“Did they take anything?”
She shook her head. “I had a little cash, and all of it was there. Not a penny stolen.”
The room went on alert.
“Then it was my car.” Her voice came out a little stronger, as though something was beginning to stir inside her. “Several times.” She lifted her eyes and looked at them, and Church saw the strain there. The exhaustion. The kind that didn’t come from one bad day or even from grief.
The kind that came from being hunted.
“They could have broken into the Porsche I was parked next to. Or the Land Rover. But they broke into my old Ford.” Anger threaded through her calm, showing them all just how hard she was working to hold herself together.
“All they took were Matt’s dog tags.”
A knife lanced through his chest, and it was echoed in Zee’s face.
“They were hanging from the rearview mirror. But they rifled through everything else I had in there.”
Not cash or electronics, which were easily sold. The dog tags.
“So I moved on.”
Church could picture it too clearly. Zee packing up what little she could carry, telling herself that a fresh start in a new town would fix what the last one hadn’t. Starting over again and again because staying had become its own kind of risk.
“Then it was the Airbnb. After that, a hotel room.”
Theo issued a noise that sounded like a curse under his breath. Gabe’s spine went rigid.
And Church saw red. Blood. Seas of it. Spilled by him when he found who was scaring Zee. Church’s jaw tightened. None of this was random—not even close. Several incidents in different places, all with the same target.
Nothing had been taken except one thing tied to Matt. This wasn’t someone looking for quick cash—they were looking for somethingspecific.
She gave a small, defeated shrug like she hated saying any of this out loud. “The cops thought I was crying wolf or doing it myself for attention.”
The humiliation in her words was impossible to miss.
Now he understood why she’d looked guilty and why she kept apologizing for the broken window, as if any of this was her fault. For years, people had been teaching her not to expect help, and that killed him.
“I bought security cameras, door wedges. Portable locks for hotel rooms.”
Gabe slanted a look at Church. They’d both seen those boxes delivered to the training center. No wonder Zee ordered that gear. No wonder she looked tired all the time.
And grown thinner, sharper, more tightly wound than the woman he remembered from years ago.
She’d been hurting…and afraid.
Guilt moved through him with a hard twist. He should have been there for her.
Matt was gone—Church couldn’t change that. But after the funeral, after everyone had gone back to their own lives, Zee had been left alone with this.
Alone with fear. With cops who didn’t believe her. And alone with repeated violations that hollowed her out from the inside.
He hadn’t known—but worse, he hadn’t looked close enough to ask.
She sat there in the harsh office light, fighting to keep her voice steady while describing how her life had been whittled down to temporary places and security gadgets and the constant question of where she might be safer next time.
He thought of the woman in the old volleyball photos, laughing, hair shining copper in the sun. She’d been full of life.
She was still beautiful and strong. But now she was worn down.
