“I’m okay,” I assured.
But the worry in her eyes told me she didn’t believe me. A car rolled past the center’s front drive, past the front automatic doors. Dark. Slow. Tinted. Moving just a little too deliberately. My breath caught.
Mara followed my stare. “That car’s been around twice today.”
My stomach dropped. “Do you know who it belongs to?”
“No.” Her voice was soft, careful. “But I can alert Officer Rousseau if you want.”
“No,” I whispered. “Not yet.”
She squeezed my arm. “Just be careful, sweetheart.”
Eric’s truck pulled in before I could respond. Relief hit so hard I had to steady myself. When I stepped outside, the cold air slapped my cheeks awake. Eric watched me closely as I climbed in.
“How was it?” he asked when I shut the door.
“It was good to see the teens.”
A beat.
“Mostly.”
His hand tightened around the steering wheel. “Tell me the rest when we get home.”
I nodded, looking back through the windshield at the brick building that had always felt like a safe place. A place where someone had tested a locked door. A place where a dark car circled slowly enough to be noticed. Something was shifting. I could feel it as surely as the cold pressing through the windows. The only difference now was, I wasn’t alone.
CHAPTER 28
Eric
Five days passed like a slow tightening wire. Five days of pretending things were normal when nothing felt normal anymore. Harmony slept in my room every night. She curled against me like her body trusted the safety of my arms, even when her mind was still fighting ghosts I couldn’t see. She spent mornings in the flower shop and late afternoons at the community center, and my brothers rotated around town like shadows. No one announced it. No one admitted it. But we were watching her every minute she stepped outside the house. Becket was checking in with updates that never felt like real progress. Dad was observing everything with that quiet, steady stare that always meant he was connecting dots he wasn’t ready to speak aloud. And it was five days without another message, but the silence didn’t bring relief. It felt like we were all holding our breath, waiting for the ball to drop.
On the fifth afternoon, we gathered in Dad’s office at the station. Harmony was already at the community center. I had walked her in, waited until she joined the teens, then forced myself to leave, even though every instinct told me to stay in the doorway and watch over her. Dad leaned back in his chair.His fingers tapped the desk in a slow rhythm that carried more tension than sound. Becket stood beside me with his notebook open. He had written pages of observations that felt like puzzle pieces from three different puzzles.
“Let’s go over what we know,” Dad said, using the tone he used when he was the director of the police force and not my father.
Becket skimmed his notes. “We have the encrypted messages. The photo from the orchard fence. The motion alert near row six. The scratch on the community center side door.”
My stomach tightened. Harmony hadn’t told me about the scratch until last night. She had been trying to protect me from worrying, as if that were even possible.
Dad lifted an eyebrow. “The car that keeps circling the center?”
“No plates,” Becket said. “Tinted windows, well beyond legal limits. It could be tied to Tremblay’s team. It could be someone else.”
Dad exhaled slowly. “The Trust has access to more funds than Tremblay’s salary can explain. I have suspected it for a long time, but nothing ever pointed clearly enough to make a move.” He paused for a moment, studying the wall as if something on it reminded him of a memory he didn’t care to revisit. “This pattern feels familiar.”
The cold that slid through my chest felt immediate and sharp. “Familiar how?”
Dad held my gaze. His eyes were tired but focused. “It feels like someone with old connections is trying to stay invisible. Someone who benefited from Marcel’s downfall and has a lot to lose if the past resurfaces.”
Rosalie.
Marcel.
Harmony’s hidden files.
The digital ghost Becket had traced.
