7. Reluctant Allies #2
We make eye contact across the street, and for a moment, I think she’ll run.
Instead, she glances over both shoulders again—what is she looking for?
—then slips between parked cars toward me.
She moves like a wild animal, tense and careful.
Up close, she looks even more worn out than I remember, with dark circles under her eyes.
“You shouldn’t be standing out in the open,” she hisses, grabbing my elbow and tugging me toward the narrow space between the clinic and the neighbouring building. My instinct says to resist, but something in her urgency overrides my common sense.
“What exactly is going on, Marta?” I ask as she pulls me deeper into the shadows. The brick wall feels cold against my back, a sharp contrast to the morning sun we’ve just abandoned. “Why are you acting like we’re in some spy movie?”
“People talk in this town,” she mutters, fidgeting with that red leather notebook she always carries. Her fingers trace its worn edges with obsessive precision. “They watch. They listen. Especially when you start asking questions about things they don’t want you to know.”
My mouth goes dry. “Are you talking about the estate? About someone… keeping watch over it?” The last words come out barely above a whisper, but they hang in the air between us like smoke.
Her eyes widen, pupils dilating with surprise.
“Well, look who finally joined the party,” she says, a half-smile twisting her chapped lips.
The tension in her shoulders eases slightly, like she’s been carrying a boulder that just got a fraction lighter.
“Took you long enough to notice the guy living in your walls.”
“I’m still piecing it together,” I admit, watching her eyes dart between me and the alley entrance.
“But yeah, there’s definitely someone there.
Looking out for me.” I chew my lip, then just say it: “Last night? Some assholes showed up with gas cans. He scared them off before they could torch my place.”
Marta nods, as if this is exactly what she expected to hear. Her hands still their nervous dance long enough to unzip her ratty backpack and extract a folded paper, its edges soft from handling. “Here,” she says, thrusting it toward me with trembling fingers. “You need this more than I do now.”
I unfold it carefully. The paper crackles between my fingers, worn thin at the creases from repeated handling.
Crooked lines in faded pencil trace familiar routes: Main Street with its sharp bend by the post office, the winding path through Memorial Park, the jagged outline of the pier.
Red ink blooms in circles across the page, some as small as a thumbprint, others spanning entire blocks.
Near the general store: “he watches the back alley.” By the elementary school: “safe after dark.” Along the creek: “he follows if you’re alone. ”
“What is this?” I ask, though I already have a sinking feeling I know the answer.
Marta’s breath tickles my ear as she leans in.
“Sanctuaries,” she whispers. “His territories. The places he keeps an eye on.” Her chipped black nail polish catches the light as she taps the largest circle in the centre of the map, my estate, without question.
“Your house is ground zero. His home base.”
My throat tightens as I flash back to the tower room, those leather-bound journals stacked beside the window overlooking the entire property, the chair positioned perfectly for someone to sit and observe for hours. “He lives in my house? In that watch tower?”
Marta’s fingers trace invisible lines in the air, mapping pathways I can’t see.
“Crawlspaces behind the library shelves. Maintenance tunnels under the clinic. Old dumbwaiters.” Her eyes dart past my shoulder, her breath catching.
She freezes mid-gesture, head cocked like a sparrow sensing a hawk.
I strain to hear whatever made her pause, but catch only the distant hum of a passing car.
Her shoulders lower a fraction. “The night my stepdad came at me with the belt, someone left the cellar door unlocked. I hid there for three days. Found water. Granola bars. A blanket that wasn’t there before. ”
I squint at the map, connecting the dots in my mind as I recognize places. The little general store I visited on my first day here. The park bench where I fell asleep reading for two hours without worrying. Even that creepy creek path that should scare me, but somehow never does.
Marta’s voice drops to barely a whisper, her eyes darting to the shadows behind me. “He’s done this before, you know. Found people who were… broken. Vulnerable. Made himself their guardian when no one else would.”
I trace the red circle around my property with my fingertip, feeling the slight indentation in the paper where Marta had pressed down hard with her pen. “If he’s watching over me, there must be something he’s watching for. What exactly is out there that I need protection from?”
