I pace the garage like a caged thing, breath tight, mind ricocheting through everything I’ve witnessed—the trembling, the frozen moments, the way she sealed the house like she was preparing for a siege. The way she recoiled when I stepped too close.
And under it all: the desperate strength she uses to hold herself together.
Then the phone rings.
“Maddox,” Adam says, voice heavier. “That stalker—Michael Sheifer—he wasn’t just obsessed. He was violent. Broke into her home. Assaulted her. She was unconscious for most of it.”
My vision tunnels, the world sharpening to a single lethal point.
Adam keeps talking, clinical, detached, unaware of the storm tearing open inside my chest.
“He wrote to her from prison. Fixated. Tried contacting her repeatedly. Threats, declarations, delusions. Every parole hearing was blocked—until the last one. He was released on parole this week.”
Week.
Not a month.
Not a year.
This week.
A cold, controlled fury unfurls inside me—measured, deadly, absolute.
Now it all makes sense.
The phone call she got yesterday morning.
The way her face drained of all color.
The panic she couldn’t hide, no matter how hard she tried.
He found her number.
He might’ve found more.
“Adam,” I say, my voice low, dark, dangerous, “I need everything you can legally—or illegally—send. Parole notes. Last known location. Behavioral reports. Anything you have.”
A beat.
Then Adam exhales. “I’ll send what I have access to. But Ethan… be careful. Guys like Sheifer don’t let go. Their brains don’t allow it.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly, a bitter promise forming behind my teeth. “Neither do I.” A cold, lethal calm slips into my bones.
Parole.
I repeat it in my head as if it’s an unbelievable phenomenon.
This fucking week.
Bloody hell.
“Adam,” I say quietly, “if he violated parole, would anyone know where he is?”
“Doubt it. He’s clever. Manipulative. Delusional. The kind who’d talk his way out of anything. Look—why? You think he’s after her again?”
I don’t answer.
Because every piece fits the puzzle too perfectly.
