
I leave without another word.
The drive back to Manhattan gives me too much time to think.
Tyler Vaughn sent that necklace to remind her he’s still there. Still paying attention.
He has no fucking idea who he’s up against.