Chapter Fourteen—Lorna
THE DEPUTIES ARRIVE forty minutes after Willa’s call. Two cruisers park at the end of the gravel drive, and a third takes a position on the county road below the property. Willa walks them through the perimeter while I finish packing.
I’ve been in the bedroom with the curtains closed. My suitcase is open on the bed, and I’m folding clothes with a precision I don’t normally bother with because my hands need something deliberate to do.
I pack chargers, my laptop, the toiletry bag from the bathroom, and my medication. I count items instead of thinking about what I’m packing to leave.
This is the second time in a month I’ve packed a bag to run from the same person.
Chris is in the guesthouse. Willa told him to stay there, and from the kitchen window I can see part of his porch. He’s sitting on the steps with his bag beside him. I don’t know if he’s watching the trees or the lodge or nothing at all.
I close the suitcase and carry it downstairs.
Willa is at the kitchen table with her laptop, coordinating something by phone. She covers the mouthpiece when she sees me. “Destination is confirmed. Private rental, two hours north. The owner is a former client.”
“When do we leave?”
“As soon as the deputies clear the property perimeter.” She checks the time. “Twenty minutes, probably less.”
I set the suitcase near the door and go back to the kitchen. My coffee from this morning is still on the counter where I abandoned it. Cold now. I pour it out and rinse the mug.
The kitchen window faces the side yard and the tree line beyond the low stone wall. Late morning light slants through the oaks. The leaves have turned enough that the woods are thinner than when I arrived, and I can see farther between the trunks than I could two weeks ago.
A man is standing at the edge of the tree line.
I grip the mug harder. He’s maybe sixty yards from the house, on the far side of the stone wall, partially behind a large oak. He isn’t hiding. He’s standing where he can see the kitchen window, and he’s looking directly at me.
He’s wearing a dark jacket and jeans. No hat, no face covering.
I know him.
Fenton Grey is standing in my yard.
“Willa.” My voice comes out controlled, which surprises me.
She looks up from the laptop.
“He’s here.”
Willa is beside me in three seconds. She looks through the window, and recognition crosses her face.
“Go upstairs,” she says.
“No.”
“Lorna.”
“I’m not running from him inside my own house.” I set the mug in the sink. “Where’s my phone?”
“On the table.”
I pick it up and open the camera. My hands are shaking, but I switch to video and hold the phone below the window frame where it won’t be obvious from outside.
Willa has her weapon drawn. She moves toward the front door. “Stay behind me. Stay inside.”
“I’m recording.”
“Good.” She opens the front door and steps onto the porch. I stay in the doorway behind her, phone aimed through the gap between the frame and her shoulder.
Fenton hasn’t moved. He’s watching the front of the house now, and when Willa appears with her weapon, he doesn’t flinch.
He’s wearing clothes I’ve never seen on him before, not the pressed shirts and tailored trousers he wore to Chris’s office.
He looks different without the professional costume, and I try to see what I missed.
The face is the same. The posture is the same. He stands as he always stood when he was waiting for Chris to finish a call, shoulders back, weight even, hands at his sides.
He’s calm.
That’s what terrifies me. He has driven hours to reach this property. He knows the police are looking for him. He knows there’s a warrant. He came anyway, on foot, through the woods, and he is standing in my yard as though he has an appointment.
“Fenton.” Willa’s voice carries across the yard. “Stay where you are.”
He looks past her. At me.
“Lorna.” He says my name as though he’s greeting me at a dinner party. “You look rested.”
My stomach lurches.
“I told you to stay where you are,” Willa says.
“I haven’t moved.” He spreads his hands slightly, palms forward. “I’m not armed.”
“That’s not your decision to make.” Willa keeps the weapon level. “The police are on their way.”
“I know.” He doesn’t look concerned. “I saw the cruisers on the county road. They’re down by the intersection. It’ll take them a few minutes.”
He planned the timing. He waited until the deputies were at the far end of the perimeter check before approaching from the opposite side.
“You need to leave this property,” Willa says.
He ignores her. He watches me. “You don’t remember me.”
I keep the phone steady. “Should I?”
“We worked together. Briefly. I was an assistant on two of your shoots and a photographer on another.” He speaks as though he’s reminding me of a shared acquaintance at a reunion.
“You wore a green dress at the third one. It was the wrong shade for your skin, and you told the stylist the same thing I was thinking before she could pin the first hem.”
The green dress. I remember a shoot where the stylist and I disagreed about color. I don’t remember the photographer or any assistant.
“That was you,” I say. I need him talking. Everything he says on this recording is evidence.
“Timothy Farris. I went by Tim then.” He takes one step closer.
“Stop.” Willa shifts her stance.
He stops. “I’m not going to hurt her.”
“You broke into her home.”
His expression changes for the first time. Irritation, brief and quickly suppressed. “That was a mistake. I wasn’t supposed to wake her.”
The words land on me with physical force. He wasn’t supposed to wake me. I was supposed to sleep through it. Through whatever he did while I was unconscious on my hallway floor.
“What were you doing in our apartment?” I ask. My voice stays level, but my free hand is gripping the door frame hard enough that the wood bites my fingers.
“I needed to see where you lived.” He says it simply. “I’d seen photographs, but I needed to understand the space. How you moved through it. Where you kept things.”
