I heard it’s Henry Thurston.
She knew exactly what that would do. She threw my name into the water and watched the ripples. Not to warn anyone. Not really.
To see what came back.
I almost answered there. Could have. It would’ve been easy to slip in under one of the throwaway handles, toss her a crumb.
He’s closer than you think, I could have said. That would have absolutelysentthem.
But I wanted this conversation where it is now: alone. Direct. No audience. No noise.
She worked for this. She deserves my full attention.
More typing dots. Then—
you’re not very subtle, you know
No, I’m not. Not with her.
Subtlety is for strangers. I spent the last year practicing on people who didn’t matter, places that meant nothing. Quiet towns. Forgettable women. That was rehearsal.
This is the show.
I tap out another line.
and you’re still curious
I don’t ask. I state.
There’s a small, jagged pleasure in it. In holding the shape of her inside my skull and knowing I’ve got the angles right.
She pretends otherwise. She’ll tell herself she’s doing this for the next girl, the way she did last time. She’ll wrap her obsession in civic duty and call it altruism.
We both know better.
Tallulah Gentry can’t stand an unresolved line of code.
I lean back in the motel chair and listen to the heater rattle. Somewhere in the room above me, somebody argues, a TV bleats the news too loud, and footsteps pound back and forth.
Transience. Noise. Background.
On my screen, the room we’re actually in is quiet. We’re just two names. Two cursors.
Nightjar and SmartLittleBird.
The sheriff’s name pops up in another window—a brief, encrypted notification from one of the feeds I still have tucked inside his department. He has a new patrol pattern. A new cruiser positioned outside her building. They’re trying, bless their hearts.
I saw the new variable earlier, too. The big man getting out of the unremarkable SUV. Broad shoulders, measured walk, cop eyesbut not a cop. I watched him stand on her sidewalk, scan her windows and the street, look up at the pathetic little tree like he was memorizing it.
He’s not from Lucy Falls. He doesn’t move like the locals. He’s heavier in a way that suggests intention, not laziness. There’s a particular way men walk when they know what it feels like to put someone through a wall.
Interesting.
I should be annoyed. It complicates things. Adds weight I didn’t plan on—one more object orbiting around my star.
Instead, I feel…awake.
They sent her a wall. How flattering. How desperate.
