She lifts that chin and I want to cup my hand around the back of her neck and pull her close and tell her that no one is ever going to sit in her kitchen again without going through me first.
But that's not professional. That's a man who has spent over a week watching a woman talk to plumbing and name power tools and leave the pillow wall down, and somewhere between the snickerdoodles and the way she taps her thumbnail against her teeth, he lost the plot entirely.
"I don't need a bodyguard who keeps me in the dark," she says. "I need someone who treats me like I can handle my own life."
"You can handle your own life. You can't handle someone who breaks in while you're in the shower."
"So what — you never leave? You stand at my door until they get bored?"
"If that's what it takes."
"That's not a plan, that's a cage."
"It's not a cage, it's a perimeter."
"Liam." She says my name like she's holding it between her teeth. "You don't get to decide what risks I take."
She's right. And the fact that my instinct is to lock down and control without consulting the person at the center of it — that's not training. That's fear wearing a tactical vest.
"Okay." Her eyebrows lift. She wasn't expecting surrender. "I should have told you where I was going. From now on, you know what I know."
"All of it?"
"All of it."
She studies me. The tension in her shoulders doesn't fully release. But she nods.
"I'm making dinner," she says, which is not forgiveness but adjacent. "You're helping."
She walks past me — close enough that the coconut scent of her shampoo cuts through the smell of drill dust. Close enough that my hand almost reaches for her.
I let her go.
In the kitchen, she bangs pots around with pointed authority. I chop vegetables because she told me to and because the alternative is standing there cataloguing the way anger makes her move faster, sharper, more precise. She's reaching for the colander when her bare foot catches the exposed pipe under the sink — the one she was negotiating with days ago.
She hisses. Grabs her foot. Looks down at the pipe.
"Sorry," she tells it. "That was my fault."
The pipe she kicked. She apologized to it.
Something in my chest cracks. Not breaks — cracks. The way concrete cracks before it gives.
The cameras feed green. All angles covered. Pin locks on every window. Her bedroom finally secured. The Foxglove is as locked down as a Victorian B&B can be without a moat.
It's not enough.
Because whoever walked in today didn't force a lock. They moved through this house like they knew something about its bones that even Kari doesn't — a loose hatch, a window with a trick, a way in I haven't found.
And they waited. Watched me leave. Counted the minutes. The kind of patience that separates amateurs from people who do this for a living.
The letter in its zip-lock bag. This offer will not be extended again. Not a purchase offer. A deadline.
My phone screen glows. Six camera feeds, all green, all clear.
I should call Vance. Tell him I'm compromised. Tell him to send anyone whose chest doesn't constrict every time this woman laughs at something only she finds funny.
My thumb hovers over his contact.
