I sit in the truck and count entry points from the driver's seat.
Seven. And that's just the front facade.
I get out, lock the truck — because at least one of us has standards — and start toward the porch. The garden gnome watches me approach with an expression that suggests it's already judged my tactical assessment and found it lacking.
Three steps from the front door, I hear the argument.
One-sided. A woman's voice from somewhere inside and above — second floor, based on the acoustics. She's not yelling. She's reasoning. With something that is clearly not responding.
"— don't care what the wiring diagram says, you are going to cooperate, because I have already driven to the hardware store twice today and I am not doing it a third time, do you understand me?"
A pause. Then: "That's what I thought."
I push the front door all the way open. It gives without resistance — the strike plate is misaligned by a solid quarter inch, and the deadbolt is decorative at best. I could open this door with a firm suggestion.
The foyer smells like fresh paint and old wood and something floral that's either wallpaper paste or an ambitious air freshenerlosing its battle with a century of dust. Tools are scattered across a drop cloth near the stairs — a drill, a box of screws, a level optimistically placed against a wall that hasn't been level since the Roosevelt administration. A handwritten label on the drill reads Gerald.
She named her drill.
I file this under client behavioral profile and start up the stairs. The steps groan under my weight — structural fatigue, not charm.
I find her on the second-floor landing, standing on a stepladder that's too short for the ceiling height, wrestling with a light fixture that has no intention of cooperating. Auburn hair piled in a knot that's lost half its structural integrity. Paint-stained overalls over a t-shirt that might have been white before the renovation got personal. She's holding a screwdriver in one hand and a wire nut in the other, addressing the fixture with the disappointed patience of a kindergarten teacher dealing with a repeat offender.
"I'm giving you one more chance," she tells it. "One."
"Ms. Engstrom."
She startles. The stepladder shifts. I cover the distance in two steps and get a hand on the frame before it can commit to the wobble.
She looks down at me.
The rapid-fire catalog. Threat level: zero. Late twenties, five-six, slight build, no visible weapons unless you count the screwdriver. Freckles across the bridge of her nose. Brown eyes that manage to look simultaneously startled and curious, which shouldn't work as a combination but apparently does.
She also has a smudge of paint on her jaw, and I don't know why my brain decides to catalog that, but here we are.
"Oh," she says, recovering faster than most people do when a stranger appears in their unsecured house. "You're early."
"I'm — what?"
"For the reservation. I don't have any bookings yet, technically, but I did put the listing up last week, so if you found it through the website — " She waves the screwdriver at the crumbling building around us. "Obviously, we're still in the soft-launch phase. Very soft. Aggressively soft."
"I'm not here for a reservation."
"Are you sure? Because you look like someone who drove a long way to be somewhere specific."
She's not wrong, which irritates me.
"My name is Liam Cade. I'm with Halo Protective Group. Your friend Del Tsao contacted us about a security concern at this property."
The warmth in her expression shifts. Not to fear — which would be the appropriate response for a woman alone in a house with a stalker — but to mild exasperation.
"Del called a security company."
"She did."
"A security company."
"That is what I said."
