A plain white envelope on the hardwood of my foyer. No stamp. No return address. No postmark.
Just sitting there like it grew overnight, which means somebody walked up to my house, crouched down, and slid it through the gap under my door while I was gone.
While I was fifteen minutes away.
I stand in my own hallway and stare at it for a long time before I pick it up.
The Glock is already in my hand—not because I drew it, but because it lives there now.
Kitchen drawer to waistband the second the girls are out of the house. Another new habit for the collection.
I pick up the envelope and open it.
Two photographs. Printed on regular paper, slightly grainy, shot from a distance with a long lens. The first one is Wrenleigh walking into Morgantown High.
Her blonde hair is down, her backpack slung over one shoulder, the walking boot visible below her jeans.
She's laughing at something—mouth open, head tilted back, completely unaware that someone is watching her from across the street.
The second one is Sadie Jo. Standing outside Suncrest Middle with her backpack straps in both hands, waiting for me to pull up in the drop-off lane.
Dark hair. Blue-gray eyes looking toward the road.
My mirror image, thirteen years old and small and patient and trusting that her father is coming to get her.
Written on the back of Sadie Jo's photo in black marker:Pretty girls. Clock's ticking.
I don't move.
I don't breathe.
I stand in my hallway with a photograph of each of my daughters in my hands and a message that isn't a threat because threats imply uncertainty, and there's nothing uncertain about this.
This is a promise.
This is someone telling me they can get to my children whenever they want, and the only reason they haven't is because they're giving me a chance to pay first.
The freeze hits—the same deep cold that settled in when the men in suits stood on my porch, but this time it goes deeper.
This time it reaches the place I keep locked down, the place where the father lives underneath the club brother, the place where rational thinking ends and something older and darker begins.
I set the photos on the kitchen table, pull out my phone and call Bracken. "Who was on the house last night?"
"Lock. Midnight to eight. Why?"
"Someone got close enough to slide an envelope under my front door."
Bracken doesn't answer right away."I'll talk to him."
"Don't talk to him. Get him to the clubhouse. I want to know exactly when he took his eyes off my house and for how long."
"Done."
I hang up and pull up the camera app on my phone—the cameras I installed the week the Nevada plates first showed up.
Four cameras. Front porch, back door, driveway, side yard.
I scroll through the footage from last night.
