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I look at him.

Torin notices different things than I do. I see structure. Briggs sees threat. Torin sees the emotional bruise under the skin.

“The handwriting,” he says. “She presses hard. See where the paper drags? But the last line is lighter. Like she’s running out of time. Or scared of being seen or heard.”

Briggs goes still.

I write: written under pressure?

“Could be old,” I say.

Torin’s gaze lifts. “Do you think it is?”

“No.”

Truth first. Comfort later, if necessary.

Briggs pushes off the doorframe. “This is a fucking nightmare.”

“Yes,” I agree, knowing exactly what he means.

This is our one chance to do something meaningful in Ben’s memory. But we just don’t know where to begin.

Torin takes the copied note and stares at it. “You’re going to Everwood?”

“I might take a look around.” I offer a one shouldered shrug. “See if I can get hold of anything. Don’t worry, I don’t intend to do anything crazy. Just… see for myself.”

I close my laptop and rise. I don’t wait to find out if either of them have anything to say on the matter. I don’t really care. I just want to act.

By 9:10, I’m in Everwood.

Everwood sits twenty-three miles west of Redwood Run and lacks its charm. That sounds subjective. It isn’t. Redwood Run has moss, old timber, quaint storefronts, and enough community memory to make privacy difficult but survival easier.

Everwood has strip malls, new vinyl siding, and traffic lights designed by someone with unresolved hostility toward flow.

Maggie’s house is on Cedar Hart Lane, a quiet road with neat lawns and one too many identical mailboxes. The white house sits third from the corner, pale yellow siding, trimmed hedges, children’s chalk faintly visible on the driveway near the garage.

I make out a pink flower. A crooked sun. A stick figure with tall hair.

Lucy, maybe?.

I park two houses down beneath a maple and wait.

Waiting isn’t passive. Done correctly, it’s work.

At 9:37, Sophie White comes out of the house carrying a laundry basket. Mid-sixties, careful movements, beige cardigan, face drawn with the kind of worry that gets folded inward instead of spoken. Mick follows six minutes later, taking trash bins to the curb even though collection isn’t until tomorrow.

Stress often expresses itself through repetition of comforting tasks. Mick White moving the bins early tells me more than his tight expression does.

It gives fear a schedule.

Tom emerges at 10:12.

He isn’t what I expect, which means nothing. Dangerous men rarely come with warnings until people compare notes afterward.

Average height. Brown hair. Light jacket. Clean jeans. A face arranged into grief for public consumption. He stands on the porch, phone in hand, and looks up and down the street.

I write down the time.