"I'm not leaving."
"Kari — "
"This is mine." My voice comes out quieter than I want it to. Steadier. "Someone is trying to scare me out of my own building, and I'm not going. I'll call the police. I'll get the locks changed. But I'm not running."
Del goes quiet long enough that her breathing shifts — the controlled inhale she does right before she loses it.
"Fine," she says. "Lock every door. Barricade if you have to. I'm making some calls."
"What kind of calls?"
"The kind you make when your best friend is alone in a murder house and too stubborn to leave."
She hangs up before I can argue.
I fold the note, tuck it into my back pocket with the first one, and go lock every door I can find.
Then I go upstairs, sit on the bed with the cheerful yellow flowers, and listen to every tick, every groan, every sound I dismissed an hour ago as charming.
Someone was in here with me. And I never heard them leave.
Chapter 2
Liam
The file lands on my desk early, which means Vance has been awake since before dawn. The man runs on black coffee and whatever keeps former FBI agents vertical when normal people sleep — spite, probably, or a classified supplement the Bureau never declassified.
I flip it open. Thin. A few photos of a Victorian property that looks like it lost a fight with the last century, a scan of two handwritten notes, and a client intake form filled out by someone named Del Tsao on behalf of someone named Kari Engstrom.
"Threat assessment," Vance says from the doorway, because he doesn't sit down for conversations that take less than a minute. "Stalker-adjacent. Two notes, no direct contact, no digital trail. Friend called it in. Client's alone at the property."
I study the notes. Block letters, generic stationery. You don't belong here and Leave while you still can. No escalation pattern yet — just repetition with proximity. The second one appeared inside the residence while the client was present.
That part gets my attention.
"Law enforcement?"
"Local PD took a report. No prints, no leads, no urgency." Vance leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. Same shirt as yesterday, which confirms the insomnia he'll deny if asked. "Friend wants a professional opinion. Quick assessment, security recommendations, done."
"Where?"
"South end of the city. The Foxglove Inn."
I look at the photos again. A B&B on a block of older buildings, renovation in progress, one woman alone in a property with more access points than a federal courthouse. The garden gnome in the front garden bed stares at the camera with the dead-eyed confidence of something that's seen things and chosen not to intervene.
"Simple job," Vance adds. He says this the way a surgeon says routine procedure — technically accurate, strategically dismissive. "Drive down, walk the perimeter, write it up. If the threat's credible, we escalate. If not, we recommend a locksmith and move on."
I close the file. "Give me twenty minutes."
Vance nods and disappears into his office. The Glasshouse hums around us — mirrored ops floor reflecting early light, the elevator making its slow mechanical groan between floors. Four years in this building, and the elevator still sounds like it's processing trauma.
I grab my go bag, check the deadbolt kit in the truck, and pull out before the rest of the team clocks in.
The drive south is uneventful. Highway, then surface streets, then the older grid where development thins out and buildings show their age. I run the file through my head. Two notes, escalating access, no known suspects. The client is renovating alone. No security system, no cameras, no prior threats.
The intake form lists Kari Engstrom as late twenties, former event planner, currently converting a neglected Victorian intoa bed-and-breakfast. No romantic partner. No enemies flagged. The friend — Del — described her as "stubborn, optimistic, and terrible at taking threats seriously," which tells me more about the next few hours than the threat profile does.
I find the Foxglove at the end of a gravel drive that crunches under my tires like a warning system designed by someone who gave up halfway through. The property is worse in person. The photos captured the peeling paint and the sagging porch, but missed the way the whole structure leans slightly left, as if the house has been losing an argument with gravity for decades. Two ground-floor windows propped open with paint cans. The side gate hangs on one hinge. The front door is cracked open.
