About the way her name looked in print. About the way she moved in the footage I had seen of her—fast, clipped, never quite at rest, like her brain was always three steps ahead of her body.
Tallulah Gentry.
I watch her window in my mind again, the way it looked tonight.
The sad little pretend tree, more wire than branches. The cheap white lights. A single ornament that looked like it mattered swinging near the floor—tiny hummingbird, glass wings catching the light. She held it like something fragile and sacred when she took it out of the box.
I watched her hang it.
She took something from me. Not my brother—I could have done that myself, someday, when he stopped being useful. She took the luxury of anonymity. She took the joy of being the only one in on the joke. She turned my story into a cautionary tale for law enforcement seminars.
Now they whisper my name like it’s a password.
Henry Thurston.
It’s not the name that bothers me. It’s the way they say it. Like they discovered something. Like they earned it.
She did, I suppose. I’ll give her that. She earned the right to be on my list.
She’s a loose end. An unfinished thread. A bright, annoying bookmark sticking out of the middle of a book, reminding you where you stopped.
I try to imagine just…leaving her.
I could let her sit in that apartment, wrap herself in those old memories, build a new life out of small-town routines and cheap coffee and cops who think they can keep her safe. Let her age. Fade. Become a story other people tell at dinner parties.
Remember that girl? The one who helped catch that killer? Whatever happened to her?
My hands tighten on the wheel until the tendons stand out.
I can’t do it. Coming back to Lucy Falls was inevitable.
This town is mine in a way those other places never were. I know its angles. Its blind spots. Its habits. Where the snow piles, where the sirens echo, how long it takes for a cruiser to get from the edge of town to the apartment complex on the south side when the sheriff’s already on the road.
Three minutes.
I timed it tonight.
Three minutes between her whisper—he’s here—and the first wash of red and blue across her ceiling.
Three minutes where it was just her and me and a pane of cheap, breakable glass.
She thinks she won because I stepped back when the lights hit.
She doesn’t understand it was a test. I wanted to see how fast they’d come.
How loud they’d be. How many.
She forgets that leaving is a choice.
She forgets that I know where she sleeps now. How she moves when she’s afraid. How her voice sounds when she’s trying not to cry.
My brother would have rushed it.
He would have broken the glass just to see her bleed. Would have made a mess for the thrill of it.
I’m not him. I can be patient.
I’ve worked alone for more than a year now. I know how to plan. How to adjust. How to disappear between acts. I’ve had time to think about what went wrong the first time and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
