Page 253 of What We Bury

Could also be someone else, and a baseball cap and a backpack aren’t overly descriptive.

When I get back to the apartment, the scene hasn’t changed much. Sage is up now, pacing the kitchen, which I take as a good sign. Eli is at the table with his hands clasped, running through something in his head. Milo’s moved from his phone to his laptop. Micah’s making coffee, because Micah always makes something when things are falling apart, and Knox hasn’t moved from his position between the living room and the front door.

“Neighbor saw someone,” I say, and lay out what Dorothy gave me. “Tallish, cap, backpack, let himself in with a key. Two, two-thirty this afternoon.”

“Tyler,” Milo says immediately.

“Maybe. Could fit a lot of people.”

“Could fit Tyler specifically.”

“It could. And it could fit someone we haven’t considered yet.” I hold up a hand before the argument starts. “I’m not ruling him out. I’m saying we don’t move on assumptions. That’s how mistakes happen. The kind that put us all in a cell.”

Milo’s jaw works, but he backs down.

“Tell me you’ve got something on camera,” I say to Milo.

He doesn’t look up from the laptop. His jaw is tight. “I’ve got nothing on camera, because there are no cameras. This building has a shitty intercom from 1987 and a landlord who thinks a deadbolt is cutting-edge security.” He shuts the laptop. “You know what would’ve caught this guy strolling in with his backpack and his borrowed key? The cameras Iinstalled at the start of all this.” His voice flattens. “Creepy, I believe was the word. Overbearing. Invasive. And now our best witness is a woman named Dorothy who was three feet from him and watchingWheel of Fortune.”

Nobody argues, because he’s right—and Milo being right while everyone else was wrong is a specific flavor of misery he’ll savor later, once we’re not standing under a noose.

I look to Eli to bring him in. He’s the one who usually balances Milo’s worst-case instincts against what’s actually in front of us. But Eli isn’t in the conversation. He’s at the table, hands clasped, knuckles gone white, staring at a spot on the wall a thousand miles past it. Not calm. The opposite of calm—the kind of quiet that’s a man holding something down with both hands.

Shit.

I know that look. I watched him wear it for weeks before he finally let himself near her. And it’s back, settling over him brick by brick while she stands ten feet away with her arms wrapped around herself—because somewhere behind those eyes he’s already decided this rope is his fault. That this is what it costs to let himself have something good. That if he holds far enough away, hurts enough, the people he loves stay safe.

“Eli,” I say, pulling him out of his internal spiral. His eyes snap to mine. “What’s your take?”

“Regardless of who did it,” he says, his voice quiet and precise, “the message is clear. Someone’s targeting Sage. Someone who knows where she lives and has access to her home.” He looks at me. “She can’t stay here.”

“No,” I agree. “She can’t.”

Sage stops pacing. “I’m not running.”

“Nobody said run,” I tell her. “We said you can’t stayhere. This location is compromised. Someone walked in, hung a noose from your ceiling, and walked out, all while you were at work five minutes away. If they wanted to do more than send a message, they could have. Next time, they might.”

She stares at me, and I can see the fight building—the stubborn, feral independence that makes her who she is and also makes her a nightmare to protect. But behind it, fear. The kind she’s too proud to name but not too smart to ignore.

“Where would I go?” she asks.

“My place.”

The room goes quiet. Five sets of eyes on me, and the size of what I’m offering hits me—the door I’m opening that I’ve kept shut for years.

“Yourplace?” Micah repeats.

“I’ve got a house. Four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and a guest room I use for storage. There’s space for all of us.” I keep my voice level, practical, like I’m presenting a tactical optionrather than handing someone the key to the only private thing I have left. “It’s in a residential neighborhood. Quiet street. I know every neighbor by name and face. No one gets within a block without me knowing.”

“You have a whole-ass house?” Milo asks, with the expression of a man who’s just learned his coworker has a secret double life, which—fair.

“I own a house, Milo. People do that.”

“Yeah, butyou? A big ole house? With rooms and a yard and shit?”

“There’s a yard,” I confirm. “And shit.”

“Holden.” Sage’s voice cuts through the banter. She’s looking at me with an expression I can’t fully read—gratitude, surprise, something softer. “That’s a big ask. All of us? In your house?”