She took two steps in.The air held the faint scent of lavender polish, hydrangeas, the ghost of a place loved by someone else’s hands.The Kingsleys, presumably.Whoever they were.
She might have stood there longer, absorbing the strangeness of returning to a place both intimately familiar and utterly alien—until a sound snapped her back.
Voices.The static squelch of a radio.
Outside.
To the right of the house.
Kate’s pulse jolted.She spun, stepped back onto the porch, down the steps, boots crunching on the gravel path as she followed the sound around the corner.
And then they came into view.
A small cluster of people emerging alongside the garden shed, half in sunlight, half in shadow.
First: a tall man in his early forties, handsome in a diffident, exhausted-professor kind of way, his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows.He had a little girl’s hand clasped tightly in his own—protective, urgent.
The little girl, seven at most, with solemn dark eyes and a serious mouth, regarded Kate with the precise, measuring look of a child who has seen too much for her age.
Beside them: a woman, early thirties, striking, with auburn hair pinned up haphazardly, one hand pressed instinctively to the small swell of her pregnant belly.Sweat beaded along her temples.Fear clung to her, not loud but real.
A Lake Forest police officer—broad, uniformed, mid-forties—hovered near them, watchful.
And beside him—
Kate’s breath hitched.
A glamorous, sharp-featured young woman in a sleek navy suit.Black sunglasses pushed up into glossy dark hair.The cut of her jaw so precise it could have been engineered.She carried herself with the unmistakable confidence of federal training—and a kind of polished ferocity.She seemed familiar, for some reason. Kate had an idea that she’d seen her on the TV news.And something in her gaze suggested that she knew Kate, too.Knewofher, at least.
"Special Agent Valentine?"the FBI agent called out.Her voice was smooth, rich, and professional."I thought that might be you.I'm Simone Hirschfeld."
Kate approached slowly.“I’m Kate Valentine,” she confirmed.“I’m the one who called in the tip earlier today.This was my home.”
Laurence Kingsley—Kate assumed this had to be him, the registered homeowner—let out a strangled exhale, squeezing his daughter's hand.His wife leaned subtly against him, relief flickering across her face.
Hirschfeld stepped forward, offering a firm, warm handshake.“Then let me thank you personally,” she said.“Because thanks to your call, we got him.”
Kate blinked.“You… caught the guy?”
“Sure did.”Hirschfeld pulled her phone from her pocket with a dexterous flick, tapping the screen.“He was hiding out in one of the greenhouses on the property.Right under their noses.”
She held out the phone.
On screen: a bulky man in a black hoodie, baseball cap pulled low, face half-shadowed—being eased onto a stretcher beside a shattered greenhouse door.Blood soaked one thigh of his jeans.EMTs hovered over him.
“Who shot him?”Kate asked, eyebrows rising.
“He did,” Hirschfeld said.“When confronted.Tried to pull a weapon he clearly wasn’t trained to use.Bullet went straight through his thigh and missed the femoral artery by about half an inch.He’s in surgery now.Might be tomorrow before you can talk to him.”
“Whoever ‘he’ is,” interjected the cop, whose shirt label read O’HARE. “I know the face of just about every burglar, peeping tom and rough sleeper in the county, and he doesn’t ring any bells.No ID on him.Refused to give a name.”
Kate stared at the image.
Something felt off.
“His only weapon was a gun?”she asked quietly.
“Yes,” Hirschfeld replied, clearly surprised by the question.“Why?”
