What the Search Found

Detective Reeves called back the next day.

"We found him," she said. "Martin Calloway. Sixty-seven years old. Retired. Lives on the north side of town — about four miles from your apartment."

Liza sat down. "Four miles."

"Close enough to watch. Close enough to know your patterns." Reeves was quiet. "Liza, I'm going to be direct with you. We ran his background. He's got a record — nothing recent, but in his twenties and thirties, he had a history of intimidation, threats, a couple of assault charges that were dropped. He's the kind of man who knows how to stay within the law while making people afraid."

"Drake knew him?"

"We don't know yet. But we know they worked together at the shop — Marsh & Drake, before the fire. Calloway was in his early twenties then, working the register. After the fire, he moved around — different jobs, different towns. He settled here about fifteen years ago."

"Why here?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out. This is a small town, Liza. People who end up in the same place again usually have a reason."

Liza thought about it. Drake's father had run the shop. Calloway had worked there. They'd committed the fraud together, split the money, and then Calloway had disappeared — resurfacing fifteen years ago, in the same town where Liza now lived.

"How long has he been here?"

"Fifteen years. Long enough to be embedded. Long enough to know the area, the patterns, the people." Reeves paused. "Liza, I need you to think about something. When Drake was surveilling you — when we found the Route 9 address — we assumed that address was Drake's, or his family's. But Calloway is connected to that address too. The storage facility lease is in his name, not Drake's."

Liza felt the floor shift again — the same sensation she'd had when she'd first read the PI's report, the first time she'd realized how much Drake knew that she didn't.

"He's been watching me," she said.

"Possibly. Or he's been watching Drake, and you're caught in the middle." Reeves paused. "Or they both have. Calloway and Drake — they have history. They have shared secrets. If Calloway knows what you have, and Drake knows that Calloway knows —"

"Then Drake isn't just testing the restraining order. He's using Calloway."

"Or they're using each other."

The line was quiet. Liza looked at the evidence log on her desk — the voicemails, the texts, the photograph of her building. She thought about who could have taken that photograph. Not Drake — not within 500 feet of her home. But Calloway could be. Calloway could walk right up to her building and take a picture and put it in an envelope and leave it in her mailbox, and the restraining order wouldn't cover it because Calloway wasn't the person named in the order.

The order was for Drake. Only Drake.

And she had just learned there was another man — a man who had been watching her for years — who could do whatever he wanted and face no legal consequences at all.