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Mostly, the anger is at myself. I might hate the people in Kamden’s life who don’t do enough, but I’m the fucking reason he is where he is now, how he is now, and just—fuck.

I knew enough about Sherry to know John was scared of what she could do. I knew enough that a dying man used some of his last breaths to ask me to get his son away from her. And yet here I am, discovering basic facts about Kamden from fifty feet away in a grocery store eleven years later.

I spend another several hours watching him without letting him see me.

Normally, surveillance becomes boring quickly because people are boring.

They go to work. They eat. They look at their phones. They drive the same routes, complain to the same people, and buy the same coffee every morning because humans mistake predictability for safety.

Kamden, though, is predictable in ways that make me uneasy and remind me constantly how much I’ve failed.

He takes his break at 10:43, and eats almost nothing. When he returns, he moves through the store efficiently, doing the work of three jobs while everyone around him appears to do barely even one. He smiles at customers when spoken to, and drops it the second they turn away.

He’s visibly fearful of older, larger men. I can’t be sure whether that’s because Rossi fits that bill, or because Sherry’s parade of shitty boyfriends over the years has had something to do with it.

If I had to guess, I’d say both have contributed.

When a man walks through the front entrance at 1:03, Kamden ducks behind a magazine display until he passes. At 1:15, a black sedan cruises through the parking lot and Kamden stops what he’s doing to watch it through the glass. Twenty minutes later, it happens again.

Seeing how most of the Greco men drive dark cars with tinted windows, I’d say that fear definitely stems from Thursday.

At least half the threats Kamden believes he sees today are imaginary. The problem is that I am here, which means the paranoia is not entirely paranoia.

He’s right to be scared, but I can’t say I enjoy it.

At 2:40, I watch from another checkout lane as a gray-mustached man brushes Kamden’s fingers while handing him cash, and Kamden jerks away like he’s been burned.

Kamden apologizes with his hands still trembling.

I have spent the past day learning what I can without alerting Mathias to the fact that my interest is personal, and probably much more personal than he might have guessed.

The file he handed over covered the basics. It’s not like I need to know much about someone before killing them.

But I’m not planning on killing Kamden, so I acquire everything I can get my hands on.

I liked the picture of him at his high school graduation so much that I saved it on my phone. He just looks so happy in it, giving the camera a sweet, shy smile while clutching his diploma, those baby blue eyes bright.

He works here at a chain grocery store between 25 and 35 hours a week, depending on the schedule.

He doesn’t appear to have any social media. No Facebook, no Instagram, nothing under his name or any variation of it that I can find. I also haven’t seen him interact with anyone like he’s friends with them. He says hello to coworkers, but that’s about it.

At 3:58, Kamden clocks out and exits the store into the parking lot. He walks toward the bus stop, head down, hands in his pockets.

Halfway across the lot, though, he notices my car. He stops mid-step, faltering like a deer when it hears a branch snap in the woods. He then makes a point of not looking my way as he quickens his pace to join the others waiting.

“Shit.”

I haven’t done anything wrong on my end.

I parked far enough from the entrance, two rows back, nose out. Changed position once, from near the cart corral to behind a delivery truck that left at noon. Never followed too closely. Never let him catch my face. The windows are tinted to the legal limit, and I’ve kept my cap on since breakfast.

But Kamden is operating on a level of vigilance that makes conventional surveillance difficult.

I start the engine, wait thirty seconds, and let a minivan pass before pulling out normally, easing over the speed bumps, and passing the bus shelter without looking toward him.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him standing there with his back to the shelter wall, watching traffic instead of his phone.

I don’t turn my head, even when his gaze is practically locked on my vehicle.