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Another beat. “So he had an axe.”

“Yes.”

“Did he go toward the kid?”

“No.”

“Did you see the kid take a picture?”

My stomach drops. “No.”

“He had his phone?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Then that’s the first thing we need to find out.”

The questions come so fast I can barely keep up, but Blair has shifted into lawyer mode, reducing the mess to the next fact we can actually verify. I press my fingers against my forehead. “I didn’t see a phone in his hand, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“No. It doesn’t. There’s not a kid over the age of ten in America who doesn’t have a phone attached to their hand at all times.”

Locke is watching me now, not trying to decipher Blair’s half of the conversation but tracking the way my shoulders have drawn tight and my hand has stayed pressed to my forehead. “Blair, what do we do?”

“Right now? You don’t call the sheriff preemptively. You don’t post anything. You don’t invite anyone over to prove or disprove the story. If someone comes onto your property without permission, tell them to leave.”

“That’s it?”

“For right now, yes. The biggest mistake would be reacting to things that haven’t happened yet.”

I look toward the road again. That sounds sensible, which doesn’t make it easy. Somewhere between here and town, a seventeen-year-old with a phone is carrying the first story about Locke beyond the people who know him. I can’t reach into that car and yank the story back.

“What about Locke?”

“What about him?”

“If people start showing up.”

Blair is quiet for a moment. “Then remember that being worried about what happens to him isn’t the same as getting to decide for him.”

The words land harder than I expect. “I know.”

“I know you do. I’m saying it because fear makes everybody stupid.”

Comments like that are exactly why I called her.

“Put me on speaker,” she says.

I do.

“Locke?”

“Yes.”

“Someone seeing you changes the timing. It doesn’t change the fact that you get a say in what happens next. If somebody comes onto Rachel’s property, Rachel can tell them to leave. If somebody asks you questions, you decide whether to answer. If somebody asks for a picture, that’s your choice too.”

Locke looks toward the phone. “If they do not ask?”

Blair pauses.