41. Mia
MIA
The meadow was wet with dew and the cottage door was cold under my hand.
I hadn't been back in days. The toothbrush I'd forgotten was the excuse.
But the real reason was simpler. I missed the quiet. The two rooms and the kitchen and the window that let in too much sky.
The key turned. The door swung open.
I smelled them before I saw them.
Sweet and wrong. The kind of sweet that happens when something beautiful has been rotting for a long time.
I stopped in the doorway. My hand was still on the knob.
Roses. Dead roses on the kitchen counter. Black petals curled in on themselves like fists.
Stems brittle and gray. Dust on the white ribbon that held them together.
They'd been here for weeks. Maybe longer.
A card was propped against the bouquet. Small. White.
Neat handwriting.
You looked so peaceful while you slept, Hadley. Avery too. Sweet dreams.
The cottage tilted. The walls pulled inward. I gripped the doorframe and the wood bit into my fingers and I held on because the floor was doing something unreliable.
He was inside.
While I slept in that bedroom. While Avery curled up beside me during sleepovers, her small hand fisted in my shirt, her breath warm against my collarbone. While I locked the door every night and checked the windows and told myself we were safe.
He stood in this kitchen. Left flowers on the counter. Wrote a card.
He watched us sleep.
And then he walked out and the cameras showed nothing.
I pulled my phone from my pocket. My hands were steady. They had no right to be steady.
But somewhere between the shooting and this moment, I'd learned that falling apart was a luxury I couldn't afford.
Lucas picked up on the second ring.
"I need you at the cottage." My voice was flat. Professional.
The voice I used on camera when the teleprompter broke. Fill the dead air. Don't let them see you sweat.
"He was inside."
Silence. One beat. Two.
"Don't touch anything. I'm twenty minutes out."
I hung up. Stood in that doorway and stared at the dead roses and thought about every single night I'd spent in that bed.
The nights Avery had slept over.
I pressed my back against the doorframe. Slid down until I was sitting on the stone step.
The meadow stretched out in front of me, green and damp, wildflowers starting to open. The main house sat across the field, glass walls catching the morning sun.
Everything looked the same. Everything was different.
Lucas arrived with two SUVs and a forensics team. I watched from the meadow while they worked.
Yellow tape across the cottage entrance. Gloved hands. Evidence bags.
A woman with short hair and a laptop connected to Dale's camera system. Her expression changed within minutes.
She called Lucas over. They spoke in low voices and she pointed at the screen.
Lucas walked back to me.
"The feeds were looped." He said it the way he said everything. Calm. Measured.
Like the words weren't a bomb going off in the center of my chest.
"Someone accessed the wireless signal and fed the cameras a recording. The system showed an empty property while someone walked right through."
"For how long?"
"We're still determining that. But the flowers suggest weeks. Possibly since before your Tuscany trip."
Weeks. He'd been walking through our security like it was a screen door.
Dale's cameras were wireless. Trail cameras disguised as wildlife monitoring equipment. They'd worked for months.
They'd caught Angelina's photographer.
But wireless meant hackable. And whoever was doing this had the resources to do it.
"This isn't amateur," Lucas said. He wasn't telling me. He was confirming what we both already knew.
"This is a funded, professional operation."
I nodded. The bullet in my spine pulsed. It did that when my body remembered something my brain was trying to push down.
Tony's truck pulled into the drive. I heard the engine cut. The slam.
His footsteps across the gravel, then the meadow grass, then the dirt path. Long strides. Fast.
Tony reached me. His eyes found mine first. Checking.
Then they moved to the cottage. The yellow tape. The forensics team.
"What happened?"
I handed him the card.
Tony read the card. His face went still. Not angry. Not scared.
Still. The kind of still that was more terrifying than rage. The man behind those green eyes had gone somewhere calculated and quiet.
Read it again.
Then folded the card and put it in his pocket and looked at me. "Where's Avery?"
"With Sophia. At the house."
A single nod. He pulled out his phone and called Dominic Cross.
His side of the conversation was short sentences. Clipped. The voice he used when he stopped being Tony and became the man who inherited an empire.
"I want hardwired cameras. Every approach. Every angle. Encrypted, no wireless."
A breath.
"Motion sensors on the tree line and the ridge. New locks on every entrance. Deadbolts. Someone on the property twenty-four hours a day. Not rotating through trails. On the grounds."
A pause.
"Today."
Tony hung up. Looked at the cottage for a long time. The stone walls. The timber frame.
The porch where Avery used to sit while I read to her. The window that let in too much sky and apparently let in monsters too.
"You're not going back in there," he said.
"I know."
"Avery's not going back in there."
"I know, Tony."
His jaw worked. Fists at his sides. The gauze from the studio was gone now, replaced by healing scabs across both palms.
He stared at the cottage like he wanted to tear it apart with those damaged fingers.
