She declined the call and slid the phone into her pocket, her heart beating harder than it should. It was probably nothing. A telemarketer. A wrong number. The hospital, maybe, though they had her email if they really needed to reach her.
But the old reflex was standing up inside her, the one that had kept her alert through countless night shifts, the one that whispered pay attention when something felt off.
She turned and scanned the crowd behind her. Families with strollers. Couples holding hands. A group of older women examining a display of hand-painted birdhouses. No gray ball cap. No sunglasses. Just a normal afternoon at a normal fair in a normal town.
She was imagining things.
"Thought I might find you down here."
She turned, her heart leaping into her throat, and found Brian standing a few feet away. He had a paper bag from Cooper's Hardware under one arm and an easy expression on his face that softened when he saw her.
The relief that washed through her was disproportionate to the moment. He was just a man she'd known for a few days. There was no reason his presence should make her feel safer.
But it did.
"I came for tea and a walk," she said, holding up her cup. "And because the air feels better down here."
"It does." He moved to stand beside her, looking out at the water. "Shop was slow this afternoon. Colby kicked me out, said I was hovering."
"Were you?"
"Probably." He glanced at her, and something in his expression shifted. "You okay? You look... tense."
She hesitated. The man at the T-shirt booth felt silly now, a product of her overactive imagination. But the phone calls still sat heavy in her pocket, unanswered and unexplained.
"I think someone was watching me," she said, the words coming out before she could second-guess them. "Up there, at the fair. Or I'm making things up. I honestly can't tell anymore."
Brian didn't dismiss it. Didn't tell her she was being paranoid. Instead, his posture shifted subtly, his gaze sweeping past her shoulder to scan the crowd the way a person scans traffic before crossing the street. Careful. Thorough. Not alarmed, but alert.
"Where?" he asked.
"By the T-shirt booth. Gray cap, sunglasses. He wasn't looking at me directly, but..." She shook her head. "I don't know. It felt wrong. And then I got two calls from an unknown Chicago number that I didn't answer."
His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "You recognize the number?"
"No. Could be anything. Probably a telemarketer."
"Probably." But his eyes were still scanning, cataloguing faces in the crowd. "The guy at the booth. You see him now?"
She looked. A couple stood at the T-shirt rack now, laughing over something on one of the designs. No gray cap. No sunglasses. The man could be anywhere. Or nowhere. Just another face in a sea of summer tourists.
"I'm probably wrong," she said. "There are a lot of people here. I spent too many years reading rooms for threats. It's hard to turn off."
"Maybe." Brian's voice was even, but there was something underneath it. Something that said he was taking her seriously, even if he wasn't showing alarm. "Doesn't hurt to walk back together."
The relief she felt at that simple offer was almost embarrassing. "Okay."
They walked through the fair side by side, Brian's presence solid and warm beside her. She noticed the way he positioned himself between her and the crowd without making it obvious, the way his eyes kept moving even as he made easy conversation about the booths they passed.
At the bulletin board outside Ruth's bookstore, she paused. The turquoise flyer for the charity concert had been reprinted larger, taped over the smaller one she'd noticed before. Someone had written Bring a Blanket across the bottom in dark marker.
Come sit with us by the water.
She touched the corner of the paper with one finger, the same way she sometimes touched a patient's chart before entering a room. Grounding herself in the moment.
"Thinking about going?" Brian asked.
"I might." She let her hand drop. "If I'm still here."
