“Now, who did you say you were again?”
My breath caught. My chest ached so deep it felt like a bruise blooming behind my ribs.
“I’m just visiting,” I said quietly, brushing a hand down her arm. “I’ll come again soon.”
I kissed her cheek, rose slowly, and slipped out before I let her see me break.
At the nurse’s station, one of them stepped into my path, her expression an apologetic grimace.
“I hate to do this now,” she said, voice low. “But the payment’s late for your grandmother’s care. We’re going to need a check.”
I nodded once.
“I know. I’ll bring one by as soon as I can.”
And then I walked out into that wet, bitter wind, letting it slap me across the face like mother nature had been waiting her turn to take a swing at me, too.
Chapter
Four
BEN
“I thinkmy girl might have a death wish, Henry.”
That’s how I opened the call — no greeting, no preamble, just pure, simmering fury as I sat in the far-back corner of the Bayview Hospice parking lot, tucked into the shadows like I belonged there.
On the other end of the line, Henry paused just long enough to sound unimpressed.
“Alright. What did she do?”
“She left her damn car unlocked,” I growled, watching Chrissy Jones exit the hospice doors and step into the cold wind like she had nothing to fear in this world. “All day. In Bay Minette. Anyone could’ve climbed in.”
Her carelessness awakened something primal and ugly inside me. Four years of watching her from the edges of her life and she still didn’t understand how breakable she looked to anyone who knew what to look for. Not weak... Chrissy was the farthest thing from weak. But she moved through the world like no one huntedwomen like her, like the monsters only existed in the stories she skimmed at midnight when she couldn’t sleep.
The truth was simpler and so much worse: the most dangerous monsters were human, patient, and driven by motive. I’d spent years memorizing her routines, the way she locked her doors at night but forgot during the day, the way her guard fell when she was exhausted. I knew her blind spots better than she did.
And Jesus H. Christ, it terrified me how easily the wrong person could slip right into her orbit. What terrified me more was how badly I wanted to be the monster she let in anyway… not despite the danger, but because of it.
“She left her car unlocked?” Henry repeated slowly. “That’s it?”
“That’s it?” I snapped. “Henry, she was in a mediation for hours with her mail just sitting there on the passenger seat like a buffet of personal information for any asshole to grab and use to his heart’s content.”
“…ah,” Henry said. “That’s what this is about.”
“Don’t start.”
“You’re pissed she made it easy for you.”
I gripped the steering wheel harder, leather biting into my palms.
“No, I’m pissed she made it easy for literally anyone. She was careless with her safety. Anyone could have gotten into that car.”
“She’s tired, Ben.”
I could practically picture Henry pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to fend off the frustration bubbling up inside him.
“She’s reckless,” I snapped. “She left her vehicle unlocked all damn day with her mail sitting out like bait. Somebody worse than me could’ve been waiting for her. Do you know how fucking easy it would have been for someone to have laid down in the back seat with a gun, ready to do God only knows what to her once she got in?”
