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"Yeah. Ten minutes."

The station is bright and busy when I get there. Trevor's already been processed and is sitting in a holding cell yelling about lawsuits and wrongful arrest. Ethan's at his desk working on the report, his reading glasses perched on his nose.

"He's been demanding his phone call," Ethan says when I walk in. "Also threatened to have your badge. And mine. And possibly Ray's, though I'm not sure he has one."

"Let him call whoever he wants. The charges are solid."

I sit down at my desk and pull out the forms. Then I start writing. Every detail documented with the kind of precision the Marines drilled into me. The confrontation at Ray's. The admission about hiring a private investigator. The refusal to leave when ordered. Driving to Lyla's cottage instead of out of town. Standing at the victim's front door, hand raised to knock, after being explicitly told to stay away. The shove that qualified as assault on an officer.

I attach Ethan's statement. Ray's statement, which Ethan took after I left Main Street. Photos of Trevor's car in Lyla's driveway. The text messages Lyla showed me yesterday, printed and filed.

By the time I'm done my hand is cramping and my eyes are burning. It's been two and a half hours. I coordinate with the county about tomorrow's arraignment, file the paperwork for the emergency restraining order, and make sure every detail is perfect. This needs to stick. No loopholes. No technicalities for some defense attorney to exploit.

When I'm finally satisfied it's almost ten o'clock.

I call Lyla before I leave. She answers on the first ring.

"Hey," I say. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Just sitting here trying to work and failing completely." I can hear the smile in her voice, fragile but real. "Are you done?"

"Just finished. I can come back if you want."

"Please."

"Give me twenty minutes."

The drive back to her cottage feels longer than it should. The roads are empty this time of night, just me and the darkness and the yellow lines disappearing under my headlights. When I pull into her driveway all the lights are on inside. She must have turned on every lamp in the place.

She's on the porch before I'm out of the truck. Must have been watching for me.

She meets me halfway across the driveway and wraps her arms around me without saying anything. I hold her, breathing in the smell of her shampoo and feeling the tension slowly drain out of her body.

"Hi," she says finally, her voice muffled against my chest.

"Hi." I pull back enough to see her face. "You sure you're okay?"

"I am now."

We go inside together. The cottage is warm, almost too warm, and I realize she's probably been feeding the wood stove obsessively. The air smells like burning pine and the vanilla candle flickering on the coffee table. There's music playing quietly from her laptop—something instrumental and melancholy.

"You want something to eat?" she asks. "I made pasta. Well, I boiled pasta and dumped sauce on it, but it's edible."

"That sounds perfect."

We sit at her small table with bowls of pasta that's actually pretty good, and she asks questions about the arrest. What happens next. How the charges work. When the arraignment is. What bail might be set at. If he could get out tonight.

I answer them as thoroughly as I can, and with every answer I can see her relaxing incrementally. Her shoulders come down from her ears. Her hands stop shaking. She starts eating instead of just pushing pasta around her bowl.

"It's really over," she says finally. Not quite a question.

"It's really over."

"I keep thinking he's going to show up again. That he'll find some way around this."

"He won't. And if he tries, I'll be here."

She looks at me across the table. "You can't promise that."