I watch her do it Wednesday afternoon.
On the walk from the Chronicle to the rink, I'm thirty feet behind her because I leave Addison's building at the same time. She doesn't know I'm there.
At the library steps, her head turns left. Bench by the fountain. Arboretum entrance. Eastern path. Two-second hold before she moves on. Her bag shifts higher on her shoulder, and her hand lands closer to her phone.
Her stride never changes. That's what fucks with me.
Anyone else would miss it. They'd see Maya Maddox crossing campus with her chin up and her bag on her shoulder and think she looks fine. One sweep in six seconds. The route to the rink doors already mapped. Every plan Maya approved says she should be safe.
The plan is working. She still scans every walkway between the Chronicle and the rink.
Marco's people are watching. Maya knows about it. She set the rules. Full visibility.Show me every text before you read it.Marco's men, the part she grudgingly accepts, are tracking David Ashford's general movements. Location pings. Broad strokes.
It's not enough.
Wednesday night, I can't sleep.
Beside me, Cole sleeps with Maya between us, in the bed that holds three. Their breathing has fallen into the same slow rhythm, each inhale answering the other in the dark. Cole's handrests on my hip. Maya's back is against my chest, warm through her shirt, her hair tucked beneath my chin.
They sleep with Maya's pulse beating soft against my forearm. My eyes stay open.
Six days, the Chronicle entrance, the arboretum path, the distance between the press-box stairs and the nearest unlocked door—I count all of it.
The hearing is next Wednesday. Six days. In six days, a judge will review the evidence and decide whether a piece of paper is sufficient to keep a man who already violated a no-contact order, already found his daughter's address, already found her campus, already walked into her building.
That kind of paper didn't stop him before. The original no-contact order was issued when Maya was thirteen. He found her anyway. He found the new name, the new city, the new campus mailbox. He found all of it because men like him don't stop. My father treats the legal system as an obstacle to be navigated; Ashford has learned the same language.
Marco's people produce general awareness. Richard's plan produces a hearing in six days. Neither plan tells me whether David Ashford is parked outside the Chronicle right now.
I slide out of bed carefully. Maya shifts but doesn't wake. Cole's hand falls from my hip to the mattress, his fingers flexing once against the sheet before going still. After pulling on sweats, I leave the bedroom.
The hallway is dark. The house is quiet. The kitchen clock says 2 AM.
This is the room where Maya sits on the counter and I stand at the stove while Cole sits at the table. Maya's mug waits in the drying rack. Cole's jacket hangs over the chair. A draft slips under the back door I keep meaning to fix.
My phone is on the counter.
The number is not in my contacts. I deleted it six years ago, but the ten digits stayed where Marco put them in my head after Milan, after espresso, after a seventeen-year-old version of me understood that some lessons in my family were never written down.
Men like this ask for an address and a timeline.
My jaw aches. I've been clenching it in my sleep, waking with the muscles locked and pressure buried behind my molars while my hands stay open at my sides.
Six days until the hearing. David Ashford found the Chronicle in one. One visit. One card. One polite conversation with a receptionist.
Campus security monitors entrances and parking lots. It monitors flagged doors and plate numbers and the places civilized people expect danger to announce itself. A man can park three blocks away and walk. The arboretum path stays open. Eight years in a cell is enough time to study how systems breathe.
My hand closes around the phone. My thumb hovers over the keypad.
Maya is asleep.
Then I dial the number.
It rings three times. A male voice answers, flat and without greeting.
"I need information on a man in Briarcliff, Massachusetts," I say. My voice is steady, the same voice I use on the ice when everything narrows to the next play. "His name is David Ashford. I need his current address. His daily patterns. Where he goes, who he sees, what he drives. Surveillance only. For now."
"Timeline?" the voice asks.
