Page 28 of No Good Fight

Then picked it back up ten seconds later and opened her profile.

I hated how easy it was to tell myself I was only checking for the potential risk.

By late afternoon, my shift was over, though leaving the station didn’t make me feel off duty. I drove toward home and missed the turn on purpose. Ten minutes later, I was passing Alex’s apartment building at a speed slow enough to annoy the truck behind me but not enough to get me honked at.

Routine.

That was what I called it.

The building looked normal at first glance. Brick exterior. Slightly uneven front steps. The half-dead planter by the entrance someone kept forgetting to water. I’d checked the place after storms since Alex moved in because the old windows leaked and the landlord handled maintenance like a personal insult to his sensibility.

Today, the front door was propped open.

Two men were inside the hall.

One wore a maintenance shirt I recognized from the property company. The other didn’t.

I pulled to the curb across the street and cut the engine.

The unfamiliar man stood near the stairwell with a toolbox in one hand, but nothing about him read like a guy working a job. His boots were too clean. His shirt had no logo. He wasn’t listening to the other worker so much as waiting for him to look away.

Then his gaze shifted down the hall.

Toward Alex’s door.

My hand was on my seat belt before I made a decision.

I crossed the street fast.

The familiar maintenance guy glanced up when I stepped inside. “Can I help you?”

“Fire department,” I said, which was technically true and strategically vague. “You guys working on alarms or something?”

“Leak in 2B,” he said. “Landlord sent us.”

The other man was already moving.

He turned toward the stairs without meeting my eyes, toolbox tucked close against his leg.

“Hey,” I called.

He didn’t run. Running would’ve made things easier. He just kept walking with the smooth, practiced speed of someone who knew exactly how much urgency looked like guilt and was keeping just to this side of it.

I followed him down the stairs and out the side exit.

By the time I reached the alley, he was already getting into a white work van with no company markings. I caught a partial plate as he pulled away, because apparently that was all the day wanted to give me.

Pieces.

Always pieces.

I stood in the alley with my fists tight at my sides and felt something hot and violent move through me.

Someone had been inside her building.

Near her door.

Close enough they could almost smell the soap she used, hear the floorboards that complained outside her kitchen, see the cheap brass number screwed crookedly into the wood. So close.