Page 38 of The Exit Strategy

“Evening patrol.” He adjusts his vest. It’s new. This one is fluorescent yellow and says Enforcer across the front.

“Stanley, putting on a vest does not give you any authority. We’ve been over this.”

“I noticed some suspicious activity near the garage apartment.”

My pulse quickens. “My garage apartment?” I pick up my pace, with Stanley tailing me. “What kind of activity?”

“Bea said the lights have been off all evening. Usually, your girl’s up there working till at least midnight, so I did a couple’a rounds.” He taps his dashcam. “I’ve got the data right here.”

The data. For fuck’s sake. Stanley has footage of Junie’s light patterns. I’m not even the most obsessive person monitoring her movements in this community, and that’s a thought I’m going to bury immediately.

“She’s fine, Stanley. Go home.”

“I’ll do another loop. Just to be safe.”

He putters away before I can argue, his headlights sweeping across properties like this is a tactical hostage situation. We need to find him a new hobby that has him hitting up Home Depot less.

By ten o’clock, I’ve burned through the resident’s wish list and have started inventing problems to solve, like Bea’s rocking chairs that squeak too loudly and give Dollie headaches, and the hedge by the pool that always grows a straggler branch that refuses to conform to The Haven’s neatly ordered shrubbery.

The thing about fixing shit to avoid other shit is that it works until it doesn’t. You can replace every bulb, tighten every railing, and clear every gutter in the community, and when you’re done, the woman upstairs still hasn’t turned onher light, and you still don’t know how to explain things in a way that won’t hurt her more.

I’m washingmy hands in the kitchen when I hear Nana Mae’s slippers on the tile.

“Mail came later than normal today.” She sets a small stack on the counter and continues past me to the kettle. “Something for you on top.”

Natalie must be more paranoid than normal because she’s upping her tactics. But I take the envelope, and my hand remains steady through sheer force of will.

The second my skin touches it, my gaze drifts to the driveway, to Junie, feeling like even holding this piece of paper is somehow a betrayal.

“Nana Mae, what the hell are you doing wandering around The Haven at ten at night?”

“How’s Natalie doing?” Nana Mae asks, ignoring me but turning her back to fill the kettle. She’s casual in her questioning, but there’s always a bite to it when Natalie’s involved.

Nana Mae doesn’t know what the letters really are. She thinks they’re updates from a former girlfriend who became a friend. She thinks the letters about Marcus are exactly as they appear to be—a woman keeping her ex informed about her brother’s health because I’m the kind of man who cares.

She’s only half right. I do care about Marcus. He’s as innocent in all of this as I am. That part has never been the lie.

It’s everything else.

It’s not his fault that his father’s gambling debt is whatmade Natalie his guardian. It’s not his fault that his sister chose blackmail because her ego wouldn’t allow for anything else.

“I’ll read it later.” I pocket the envelope and force myself to lean against the counter, pretending the paper isn’t burning a hole through my heart.

Nana Mae’s quiet as she waits for her water to heat, then she turns with two mugs, and I lift a brow. She’s always done this—anticipated the crisis before it arrives. This time, she uses tea as the method to have a conversation.

Respect for my grandmother is the only reason I sit next to her at the same table where she didn’t ask me why I left Boston, just handed me a deed to her portion of the land and said,“Build something, Cole. That’s what you’re good at.”

She doesn’t know about the giant loan I took out against my five acres. The most important acreage to us both. The land that sits undisturbed except for the fishing dock my grandfather built fifty years ago.

“Juniper found some…things in the books today.” Talking about Devin is easier than thinking about the letter in my pocket.

Her mug pauses halfway to her lips. “What kind of things?”

“The kind that confirm my suspicions.” I choose my words the way I choose building materials—carefully, structurally, knowing what they have to support. “Devin was…strategic, not careless as I originally hoped.” And that’s the truth. I hoped that he was just a fucknut, not an active thief. “Junie’s good at collecting evidence.”

Mae sets down her tea. Her index finger traces her thumbnail, and she won’t meet my eye.

Which means she’s about to drop a bomb of her own, and I won’t like what she has to say.