Page 32 of No Good Fight

Still, it’s work. Work gives me something to do with my hands and brain that isn’t checking locks or wondering what Ryder is doing right now.

Probably saving a kitten from a tree.

Or lifting something heavy.

Or brooding in a way that is completely unfair to single women with active imaginations and unreliable vibrators.

I pack my bag before that thought can develop into anything worse.

The rain starts while I’m driving out of town. Not hard enough to be dramatic, just steady and gray, streaking across the windshield while the wipers drag back and forth with a squeak that makes my teeth hurt.

Mason Ridge sits beyond the grocery plaza and the storage units, far enough from downtown that the road narrows and the trees crowd closer to the shoulder. The complex is a long brick building with chipped stair rails, sagging gutters, and exterior lights that flicker even though dusk is still an hour away.

Charming.

Very welcoming.

Only slightly murdery.

I park near the front entrance, lock my car twice, and immediately feel ridiculous for checking the handle after the second chirp.

My first interview is with a young mother on the first floor who has a baby balanced on one hip and the hollow-eyed exhaustion of a woman who has asked for help too many times and stopped expecting it. She points to the smoke detector in the hallway outside her apartment. The cover hangs open. There’s no battery inside.

“It started chirping six months ago,” she says, bouncing the baby when he grabs at her necklace. “Maintenance came by, took the battery out, and said they’d replace the whole unit.”

“I take it they did not do that.”

She gives me a look more telling than mere words can convey.

Right.

I write that down.

The next tenant shows me the laundry room outlet with a dark scorch mark above it. He says the power flickers whenever both dryers run. A woman on the third floor tells me everyone uses space heaters because the building never warms evenly, which sounds like a sentence designed specifically to make a fire marshal develop high blood pressure.

By the time I reach Mrs. Henley in 2A, my notebook is damp at the edges from the rain, and the hallway smells like old carpet, wet drywall, and the kind of lemon cleaner people use when they’re trying to convince themselves something is cleaner than it is.

Mrs. Henley is tiny, silver-haired, and sharper than the pen clipped to my notebook. She sits in a recliner by the window with a mug of tea on the side table and a blanket tucked neatly over her knees.

“They’ll wait until someone dies,” she says before I finish turning on my recorder.

I blink at her. “The landlord?”

“The landlord. The city. Whoever signs forms and pretends paper makes people safer instead of actually doing something.” She tips her chin toward the hallway. “Lights go out when it rains. Wiring shorts happen more often than my knees cracking. Men wander in and out with toolboxes but nothing ever gets fixed. Nobody cares because most of us can’t afford to make anyone care.”

My pen pauses halfway across the page.

“Men with toolboxes?”

Mrs. Henley’s eyes sharpen, which tells me she hears the change in my voice.

“Some are maintenance,” she says. “They’re usually wearing a company shirt with the truck sitting in the parking lot outside, and they have a proper work order that needs someone to look at it. Lately, there have been other people too. No logo on anything, and their boots are too clean. They look around more than they fix anything.”

The room seems to cool despite the small lamp glowing beside her chair.

Ryder’s face flashes through my mind immediately, followed by the memory of him checking my deadbolt with his jaw tight and his eyes too focused to make sense.

“Did you report it?” I ask her instead of pulling out my phone to text him.