"He was there while she slept," I said. The words came out like a fact I'd been holding in my mouth, waiting for somewhere to put it.
"Every time Avery stayed over with me. He was right there."
Tony closed his eyes.
When he opened them, the man looking back at me was different. A lock clicking shut. A decision made.
"Nobody touches my family." Not to me. Not to Lucas.
To the trees. The ridge. Whoever was out there watching.
The cottage was sealed by afternoon. Crime scene tape across the entrance. Nobody in or out until forensics finished.
Evening changed the main house.
Dominic's team worked fast. Men I'd never seen carried equipment through the front entrance. Hardwired cameras replaced every wireless unit on the property.
Motion sensors went up along the tree line, the ridge, the meadow path. New deadbolts appeared on every exterior frame. Heavy. Steel. The kind that meant it.
A second guard materialized. I never learned his name. He walked the perimeter in boots that didn't make noise.
Tony moved through it all like a general inspecting fortifications. Checking sight lines. Testing locks.
Asking questions in that low, clipped voice that made grown men with military training answer faster.
I helped Sophia make dinner because my hands needed something to do besides shake. She didn't ask questions.
She handed me a knife and pointed at an onion. "Small pieces." That was all I needed.
Avery ate her pasta without noticing the new locks.
"Can Barnaby live in my room?"
"Barnaby lives outside, sweetheart."
"But he'll be cold."
"Ladybugs like the cold."
"That's silly. Nobody likes the cold."
She had a point.
After dinner, Tony carried her to bed. I followed.
He tucked the blanket under her chin and checked the window. The new deadbolt. The latch.
The purple butterfly nightlight glowed in the corner. Safe room. Safe house. New locks.
I kept telling myself that.
"Daddy, you're squishing me."
Tony loosened his arms. Kissed the top of her head.
His fingers were shaking. I could see it from the hallway. The faintest tremor as he smoothed her curls.
"Love you, Pickle."
"Love you, Daddy." A pause. "Love you, Mimi."
I leaned against the frame. "Love you, baby."
We stepped into the hallway. Tony pulled Avery's door closed. New deadbolt.
The lock clicked.
Tony leaned his forehead against the wood. I put my hand on his back. The muscles under his shirt were rigid.
"We're going to find out who this is," I said.
He didn't answer. Breathed. In and out.
His forehead against Avery's door.
I left my hand where it was.
Later. The house was quiet. Avery asleep behind a lock that could stop a battering ram.
Sophia gone. Dominic's team somewhere outside in the dark, watching.
I stood at the glass wall in the living room. The lake was black. The mountains were outlines against a sky full of stars.
The trees along the ridge stood in rows, dark and silent and full of shadows.
These walls used to feel like freedom. Glass and sky and open space.
Now all I could think was that he'd already been on this property. Past the cameras. Past the locks. And glass doesn't stop someone who's already inside the perimeter.
Tony came up behind me. His reflection appeared in the glass. Tall.
The crease between his eyes deeper than usual.
"Security is live," he said. "Twelve cameras. Hardwired."
"Motion sensors on every approach. If a deer crosses the meadow, we'll know about it."
I nodded. I kept looking at the dark trees.
"He was in there for weeks, Tony. While we were in Tuscany. While we were sleeping."
"The cameras said everything was fine and he was standing in my kitchen."
"Not anymore."
I repeated it. But the words didn't stick. They slid off the fear like water off glass.
I thought about the card. The handwriting. Neat. Patient.
The handwriting of a man who took his time. Who planned. Who waited.
You looked so peaceful while you slept, Hadley.
He used my real name. The one I'd buried. The one the FBI had erased.
Avery too.
My daughter. Not by blood. Not by law.
But mine. The girl who climbed into my bed and pressed her face into my neck. Who said "Mimi, your feet are cold" and fell asleep holding my fingers.
He watched her sleep. He stood over her and watched her sleep and then he left dead flowers on the counter like a love note.
Something inside me went quiet. Not fear. Not anger.
Older than both. The thing that had kept me alive in the hospital when the doctors said I might not walk again.
That thing made me rebuild a career with a bullet still in my spine and walk away from it when I had to.
The journalist. The woman who spent her career pulling monsters into the light.
I turned away from the glass. Tony was watching me.
"I'm going to find out who you are," I said. Not to Tony.
To the dark. The trees. The man with the neat handwriting who thought he could touch my family and disappear.
Tony's eyes held mine. He didn't argue. He didn't tell me to leave it to Lucas or Dominic or the FBI.
He nodded.
Because he knew what I was. He'd always known.
Outside, the dark pressed against the glass. The motion sensors blinked green along the tree line. Somewhere in the meadow, a guard walked without sound.
The fortress was up. The walls were tight. The cameras were watching.
But the man with the dead flowers had already been inside once. And the question that kept me standing at that window, staring into the black, was simple.
How do you keep a monster out of a house made of glass?