Page 69 of The Advocate’s Ultimatum

Sabre’s fingers tapped lightly against the table. “She also said, ‘We protect each other.’ Like it was a rule.”

“Who’s we?” he asked.

“She wouldn’t say.”

JP leaned back again, thinking. “Did she ever indicate if the person she was protecting was a male or a female?”

“She chooses her words very carefully, but she did say ‘she’.” Sabre gave JP a sideways glance. “You think there is someone teaching Bay and maybe others, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” JP nodded. “And we have no idea how many.”

Sabre’s stomach tightened, because that led somewhere she really didn’t want to go.

Chapter 25

Friday morning

JP took his time on his first serious pass through Hannah’s old neighborhood. He wanted to see it without expectations. Once he started forming opinions, it got harder to notice what didn’t fit.

He turned off the main road and onto a residential street that bordered the school, letting the pace slow naturally. The houses were modest and close together, the kind of place where people noticed routines even if they didn’t talk about them. Lawns were trimmed but not perfect. Cars were parked in driveways and along curbs in no particular order. It felt lived in.

He drove past the school first and followed the route Tyler had described, about two blocks.

When he reached the corner, he eased off the gas. The house on the left stood out without trying to. It sat on the corner lot with a clear view of the street in both directions. The wrap-around porch had a chair positioned at the point, near the edge.

JP drove past and glanced at it as he went by. He kept going to the end of the block, then drove to the address he had for Hannah’s mother before turning around.

On the second pass by, JP slowed down.

The property was tidy. Not new, but maintained. The yard was trimmed. The paint held. Nothing suggested neglect. If anything, it suggested discipline.

He made a third pass, slower still. The porch was empty, and the chair hadn’t moved. It was positioned so that someone could sit there, watching the street.

JP pulled over half a block down and let the engine idle. From where he sat, he could see the corner clearly, and he watched for a minute.

A couple of young adults walked past, cutting across the corner without looking toward the house. A woman walked her dog on the opposite side of the street. A car slowed briefly at the intersection, then continued on. No one looked at the porch.

JP rested his arm on the window and studied the setup again. If a child walked home from school, the home was unavoidable. You didn’t detour around it without adding distance, and most kids didn’t think that far ahead. They followed routine.

He picked up his notebook and wrote down the address. Then he sat a moment longer, committing the layout to memory, where the sidewalks ran, where a car could pull up, what could be seen from the porch, and what couldn’t.

JP wasn’t ready to leave the neighborhood. He’d seen the corner. He had the address. That could wait a few hours. What he needed now was anything the file hadn’t bothered to note, small details, the kind people remembered because they lived with them, not because anyone wrote them down.

He walked the block toward Hannah’s house instead of driving. He moved slow and casual, resisting the urge to knock on every door. That never worked. People shut down when it felt like a sweep. Better to let it look like a conversation that just happened to include them.

Two houses down from Hannah’s, a woman was watering a narrow strip of lawn that didn’t need much attention. She glanced up when JP came near.

“Good afternoon,” he said.

She nodded. “Afternoon.”

JP stopped a few feet away, keeping it easy. “Have you lived here a while?”

She gave him a look. Not suspicious, just measuring. “Long enough.”

JP pulled out his card and offered it casually. “My name’s JP Torn. I’m looking into something that happened years back to a girl named Hannah Caldwell.”

“I remember that incident,” she said. “Everybody around here does. Have they learned something new?”