“That’s why you were in the kitchen?”
“Among other rooms.”
Willa takes a step to her right, putting more of her body between him and the doorway. “Lorna, go inside.”
“Not yet.” I hold the phone steadily. “The gifts. The perfume. The messages.”
He tilts his head slightly. “You liked the ceramics.”
I did. Before they frightened me, before I understood that someone was watching my purchases and sending alternatives to my home, I liked two of the pieces. I never told Chris that.
“You watched my newsletter,” I say.
“I read everything you’ve written.” There’s warmth in his voice that makes my skin crawl. “You’re a good writer. Better than people give you credit for. The Lisbon piece was exceptional.”
Chris mentioned the Lisbon piece at dinner months ago, after Camille told him about the newsletter. Fenton was in the room when Chris said it.
“You were listening the whole time,” I say. “When Chris talked about my work. When I called his phone. When Willa sent her reports.”
“I was doing my job.” His tone shifts, cooler now. “I managed his life. That included managing everything connected to it.”
“Including me.”
He doesn’t deny it. “You weren’t supposed to be unhappy. I was trying to give you things Aldren never noticed you wanted.”
He said Aldren, not Chris, not “your husband.”
“You sent me perfume I’m allergic to.”
For the first time, something that looks like genuine frustration crosses his face. “That was an error. You changed brands, and the reformulated version had different ingredients. I didn’t have your allergy list.”
He’s annoyed with himself for getting the perfume wrong. Not for sending it. For getting it wrong.
“Timothy.” Willa’s voice is harder now. “The deputies will be here in under two minutes. You need to leave the property.”
He looks at Willa for the first time with any real attention. “You’re competent. I respected that about you. That’s why I had to limit your access.”
“You terminated my contract.”
“I adjusted the situation.” He looks back at me. “She would have found me eventually. I needed more time.”
“More time for what?” I ask.
“To help you realize he wasn’t the right one for you.”
The sentence is so quiet that I almost miss it. Then the meaning registers, and my grip on the phone falters for half a second.
“I was helping you.” He takes another step.
Willa raises the weapon higher. “He didn’t see you.
He didn’t listen to you. He delegated you to me, and I was the only person who actually paid attention.
I know what you order for breakfast and what you listen to while you cook.
You stop sleeping when he travels and sit on the couch at three in the morning with the television off. ”
The three a.m. detail goes through me. Fenton knew because he was watching. Cameras, apps, and some access I haven’t found yet. He knew I was awake in the dark.
“To realize he wasn’t right for you,” Fenton says. “You were already seeing him differently. Every time he dismissed you or chose work over you, you understood a little more. I only needed you to stop making excuses for him.”
I swallow as my fear increases. “And then what?”
His expression softens. “You would’ve been ready for me.”
“Fenton.” Willa’s voice cuts through. “Last warning. Leave the property or I will use force.”
He looks at the weapon, then at Willa, then at me. For several seconds, nobody moves. “I’ll go.” He speaks to me, not to Willa. “This isn’t how I wanted us to talk.”
“There is no us.”
His expression doesn’t change. “There will be.”
He turns and walks back toward the tree line. His pace is unhurried, almost leisurely, as though he’s leaving a garden party early rather than retreating from an armed woman.
I keep recording until he disappears into the woods.
Willa doesn’t lower the weapon until he’s been out of sight for a full minute. Then she steps back inside, closes the door, and locks it.
“Did you get all of that?” she asks.
I stop the recording. “Yes.”
“Send it to Stone and save a copy.”
I do both with hands that won’t hold still. The file is four minutes and thirty-seven seconds long.
Willa is already on the phone. “Tremaine. Subject appeared on the property on foot from the eastern tree line. Departed east approximately ninety seconds ago. Armed response needed for pursuit. I have the entire encounter recorded.”
She gives a description, direction of travel, and the property coordinates while I sit on the bottom stair and hold my phone against my knee.
Chris appears on the porch of the guesthouse. He must have heard voices. Willa sees him through the kitchen window and shakes her head once.
He stays where he is.
The deputies reach the lodge within three minutes. Willa walks them through the tree line while I stay inside with one of the officers. Fenton is gone. No vehicle nearby. No trail they can follow in the leaf cover.
He walked in, and he walked out, and somewhere in the woods he’s still close enough that I want to lock every window in this house.
Willa comes back inside. “We’re leaving now. Not twenty minutes. Now.”
I pick up my suitcase.
Chris crosses the yard with his bag. He looks at me through the open door, the question plain on his face.
“He was here,” I say. “I talked to him. Willa had her weapon drawn.”
Chris’s face drains. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” I pick up my laptop bag. “I recorded the whole thing.”
“What did he say?”
I look at him, and for a second I consider not answering. Then I say the only part that matters right now.
“He said he was waiting for me to be ready for him.”
Chris closes his eyes.
Willa steps between us. “Car. Now. Both of you.”
I follow Willa to her SUV. Chris takes the back seat without being told. I sit in the front and hold my phone with the recording in my lap.
We pull out of the gravel drive, past the deputies, and onto the county road. I don’t look back at the lodge.
It was mine. It was the one place I chose for myself, and he found it because my husband handed him the map.
I press the phone into my lap and watch the road ahead.