Page 13 of What We Bury

Eli ordered me to follow her, but I would have done so even if he hadn’t. She intrigues me.

She’s a block ahead now. Moving at a pace that’s too steady to be natural—the kind of walk you do when you’re afraid that if you slow down, your legs will stop working entirely. I match it, keeping to the far side of the street, using the parked cars and the overgrown hedges for cover. She doesn’t look back. That’s either trust or shock. Probably shock.

My boots are silent on the concrete. Practice. Years of it. I learned to move without sound long before Eli, Holden, and I started this thing—back in a house where noise meant attention and attention meant pain. The ghost walk, Milo calls it. Says I move like someone deleted my sound file.

She turns left on Harbor. I know this street. I’ve cataloged entry points and blind spots, purely out of habit, so I know the corner camera outside the laundromat is a dummy—no wiring. The alley between the bars is unlit.

A car passes. Headlights sweep across her and for a second I see her clearly—the jacket zipped tight, chin tucked into thecollar, the way her right hand is still shoved into the pocket where the knife is.

She steps over a broken bottle without looking down. Her feet are going to be shredded by morning. Gravel, glass. She doesn’t adjust her stride for any of it. I want to pick her up. Carry her.

I don’t.

She’s earned the right to walk herself home.

She takes the turn onto Pacific and I hang back an extra ten yards because the street narrows here and there’s less cover. Her building is three blocks up—a cheaply made concrete shithole that barely has a view of the ocean. It’s where people live if they can’t afford better or want to be a ghost.

Which column does she fall into?

A dog barks but she ignores it.

Most people who’ve been through what she just went through flinch at every shadow, every sound, every unexpected touch.

She doesn’t react. Which means either she’s in deeper shock than I think, or this isn’t her first time walking home from something she should be screaming about.

Her building’s front door is battered wood and glass. She works the buzzer panel, lighting it up like a Christmas tree until somebody buzzes her in without so much as a voice check. The door sticks. She hip-checks it to get it moving. The lock has a strike plate I’d bet is loose, but it hardly matters when the tenants will open up for anyone who leans on a button long enough.

Pathetic security. Worse tenants.

I slide in silently behind her, catching the door before it fully closes. Then I hang back in the lobby and listen as she climbs the stairs to the second floor. I follow a single flight behind andsurface on the landing just as she slips inside 2B and the door clicks shut.

Standing in the hall, I wait until I see the lights go on beneath the door, then head back outside to take inventory while she settles. The south-side fire escape is rusted but functional. The ground-floor windows have no bars. The building next door sits close enough for a rooftop jump. No cameras. Barely any security at all.

I catalog, file, and mentally sort all of it for Eli. He’ll want a full report by morning. Baseline recon for any job.

Except tonight it feels less like cleanup and more like caretaking.

I step back, wedge myself behind the warped cedar post at the edge of the courtyard, and settle in to watch the building. Her apartment is a corner unit, blinds already drawn. A lamp goes on in the living room. A soft yellow square lights the frosted glass of what I assume is the bathroom.

I wait long enough for her to get in the shower before moving.

As I suspected, the building lock is garbage. I’m inside in seconds. The apartment lock is worse—a cheap knob, no deadbolt backup. A little pressure and the latch gives with an unsatisfying click.

Pathetic. Unworthy of the girl inside.

I step over the threshold, boots silent. Living room ahead, basic kitchen to the side, an archway leading deeper into the apartment.

The jacket is draped over a kitchen chair. My knife is still in the pocket, warm from her body heat. I slide it free, check the blade out of habit, click it shut, and tuck it back into the holder at my ankle.

I feel whole again.

I edge down the hallway only far enough to confirm where the evidence is. The shower is running. Steam spills through the inch-wide gap of the open bathroom door, carrying drugstore body wash and the copper stink of blood.

The dress is on the floor—blood-soaked and crumpled in a heap, leaving rusty smudges on the tile.

I push the door open slightly, crouch low, keep my eyes on the floor, and snag the dress before retreating back to the kitchen.

I pull out my phone, snap photos of the dress, and pull up the shot I already grabbed of the shoes she left under the jetty. I open the encrypted app and send them all to my boss.