I don’t tell Theo the plan.
I just tell him Grandma misses his face and wants a movie night, which is true. My mother picks him up with a promise of popcorn and a running commentary on everyone at the Prom Throwback fundraiser committee, which is also true. I stand on the curb and wave until their taillights blend into the string of cars heading toward the waterfront, where the bass from some regatta-week party thuds against the cliffs.
When I go back upstairs, Luz is already in my kitchen, leaning against the counter like she owns a piece of the laminate.
“Your locks are pathetic,” she says by way of greeting. “I’m putting in new ones once this internal affairs circus lets me carry tools again.”
“Get in line,” I say. “The Harrow bug beat you to the hardware upgrade.”
She lifts the ceramic bowl in the center of the table and stares down at the tiny listening device inside. It looks like a toy in her hand, cheap plastic hiding how much of my life it captured.
“You sure about this?” she asks.
I open the window over the sink a crack. Salt air rolls in, sticky and cold, carrying the smell of damp rock from the cliffs and the faint chemical sweetness of hairspray from the neighbor’s bathroom vent. The laundromat rumbles underneath us, dryers spinning, filling the apartment with warm lint-scented air.
“Theo recorded five episodes of his own podcast so he wouldn’t bother me with the fact that a dark car is stalking our building,” I say. “So yeah. I’m done watching from the window.”
Luz pulls a thermos from her bag and pours coffee into two chipped mugs. The steam curls up between us, bitter and comforting.
“Remind me why we’re not calling this in,” she says. “Besides the part where my captain thinks I’m a liability.”
“Because if we call it in, it becomes paperwork,” I say. “Paperwork gets funneled past Calder’s old friends, and Elliot hears about it before anyone knocks on a car window. And if this guy is tied to Harrow, the warning gives him time to vanish.”
Luz studies me over the rim of her mug.
“You’re getting good at this,” she says. “Paranoid systems-thinking.”
“Occupational hazard,” I say.
We kill the overhead light and move into the living room. The only illumination comes from the liquor store sign across the street, pulsing red and white through the blinds, and the soft glow of the bay reflecting party lights beyond the rooftops. The bass from the waterfront is a steady heartbeat under the city—Crescent Bay’s permanent soundtrack of yacht dances and charity balls.
Luz drags one of the kitchen chairs to the window. I grab my recorder and my phone, because my hands don’t know how to be empty anymore. I sit on the arm of the couch, eyes angled toward the slice of curb Theo described in his episodes.
“What did he call it?” Luz asks. “Theo’s Show?”
“Don’t,” I say.
She nods, jaw tight.
Time stretches. Downstairs, dryers clank coins and zippers against metal drums. A group of teenagers in prom-throwback outfits—velvet blazers, glittered hair, a vintage glass rose centerpiece carried ironically between them—drift past on their way to the waterfront fundraiser, laughing too loud. The smell of cigarette smoke and salt rides up from the sidewalk, the same mix kids used to chase on the rock shelf under the cliffs.
I watch headlights slide across parked cars, over and over.
“I keep thinking about the paradox,” I say.
Luz grunts. “Which one? You collect those.”
“I told myself public attention would keep us safer,” I say. “That making noise would scare the stalkers away. But ever since the show blew up, I’ve collected more voyeurs than protection. The town hides its secrets under glass roses; I put them in RSS feeds, and then the wrong people subscribe.”
“You’re allowed to change strategy,” she says. “You don’t owe the world every angle.”
“Tell that to my ad contracts,” I mutter.
Luz points with her chin.
“Focus,” she says.
Headlights sweep our window again, but this pair doesn’t move on. The beam glides over the liquor store, the laundromat sign, then settles in the exact gap of curb Theo described under the busted streetlamp.
A dark sedan glides into view and eases against the curb.
My body recognizes it before my brain does; every cell in me stands up on alert.
“That’s him,” I whisper.
Luz is already on her feet, all loose muscle and coiled intent.
“Stay behind me,” she says.
“You’re on leave,” I remind her. “I’m technically the only one with a job to lose here.”
“Cute,” she says. “Bring your phone.”
We head down the stairwell, our footsteps thudding over the hum of washers. My mouth tastes like metal and coffee. The air in the lobby smells like wet concrete and fabric softener. I shove the door open and the night hits my face, cold and sticky and full of brine.
The car’s engine is off. No radio, no visible movement.
“Circle around,” Luz murmurs. “I’ll take the driver’s side.”
I nod and move toward the passenger door, heart banging against my ribs hard enough I can hear it. The liquor store sign stutters overhead, painting everything in a jumpy red-white rhythm.
