Page 101 of No Good Fight

Then we reach the bedroom.

Every drawer is open.

Clothes hang over the edges. Socks are scattered across the floor. My underwear drawer has been dumped onto the bed and handled in a way that makes my stomach turn so hard I have to press a hand over my mouth. Ryder goes completely silent beside me.

That silence scares me more than rage would.

On my pillow, placed neatly in the center like a gift, is a photograph.

I know what it is before I pick it up.

Ryder says my name, but I already have it between my fingers. The picture is grainy and dark, taken through a window from outside his house. His living room window. Me asleep against his chest after the storm, my hair across his shirt, his arm wrapped around me.

Beneath it, in thick black marker, Preston wrote:

YOU DON’T DESERVE THIS.

For a second, I don’t feel anything.

Then I feel everything at once.

Ryder takes the photo from my hand before my fingers can crush it, holding only the corner. Remy appears in the doorway and stops when he sees Ryder’s face.

“He was outside your house,” I say.

Ryder doesn’t answer.

“He saw us.”

His eyes come to mine, and the apology there is so immediate and useless that I want to tear it out of him before it can become another thing he carries.

“No,” I say, voice shaking. “Don’t. Don’t make this your fault.”

“He got close enough to take this.”

“And today he tried to grab me in broad daylight.” I look at the clothes on my bed, the open drawers, the doorway where Remy is already calling for another evidence bag. “This isn’t about scaring me anymore.”

The truth sits there, ugly and undeniable.

My life is in danger.

Not theoretically or in the way an ex might want to scare me or take revenge because I damaged his ego. Not in a dramatic, maybe-I’m-being-paranoid way. A man put his hands on me and tried to drag me into my own apartment while Ryder listened helplessly through a phone.

I turn away from the bed before the underwear and the photo can finish ruining me. Mrs. Vance is still in the hall when we come out, giving a statement with the offended dignity of a woman whose afternoon television was interrupted by an attempted kidnapping. She’s also surrounded by police officers who look like they stepped out of a magazine spread, so she’s got to be feeling that.

“He had stupid shoes,” she tells Logan Pierce. “Write that down. Black with a white stripe. Cheap-looking. If you bring me a lineup of shoes, I’ll know immediately. Who wears shoes like that when they’re trying to kidnap someone.”

Remy’s mouth twitches despite everything.

Mrs. Vance points her cane at him. “Don’t you smirk at me, Officer Townsend. I saved that girl while half this building was peeking through door cracks like cowards.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Remy says.

Ryder keeps his hand at the small of my back, not pushing, just there. The pressure steadies me enough to stand in the hall while Logan photographs the threshold, the scuff marks, my dropped bag, and the place my shoulder hit the wall. I answer questions until my voice goes hoarse. Ryder doesn’t answer for me. He only corrects the timeline once, when my memory skips over the part where I told him the door was open.

By the time we leave, I’m carrying nothing from my apartment except my purse and the phone I almost lost.

Ryder opens the passenger door of his truck, and I stop before climbing in. My car sits two spaces over, harmless and wet under the gray sky.