Page 26 of No Good Fight

“Maybe.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“It’s tied to a woman who may be getting stalked.”

The typing stopped.

Remy’s voice changed. “You calling this in?”

I looked at the intersection where the SUV had vanished. “Not yet.”

“Ryder.”

“I don’t have enough, and she’s not reported anything that I’m aware of. Just terrified, even if she won’t admit it.”

“And you’re calling me because you’re famously relaxed when you don’t have enough?”

I didn’t answer.

He exhaled through his nose. “Give me a few.”

The call ended, and the silence in the truck immediately filled with Alex.

Her face in the coffee shop when that man said her name.

Her wrist under my fingers last night.

The way she’d looked at the window lock like it had betrayed her personally.

The flowers. The unlocked window. The late-night calls she tried too hard not to describe as calls. A familiar vehicle appearing and vanishing before she could turn fear into evidence that might protect her from whatever bullshit was going on.

I should’ve seen it sooner.

That thought crawled under my skin and stayed there.

I had noticed pieces. I was good at pieces of the whole. Smoke pattern near a baseboard. A door swollen wrong after heat exposure. A patient breathing too shallow before they crashed. I built entire emergencies out of small things most people missed. And I was good at it.

With Alex, I’d seen the pieces and told myself I was being careful.

Because she was Josh’s sister.

Because she’d already been hurt.

Because wanting to know whether her porch light was out after a storm wasn’t the same thing as needing to know she was taken care of.

Except I always knew.

I knew which nights she worked late because the newsroom lights stayed on past nine and her car was the last one in the lot. I knew she forgot to close her kitchen window when the weather turned warm. I knew she paced when she was on deadline and left the lamp on beside her couch when she was anxious.

None of that had felt strange before.

It had felt necessary.

That was the part I didn’t like looking at too long.

My phone buzzed twenty minutes later, after I’d made it back to the station and sat through ten minutes of Lieutenant Walsh asking about an incident report I couldn’t have repeated if my life depended on it.

Remy: No full hit. But I’ve got three possible vehicles in the county. One registered two towns over. One commercial. One local address.