Luz approaches, hands visible, voice firm.
“Evening,” she calls. “Crescent Bay PD—unofficially. I’m Detective Navarro. Mind rolling down the window?”
There’s a beat of stillness. Then the window whirs down.
The man inside is not a shadow or a monster. He’s middle-aged, compact, with a shaved head and a salt-and-pepper beard. He wears a windbreaker, button-down shirt, no tie. His hands are on the wheel at ten and two, knuckles pale. A camera strap crosses his chest.
He blinks at Luz, then at me.
“Ms. Lane,” he says.
Hearing my name in his mouth makes my skin prickle.
“That’s a bold greeting for a stranger in a dark car,” I say.
Luz flashes her wallet, badge side angled just enough to catch the light.
“Driver’s license,” she says. “And anything that explains why you know her name.”
He exhales through his nose, slow, like he’s rehearsed this exact scenario.
“I’m going to reach into my jacket pocket,” he says. “Very carefully. For my wallet. All right?”
“Slow,” Luz says.
He moves like a man who’s had guns pointed at him before: measured, unthreatening. He hands over a worn brown wallet. Luz opens it under the streetlamp.
“Lionel Park,” she reads. “Private investigator license. Hartford.”
She glances at me. I keep my phone pointed at him, the camera rolling. The weak LED throws a bluish cast over his face.
“Who hired you, Mr. Park?” I ask.
He hesitates, just for a heartbeat.
“Harrow Media,” he says. “I’m here as security. For you.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks so fast I could steam the air between us.
“Security?” I repeat. “From what? Myself?”
“Look,” he says, adjusting his grip on the wheel. “You’ve had death threats. Weird fans. Anonymous callers claiming inside knowledge on a murder. My client felt the local police presence was… insufficient.”
Luz snorts.
“Your client helped design the insufficient part,” she says. “You been sitting outside this building every night, ‘protecting’ her?”
“Not every night,” he says. “Rotating shifts. Different vehicles. We document anyone hanging around, unusual patterns, that sort of thing.”
“Including my twelve-year-old kid,” I say.
His gaze flicks to me, then away.
“We document everything,” he says. “Patterns matter.”
My grip on the phone tightens.
“Show me,” I say.
“Show you what?” he asks.
“The patterns,” I say. “The photos. You’re pointing that lens at my life under a contract with the man whose company put a bug in my vent. So you’re going to show me exactly what you’ve collected—or we can stop playing pretend and call this harassment.”
Luz leans down closer, her voice dropping.
“You know how fast this story hits the feeds if she records a bonus episode about her stalker being on Harrow’s payroll?” she says. “Imagine the sponsor fallout. For them. For you. Might want to cooperate.”
Lionel looks between us, then sighs like we’ve just asked him to work unpaid overtime.
“Fine,” he says.
He reaches slowly for the camera on the passenger seat—a black DSLR with a long lens—and wakes it up. The back screen glows, reflecting in the windshield.
“You stand where I can see your hands,” Luz says. “And tilt the screen toward her.”
He does it. I step closer, until my reflection ghosts over the thumbnails.
The first images are boring: wide shots of the street, other cars, the laundromat doorway, the liquor store. Then the frame tightens.
A man in a hoodie loitering near the entrance, face turned away. Two girls in prom throwback dresses posing with a glass rose they swiped from a centerpiece. A guy with a camera across the street, pointing his lens toward my window.
Then me.
I see myself in profile coming out of the building, juggling grocery bags and my laptop bag. Theo in front of me, backpack hanging off one shoulder, sweatshirt half-zipped. Another shot: me on the stoop, phone to my ear, one hand pressed to my forehead. Another: the sliver of my living room visible through the blinds, my hunched silhouette at the table, headphones on.
There’s a photo of Theo at the bus stop, kicking a pebble down the sidewalk, headphones in, oblivious. Another of him at the cliffs on that awful day he went missing, taken from farther up the path. In the frame I’m talking to a cop, my hands flying, while my son stares out at the rock shelf below like he’s trying to memorize it.
My stomach lurches.
“Delete those,” I say. My voice comes out thin and hard. “Right now.”
“I can’t,” Lionel says. “Chain of custody. They’re evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” I snap. “That I buy groceries and worry too much?”
“Evidence of threat patterns,” he says. “You’re not the only subject in the frame.”
He scrolls on.
A man in a baseball cap across from Theo’s school, pretending to read a paper but watching the entrance. A woman in a Harrow regatta windbreaker standing too close behind me at the PTA meeting, face just out of focus. A cluster of listeners outside a coffee shop holding up their phones, screens lit with my podcast art, the glass rose glowing between their fingers.
