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At the bakery, I had given her a timetable for disappearing.

I started the engine.

The turn toward my mountain road came ten minutes later.

I drove past it.

***

Sybil’s Signature Events occupied the first floor of a narrow brick building a few streets back from the river. I had seen the address in her paperwork and heard her talk about the studio, but I had never been inside.

By the time I reached it, the afternoon had begun sliding toward evening. The neighboring shops were closing, and reflected gold from the lowering sun stretched across the front windows.

Sybil’s business name was painted on the glass in clean lettering.

Inside, she stood beside a long worktable with a phone pressed to her ear.

I stayed outside until she saw me.

Her eyebrows lifted, but she didn’t wave me away.

Through the window, I watched her turn back to a laptop and continue the call. Samples were spread across the table in deliberate groups: ivory cardstock, fabric swatches, two lengths of ribbon, and photographs of a ballroom I didn’t recognize. Framed event images covered one wall without crowding it. Shelving held labeled client boxes, binders, invitation books, and trays of materials. A large calendar displayed color-coded deadlines that meant nothing to me and apparently everything to her.

This was the business she had built before Hollowfield became a crime scene.

Sybil ended the call, typed something into the laptop, and came to unlock the door.

“What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

She stepped aside.

I entered, and she locked the door behind me before returning to the worktable. She had changed out of the jacket she wore at the bakery and rolled the sleeves of her dark thermal to her forearms. Her hair was clipped loosely behind her head, with several strands already escaping.

“I have about twenty minutes before I need to send this proposal,” she said. “If this is about your bag, it can stay at the cottage tonight. I’m not going to throw it onto the lawn.”

“It isn’t about the bag.”

Her expression gave me nothing.

I stopped across the table from her. No guest routes ran through this room. I had no reason to check the back door, ask where she planned to move next, or decide whether the position of her chair gave me a clear line to the street.

I wanted to reach for her.

I kept my hands to myself until I had said what I came to say.

“I handled the end of the assignment badly. I spent the entire weekend telling you exactly what I needed from you whenever your safety was involved. Then Rick released me, and I immediately started telling you when I’d leave your house and how much space I’d give you.” I took a breath, watching her face. “I never asked what you wanted from me after the job.”

Sybil’s shoulders eased slightly, though she stayed on the opposite side of the table.

“At the bakery, it sounded like you already had the answer. You were going to get your things, give me my house back, and go home.”

“I heard how it sounded after you left. Too late, but I heard it.”

She looked down at the open proposal between us, then closed the laptop without sending me away.

“I wasn’t going to chase you into the parking lot, Damien. I told you last night that I wanted you. I thought I’d been fairly clear about which version of you I meant.”