I should call Vance in the morning. Recommend a rotation. Reese is available — solid operator, no personality to speak of, which in this case would be an asset. Kari would be safe. The cover story could be adjusted. It's the correct tactical decision.
The ceiling fan clicks.
Kari's fingers curl against my forearm in her sleep. Light. Unconscious. Like her hand went looking for something in the dark and found it.
I don't move.
I'm not going to call Vance. I already know that. The decision was made somewhere between holding drywall and fixing a drawer she hasn't noticed yet — somewhere in the long, ordinary hours of a day that had no business rearranging my priorities.
The correct tactical decision is obvious. The correct tactical decision is someone else. And I'm lying in the dark with a pillow wall collapsing against my ribcage, running threat assessments on my own judgment like it's a perimeter I can secure.
The ceiling fan clicks. Kari breathes. My thumb remembers her pulse.
I am in so much trouble.
Chapter 5
Kari
The pillow wall has surrendered.
Not gracefully — nothing about this arrangement is graceful. The bolster has migrated to the foot of the bed. Two pillows are on the floor. And my left hand is resting on Liam's forearm like it belongs there — tracing the cords of muscle, the warmth of skin over tendon.
It does not belong there.
Morning light comes through the curtains in long amber bars. The ceiling fan clicks. Somewhere on the street, Nina is unlocking her shop — the scrape of the deadbolt carries across the quiet like a starting gun.
I extract my hand. Slowly. Like I'm defusing something.
Liam doesn't stir. Or doesn't appear to stir. His breathing is too even, too controlled, and somewhere in the back of my skull a small voice suggests that a man who runs perimeter checks before dawn is probably not sleeping through direct physical contact. But that's a thought I'm not entertaining this morning, or any morning, so I file it under things I will never think about again and slide out of bed.
The floorboards creak. Millicent — the hallway wallpaper — watches me pad toward the bathroom. "Don't start," I tell her.
She always starts. Tiny faded roses on a yellowed ground, simultaneously judgmental and smug.
Downstairs, the kitchen smells like coffee.
This is the part that gets me.
Not the coffee itself — I can make my own coffee at hours that would concern a sleep specialist. It's that the coffee is already made. The pot is full. The mug I used yesterday is on the counter, clean, handle facing the direction I reach from. And the sticky drawer — the one by the stove that's been requiring a dish towel and an act of faith — slides open on the first pull. Smooth. Silent. Like it never stuck at all.
My thumbnail goes to my teeth.
The porch step that caught my ankle on Day 1. Level now. The pantry hinge that squealed every time. Quiet. The back screen door latch that rattled in the wind at night — the sound that kept jolting me out of half-sleep, heart hammering, certain someone was coming in. Tight now. Flush against the frame.
I never see him do any of it.
He doesn't mention it. Doesn't leave a list, doesn't fish for thanks. The repairs just appear, like the house is healing itself overnight, and if I didn't know better — if I hadn't caught the faint scratch of a multi-tool against hardware past midnight — I'd think Margit's ghost was finally getting around to the maintenance she'd been ignoring.
The coffee is strong and slightly bitter, which is exactly how I make it. He noticed.
I pour a cup and stand at the kitchen window. Gary stares back from his post in the front garden bed. "Morning, Gary." His expression suggests he has opinions about my sleeping arrangements.
The oven timer in my head clicks on. My hands need a project. And my kitchen has a working oven, three kinds of flour, and a butter supply that could feed a small nation.
Banana bread first. Then blueberry muffins, because there's a pint in the fridge that won't last another day. Then brown butter snickerdoodles, because the butter is already out and the rhythm of measuring and mixing and folding is the only thing between me and the low hum of anxiety that lives in my ribs these days.
By mid-morning, the kitchen looks like a bakery had a breakdown. Cooling racks cover every surface. Flour dusts the counter, the floor, my overalls, and somehow the inside of my left ear.