My life reduced to frames, to a surveillance montage no one asked my consent to create.
“You sharing these with the police?” Luz asks.
“My contract says I share with my client,” Lionel says. “What he does with them is his business.”
She whistles under her breath.
“Neat way to privatize evidence,” she says.
“Go back,” I say.
“To what?” Lionel asks.
“I saw Katie’s porch,” I say. “Back three.”
He clicks. The image I noticed flashes up full-screen.
It’s night, a different neighborhood—Katie’s block, I recognize the sagging porch rail and the hydrangea bush to the left of her steps. The camera is across the street; the angle is slightly down, like Lionel sat in a car for this one too.
On the porch step sits a glass rose, catching the porch light. The petals glow icy, every edge sharp. A figure is frozen mid-bend over it, one knee on the step, one foot planted. The face is completely hidden by a hood and the angle of their shoulder. Their hand reaches toward the rose, maybe to adjust the note or set it down.
“When was this?” I ask.
“Last anniversary,” Lionel says. “Client wanted extra eyes on her address. Too many years with weird gifts.”
“You saw whoever left that,” I say.
He shakes his head.
“I caught the tail end,” he says. “Came around the corner in time to grab this frame and the back-of-head shot as they walked away. Didn’t get the face. I did get a partial plate.”
“And you gave that to Elliot,” I say.
“To Harrow security,” he corrects. “That’s who signs the checks.”
I taste bile.
“You didn’t think to walk that down to the department?” Luz asks. “Or to give the victim’s family a heads-up that some creep is leaving glass roses on their steps?”
Lionel lifts one shoulder.
“My client presented himself as working closely with law enforcement,” he says. “I assumed information was flowing. And I was warned the department had a leak, so… I followed the chain I was hired to follow.”
Information was flowing. Just not in my direction.
I pull out my own phone and snap three quick photos of his camera screen—the porch, the rose, the blurry outline of the hooded figure.
“You can’t—” he starts.
“I already did,” I say. “Touch my kid again with that lens and I go nuclear on every platform I have. I don’t care how many regattas your boss funds.”
His jaw works. He doesn’t argue.
Luz bends lower, eyes on the contract peeking out of the folder in his door pocket. The Harrow Media letterhead is unmistakable—the same tasteful blue lettering that once offered me a production deal in a conference room with expensive coffee.
“You’re going to stay away from the boy,” she says. “You want to document threats, point your camera at the people hovering at the edge of his life, not the kid walking to math class.”
Lionel nods once.
“Understood,” he says.
Luz straightens.
“Turn the car around and leave,” she says. “You want to keep watching from a distance, that’s your conscience. But you don’t park under this window like you own the curb. You’ve been made.”
He starts the engine. The low rumble vibrates through my shoes.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, glancing up at me, “you’re not paranoid about the threats. Some of the faces I’ve logged? They’re worse than me.”
“Then maybe send those to someone who isn’t on Harrow’s payroll,” I say.
He doesn’t answer. He pulls away from the curb, merging into the slow stream of cars heading toward the waterfront lights, toward the parties where my name trends and clinks against champagne glasses.
Luz and I stand on the sidewalk in his exhaust, watching his taillights shrink.
The salt air fills the space he leaves. Somewhere down by the marina, a DJ tests a microphone, bass echoing back off the cliffs and across the treacherous rock shelf where kids still sneak out to smoke and dare each other to look over the edge.
I look up at my apartment window, the faint outline of Theo’s science project visible on the sill, a kid’s life lit from inside. I look at the Harrow bug in my memory, the glass roses in photos and on doorsteps, the hooded figure on Katie’s porch frozen in pixels on Lionel’s camera, preserved and contained and hoarded.
Elliot doesn’t just control narratives. He controls who gets to see the raw footage.
I check the photos I stole on my phone, zooming in on the hand reaching toward the glass rose. The face is still obscured. But there, on the wrist, the edge of a bracelet glints under the porch light—thin metal, familiar in a way that makes my pulse jump.
I lock the screen before my brain finishes the connection.
“Well?” Luz asks quietly. “Feel safer?”
“No,” I say. “But I feel clearer.”
I tilt my head toward the distant silhouette of Harrow House, a dark shape above the cliffs against the bruised sky.
Somewhere in that glass-and-shingle box, Elliot is probably looking at a different version of the same photos, telling himself a story where he’s the hero guarding me from the bad guys.
I tighten my grip on the phone until the edges bite into my palm.
“He thinks he’s watching every angle,” I say. “Time to show him there are some he missed.”