She slips her duffel bag out of my grasp. “That’s not necessary.” The cool, I-don’t-need-help-from-anyone Ivy is slipping back.

“Yeah, it is. You heard the cops. These people ransacked your place. Given your uncle was killed two weeks ago, it’s suspicious. I don’t want you going to that shop again without me, either.”

Rare amusement dancing in her eyes. “Is this you going all badass bodyguard on me?”

I smirk. “Something like that.”

“Well, don’t think I’m gonna pay you. I have no money for protection.”

“I seem to remember handing you fourteen hundred bucks today.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She gives me a sly smile, but then all amusement fades from her face. “Do you always carry a gun, even when you’re not working?”

I figured that would come up, eventually. “Yeah.” I hesitate but ask, “Does it bother you?”

She shakes her head and then dismisses the topic entirely. “Well, I’m going to the shop at nine in the morning to let the painters in. That’s”—she glances at the clock—“only five hours away.” She looks from the house back to me. I can’t tell if she’s just pointing out the obvious or fishing for me to stay. I don’t even think it’s about getting laid anymore. By the way she seemed to gravitate to my side for the past few hours, dealing with the cops, I think she just feels safer having me around. And that is why I’d love to say yes to her right now.

Pulling out my burner phone—idiot move but it’s the only phone I have on me—I demand, “Give me your number.”

She recites her number and then pushes open the door and climbs out.

I briefly consider grabbing her arm, pulling her back in to taste the last of the whiskey and Coke in her mouth, but I resist because I know where that’ll lead and I do need to go. “Get some sleep. I’ll come back in the morning,” I call out, watching her saunter up to the house with her duffel bag slung over her shoulder. The door opens and a pretty woman with long dark hair and tan skin appears in nothing but a nightshirt. She’s smiling wide, like she’s not at all bothered by the late arrival.

I wait until the door is closed, send her a quick generic “sleep well” text so she has my number, and then pull away.

Bentley answers the phone with a gruff, “Yeah?”

“You sent those fuckers into her house!”

There’s a pause and then I hear rustling on the other end, followed by a muffled, “It’s not even five in the morning, John. Who’s calling?”

“It’s okay. It’s work.”

“What phone is that? That’s not your iPhone, is it?”

“Go back to sleep, Tuuli.” He heaves a sigh. Footfalls sound, and I can picture him trudging down the long hall to his office. Not until a door shuts does he speak again. “I warned you, didn’t I?”

“You said tomorrow, and you didn’t say anything about going into her house.”

“I changed my mind and had them go in to do a final sweep tonight. Figured we had to be sure.”

“That wasn’t a sweep, John. They ransacked it.”

“So the police will file a report and she’ll claim insurance. Not a big deal.”

I grit my teeth against the urge to yell. “You also said they’d stay away from me. One of those assholes was ten feet away from me tonight. He followed her to the club.”

“Did he approach you?”

“No, but—”

“Then he followed orders and there’s nothing to discuss here, so stand down!” Bentley doesn’t like being questioned, and he’s not used to it coming from me.

“Don’t you think turning over a recently murdered man’s house will raise suspicions?”

“Maybe, but no one will have anything to go on and it’ll die down soon enough. It’s worth it, if it means finding that tape.”

“And did they?” I already know the answer, because I already searched the fucking house!

A long pause. “No.”

“Keep them away from me. And her. If she has the tape, she doesn’t know.”

“How do you—”

“Because I’m good at what I do. I can read people, and I know that she had no fucking clue why anyone would want to bust into her place tonight. If she were hiding a tape that got her uncle killed, she’d be freaking out and running. And now the cops have turned their attention to her, and they’re already starting to ask questions that tie back to her uncle.”

A quiet “shit” slips out of Bentley’s mouth.

Seriously, what did he think was going to happen when he told those guys to tail us? They’d already acted beyond the scope of his orders before. Stupid amateur move, Bentley.

“Just . . .” He sighs. “Keep an eye on her. You’re right. We don’t want her turning up dead right now.”

“Or ever.”

“Right.”

“And your guys?”

“They’ll stay away from you.” He’s awful quick to say that.

“If I see them again—”

“Just find that fucking video and everyone will be happy and safe,” Bentley snaps.

The phone line goes dead. I toss it aside and stretch out on my bed. The center caves under my weight, but I barely give it any thought, my mind reeling over tonight’s developments, which veered in a much less enjoyable direction than they were supposed to.

As long as that videotape is out there, Ivy’s not safe, that much is clear. Tonight, Bentley’s other guys trashed her house for no good reason. I already searched that place top to bottom and told Bentley as much. He must be under a lot of stress here, to undermine me like that, to not trust me after bringing me here explicitly because I’m the only one he trusts. He’s not thinking rationally. Which means that tomorrow . . . who’s to stop him from telling these guys to go straight to Ivy?

They’re not getting their hands on her. I won’t allow that.

I need to find this goddamn tape.

The willow tree that my mom planted when I was fourteen is gone, replaced by a generic young maple. I wonder if the willow died. There’s no way my mom decided to cut it down—she loved it and all its messy tendrils.

Everything else about the house is exactly the same, except the new windows. The stucco is the same pale yellow, the front door the same stark white that my dad paints every spring to erase the scuffs. The property is still manicured to perfection.

I haven’t laid eyes on my family’s home in five years, and now I sit parked across the street, with a coffee in hand, a necessity after only two hours of sleep. Something compelled me to take the long way around and see my parents’ home this morning. Maybe to see them.

It’s seven twenty-five and the daily newspaper still rests on the stoop. I expect the door to open any moment, and for Captain George Riker to step out and collect his morning reading. He’ll sit at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice and read it from cover to cover, even if it takes him all morning.

Unless, maybe, he’s changed. Maybe enough years have passed after retiring from a thirty-year career in the navy that he’s learned to relax a bit. Maybe he doesn’t polish his shoes every day and make my mom iron his golf shirts. Maybe he doesn’t still get together with his guys on Tuesday nights for poker.

Maybe he wouldn’t look at his son through the eyes of a disappointed father.

At exactly eight a.m., the door creaks open and my father steps out in his pressed golf shirt and pressed khaki shorts, his hair still cropped short but nearly all white now. He was thirty-five and halfway done with his career before he met my mother. I inhale sharply, both wistfulness and resigned sadness swelling inside my chest at the sight of him. I used to idolize him, standing tall and proud in his uniform.

He takes a leisurely glance around the neighborhood, waves at Mr. Shaw two doors over, who’s watering his flowers, and then stoops to collect the paper on the welcome mat and disappears inside.