"They didn't break in. They—" I stop. What's the better word? "The cameras didn't catch anything."
"That's worse. That means whoever it is knows where the cameras are. This isn't notes anymore. Someone stood in your house in the middle of the night and carved your name into a wall."
I tap my thumbnail against my teeth. "I'm aware."
"Then come stay with me. A week. Two weeks. Let Liam and his people handle it."
The thing about Del is that she's never wrong. She was right about my ex. She was right about the event planning agency. She was right when she said you need to go see that house after Margit's lawyer called.
And she might be right about this.
The thought lands in my chest like something heavy and cold. I might need to leave. I might need to pack a bag, lock the door, drive away from Sycamore Lane. From the parlor with its freshly painted wall. The kitchen where I've stress-baked enough banana bread to feed the block. The bedroom with the yellow bedspread and the man in it.
The fact that I'm considering it—even for a second—makes something hot and sharp rise in my throat.
"Margit didn't leave," I say.
The silence on Del's end is heavy.
"She got notes too. Oren told me. She got threatening notes, and she stayed. She stayed because this was her home, and some developer with shell companies and rotating suits doesn't get to decide?—"
"Kari." Del's voice is quiet now. Gentle in a way that scares me more than the shouting. "Margit is dead."
The kitchen is very still. The bread is cooling. The oven ticks. Somewhere in the house, a pipe groans, and I don't talk back to it.
"I'm not leaving," I say. My voice comes out steady, which is a miracle of engineering. "But I hear you. Okay? I hear you."
"Promise me you'll think about it."
"I promise I'll think about it."
I won't. But I'll let her believe I will, because that's what love looks like sometimes—letting people believe the thing that lets them sleep.
The afternoon unspools in the way afternoons do now—half domestic, half surveillance. Liam checks the camera feeds on his phone. I sand a section of baseboard in the upstairs hallway with Patricia, who whirs gamely despite the tension. Liam brings me water without being asked. I make sandwiches without being asked. We orbit each other in the Foxglove's narrow hallways, and every time we pass, his hand finds the small of my back. Brief. Warm. A checkpoint.
We don't talk about the wall. We don't talk about Del's phone call or the dead bird he thinks I don't know about. We talk about the baseboard. The grout in the upstairs bathroom. Whether Oren's coffee cake is better than Nina's drip brew, which is a question with no correct answer and therefore the safest possible conversation.
Almost normal. Except for the way Liam's gaze tracks to the windows every few minutes. Except for the way I flinch at a car door on the street, then pretend I didn't.
Except for the fact that I'm wearing my own shirt instead of his henley, and we both know why, and neither of us says it.
We're in the kitchen—me at the counter slicing bread for Oren's loaf, Liam leaning against the doorframe—when his phone buzzes differently. Not the steady pulse of a text. A sharp, insistent vibration that makes his whole body change. Spine straight. Jaw set. Eyes going flat in a way I've only seen twice.
"What is it?"
He reads the screen. Something shifts behind his eyes—a calculation, a decision.
"Line 13," he says.
I don't know all of HPG's protocols. I know enough. Line 13 means an emergency that pulls resources. Line 13 means Liam has to go.
"How long?"
"I don't know." He pushes off the doorframe, already moving. "Reese is on standby. I'll have him here in?—"
"Go."
He stops. Looks at me. Those gray eyes are doing something complicated. He doesn't want to leave. The not-wanting is written in every line of him—the set of his shoulders, the way his hand tightens around his phone, the scar on his forearm catching the light as his muscles tense.
