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I turn the card over in my hands one more time, then set it on the coffee table where I can see it.

Just in case…

Chapter 2 — Kieran

I make it three miles down Maple Ridge Road before I almost turn around.

It's stupid. I just left her cottage minutes ago after making sure it was secure, after giving her my personal number, after checking every lock and window like some kind of paranoid bodyguard.

She's fine. The guy's gone. There's no reason for me to go back.

Except I can't stop thinking about the way she looked standing on that porch. Alone and scared and trying so hard not to be.

I tighten my grip on the wheel and keep driving.

I pull into the station parking lot and sit there with the engine running, trying to talk myself into going inside and doing actual work.

I turn off the truck and head inside.

Ethan looks up from his desk when I walk in. He's got that expression on his face, the one that means he's been waiting to say something.

"So," he says.

"Don't start."

"I'm not starting anything. Just observing that you've been gone for an hour on what was supposed to be a fifteen-minute welfare check."

"I was being thorough."

"Uh-huh." He leans back in his chair. "And the woman? Is she doing okay?"

"She's fine. Scared, but fine."

"And the guy?"

I drop into my desk chair and pull up the database. "That's what I'm about to find out."

Trevor's record loads on screen. Not much there. A DUI from five years back in Richmond, dismissed. Speeding ticket. Noise complaint from neighbors two years ago.

Nothing that screams dangerous, but nothing that screams upstanding citizen either.

I run his name through the hotel registries for the county. Nothing. Check short-term rentals. Nothing.

If he's still in the area, he's either staying with someone or he left like I told him to.

Somehow, I doubt it's the latter.

"Find anything?" Ethan asks.

"No. Can't locate him."

"Maybe he actually left."

"Maybe..."

But I don't believe it. Guys like Trevor don't just walk away. They push until someone makes them stop.

I saw it in his face this morning. The entitlement, the certainty that he had a right to her, the dismissal of her boundaries as just obstacles to work around.