Marta’s eyes darken, something like fear, or maybe anger, flashing across her face. “The town has secrets. Old ones.” Her fingers twist together nervously. “Some people want to keep them buried. They don’t like it when outsiders start digging.”
“People like Mayor Garrow?”
Her head snaps up, her gaze suddenly focused with laser intensity. “Don’t say his name out loud. Not here.” Her fingers clutch at my wrist, bony and cold. “He has people everywhere.”
Before I can answer, voices drift toward us from the main street: someone’s husband bought the wrong cheese again, and someone else’s tomato plants are finally flowering after that weird cold snap.
Just everyday small-town drama. But Marta freezes, her limbs locking mid-fidget like someone pressed her pause button.
“I have to go,” she whispers, already backing deeper into the alley. “Keep the map hidden. Don’t let anyone see you looking at it.”
“Wait,” I call after her, keeping my voice low. “How do you know all this? Who told you about him?”
For a moment, she pauses, one hand braced against the brick wall.
“I figured it out myself,” she says, her voice dropping to barely a whisper.
Her eyes hold the weary knowledge of someone who’s survived by noticing what others miss.
“When you spend enough time in shadows, you start to recognize who else lives there.”
Then she’s gone, vanishing through a crack between buildings I swear wasn’t there a second ago. I blink at the empty space where she stood, my fingers still gripping this weird map that’s either total teenage bullshit or the answer to why my floorboards creak when nobody’s walking on them.
I fold the paper with shaking hands and put it in my pocket, though part of me wants to look at it again right here.
Two older women turn the corner, their curious eyes landing on me.
I give a weak smile, torn between wanting to run and wanting to ask if they know about the man in my walls.
Small towns always watch, but never tell what they know.
Back in my car, I pull out the map again and spread it over my steering wheel.
My finger traces each red circle, connecting the dots.
It hits me that these spots aren’t just random; they’re like checkpoints.
The corner where the high school kids wait for buses.
That creepy alleyway behind the bar. The jogging path where nobody can hear you scream.
Places where bad stuff could go down without anyone stepping in.
And right in the middle, with a circle so dark the pen nearly tore through the paper, sits my place. Not just another spot on his watch list, but the whole damn command centre. Ground zero for whatever the hell he’s been up to all this time.
I trace the outline of the estate on the map and can’t shake the feeling that he’s watching me as I figure things out. It should creep me out, but instead I feel a strange warmth in my stomach. For the first time since I got here, I don’t feel like I’m facing everything alone.
My tires crunch over the gravel driveway as I pull up to the estate, Marta’s map burning a hole in my pocket and Dr. Rao’s revelations simmering in my brain. Great. Now I’ve got confirmation from two separate sources that my house has a bodyguard with a hero complex.
The evening sun casts shadows across the lawn, making the estate look like the cover of a Gothic romance novel, all dramatic angles and moody lighting.
It’s the perfect backdrop for the next surprise, which is apparently waiting for me in human form.
Nora sits on my porch steps surrounded by stacks of what look like old newspapers in clear protective sleeves, her usual bubbly demeanour replaced by something that makes my stomach drop.
She looks up as I approach. “You’ve been busy today,” she calls, her voice wavering between accusation and concern.
Her eyes track me with unnerving focus, then dart away, then back again, as if she’s fighting her own instinct to observe.
When our gazes lock, I see something I recognize: the look of someone who doesn’t know whether to trust their own judgment anymore.
“I could say the same for you,” I counter, gesturing at the papers spread around her like fallen autumn leaves. “Spring cleaning at the archives?”
She doesn’t smile. “I think it’s time we had a real conversation, Elara.” Her fingers tap against a yellowed newspaper, the headline partially visible: “LOCAL TEACHER VANISHES WITHOUT TRACE.” The date: 1978.
I sit down next to her on the steps, careful not to mess up her stacks of papers.
Nora looks exhausted, like she hasn’t slept in days.
Her usual bright clothes are gone, replaced by a dull gray cardigan that almost says, 'don’t look at me.
' The woman who once cornered me at the grocery store to talk about the historical society bake sale is gone, and whoever this is, she’s carrying something heavy.