Something cold and hard settled in Anson’s chest. A familiar feeling—the calm before violence. The same stillness that came over him in the military before defusing a bomb or in prison before a fight. Every instinct screamed to find this man and eliminate the threat permanently. To hunt him down and make sure he never spoke to Maggie again, never breathed her name, never thought about her without remembering pain.
But Maggie was shaking beside him.
She didn’t need his fury right now.
She needed his steadiness.
He took the phone from her deathgrip and set it face down on the bedside table. Then he simply sat with her in silence, his shoulder barely touching hers.
“It’s not true,” she whispered. “What he said about everyone forgiving him, except me? And we didn’t build a goddamn thing together.Ibuilt it, and he fucked his career and nearly ruined mine with his temper and drug use. The network won’t take him back, and he thinks it’s because I won’t sign on. That’s the only reason he wants me. Instead of taking ownership of his poor choices, he blames me.” She exhaled shakily and scrubbed her hands over her face. “I don’t know how he got this number. I changed it before I left.”
“Maggie.” He waited until she dropped her hands and looked at him. “Let us help.”
She gave a bitter laugh, exhaustion and defeat etched into every line of her face. “Help how? The cops never do anything. The restraining order’s been processing for months. The police said they can’t do anything until he actually hurts me.”
“So we won’t go to the police. Ghost and Naomi, they do this kind of thing. Track people. Investigate. Naomi understandshow the system fails women, and Ghost isn’t bound by the same rules. He makes his own.”
She studied his face for a long moment. “You really think they can help?”
“Yes.”
Another beat of silence. Then she nodded. “Okay. Let’s talk to them.”
nineteen
“Start from the beginning,” Ghost said, fingers poised over his keyboard. “When did the stalking behavior first manifest?”
The Hub hummed with the low electronic pulse of multiple computers. Three screens tracked different sections of the ranch perimeter, while a fourth displayed a satellite view of Valor Ridge and the surrounding five miles.
If Landry were here, Ghost would absolutely know.
Anson thought he should take comfort in that, but he didn’t. Ghost was good, but he wasn’t a superhero. He needed to sleep sometime, and the property was big. He couldn’t watch every inch of it 24/7.
Maggie took a deep breath. “About two years ago, after I refused to help him get back on the show. He’d been fired for substance abuse issues. Showing up drunk, missing shoots. The network wanted him gone.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “After I said no, flowers started showing up at my house. Then gifts. Always with notes about ‘our future together’ or ‘when we reunite.’”
“What about the tools moving, things disappearing?” Anson spoke up from where he stood by the door, watching Maggie perch on the edge of the room’s only other chair. “Thatall started happening around the time I got Bramble.” He remembered the letter and the surge of worry that had coursed through him as he read it.
Things have been strange here lately.
Nothing I can put my finger on, just... off. Like that chill you get down your spine when someone’s watching you?
Maggie glanced over at him. She’d pulled herself together since he found her in the cabin—washed her face, changed her clothes, put on a mask of composure that might fool someone who hadn’t seen her staring at that phone like it was a loaded gun.
“So that was, what?” Naomi leaned a hip against Ghost’s desk, arms crossed. “Five years ago?”
“Yeah, about,” Anson confirmed. “She wrote to me when it started happening.”
“Do you still have the letter with the exact date on it?” Ghost asked.
“Yeah.” He felt Maggie’s gaze on him, and heat rushed into his cheeks.
“Aw,” Naomi said, but then got back to business and shifted to face Maggie. “So it started five years ago?”
She lifted her shoulders and let them drop in a helpless shrug. “Maybe? Landry was in the thick of his addiction then, and the show was falling apart. I was trying to salvage my career, stressed out, not sleeping, so it’s possible I was just misplacing things.”
“No, you said you felt like someone was watching you.”
Again, she looked at him, but this time with surprise in her eyes. “You remember what I said?”
