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Mine are better. They have to be. I’ve spent years searching for someone who made disappearing his entire personality, and apparently spite is an excellent educational tool.

I linger in the passenger seat of his truck, twisting the bloody hoodie. For a man with broad shoulders and tattooed muscles who helped me bury a body, he’s very calm and unnerving.

“Are you going to tell anyone?” I wonder, turning to him.

“No.”

I glance outside. “Are you going to follow me?”

A shadow of a smile touches his lips. “Not now.” At least he’s honest.

I open the door. The sharp wind hits me instantly. “Gage?”

His focus doesn’t waver. “Yes?”

I swallow the lump in my throat. “Three. Fifty-nine. Seven. Eighty-three. Eleven.” Then I step out into the rain and shut the door.

“Jules?”

I spin around, almost lurching. “Yeah?”

He tilts his head, one brow raised. “You like cats?”

A smile forms on my lips through the raindrops. “Of course. Only a psycho doesn’t like cats.”

Amusement plays on his lips and maybe—but something deeper I can’t read. I don’t question it. And he doesn’t press.

As I walk back to my apartment, adrenaline fading, I realize: in the absolute worst moment of my life, Gage Cannon gave me numbers, a shovel, and a living plant to hold. More than survival, it feels like a tether.

I should be afraid he might follow me.

But I’m more afraid he won’t.

CHAPTER 4

Gage

The gloves stay on after the engine goes off.

That’s the rule. A practical rule drilled into muscle memory. Black leather, worn soft at the knuckles. Ordinary enough to belong on a motorcycle, thin enough to feel what matters.

A gentleman should always dress appropriately for the occasion.

If someone opens the wrong door at the wrong time, I am not a man in gloves searching an apartment. I am a tired rider with the wrong address, with the kind of smile people mistake for harmless.

I kill the motorcycle two blocks from the building and coast the rest on momentum and bad intentions.

It’s an overlooked building—brick faded to a dull gray from exhaust. The security light on the east entrance busted long ago. Predators pick subtle residences.

Last night was supposed to be clean and quiet and mine. The part where I remove a problem from the general population without anyone’s blood on my hands except, technically, the problem’s.

Instead, I helped a muddy goth girl plant an endangered species over the problem, helped her count prime numbers, and watched her laugh with the unhinged beauty of someone who had remembered she was still breathing.

I take the stairs. Elevators have cameras.

The lock on 4C is a Kwikset. It’s downright offensive. The man was careful enough to track multiple women across three different running trails, photograph them down to the minute, mark their behavioral patterns—and his home security is a Kwikset.

Eleven seconds.