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The concrete landing burned through my socks before the screen had finished waking.

I had made it across the apartment without touching the bad floorboard.

Phone first. Keys second. Coat from the hook by the door, eased up so the brass hanger did not knock the wall. I left the bag in the spare room. Two shirts, underwear, a toothbrush — Derek could keep all of it, he'd bought most of it anyway.

But I took Clover out of it first, and she went inside my coat, against my ribs, where his money had never once been able to reach her.

The door clicked shut behind me with less sound than a refrigerator seal. Cold hit my bare ankles. Bozeman spread below the landing in sodium-yellow patches, parking lot and rooftops and the distant dark shoulder of the mountains. The wind had teeth now. Weather coming.

I crouched beside the concrete rail, using it to block the screen from the apartment windows, and opened the text thread.

Four messages.

There they were.

Proud of you for finally making the adult choice.

Tomorrow we'll talk about what you owe me for cleaning this up.

I meant what I said. I can make this easy or hard.

Behave and your boyfriend stays free.

I took screenshots of them all.

My fingers shook so hard I had to brace my wrists on the concrete, but my mind stayed level. It became the barn mind. The crisis mind. The part of me that could stand knee-deep in blood and know which instrument came next.

I emailed everything to myself first.

Subject: DEREK KANE — MESSAGE RECORD — APRIL.

Then Wyatt.

Subject: EVIDENCE OF COERCION AND FALSE COMPLAINT — BOONE CALLOWAY.

The message body took three attempts because my thumbs kept hitting the wrong keys.

Wyatt—

Derek told me in writing that Boone stays free if I behave.

I am leaving now. I am safe.

Josie

I deleted I'm sorry before sending.

The deletion felt like lifting something heavier than me.

Then the Madison County Sheriff's Office general inbox. I found it through the county website, brightness turned low, wind lifting loose strands of my hair across my mouth.

Subject: FILE EVIDENCE — FALSE ASSAULT COMPLAINT / COERCION — JOSIE MARSH.

My name. My file number. Boone's full name. Derek's full name. Dates. No adjectives.

I pressed send.

All three messages moved into the outbox, then disappeared.