The Call

She called Aaron from the parking lot of a diner, not her apartment.

"I need to tell you something," she said. "About the letter. About what Drake knows."

She told him everything. The storage unit, Gavin, her mother, the letter about the fire. She heard Aaron listening — the quality of his silence, the specific way he went quiet when she said Marsh & Drake and then again when she said Peter Voss.

"Liza," he said when she finished. "This changes things."

"Does it help the restraining order?"

"No. But it may change what Drake does next." He was quiet for a moment. "If he knows you have access to evidence that implicates his family — that implicates him, if he was involved — this isn't a domestic violence case anymore. This is blackmail. Or it could become blackmail. Or it could become a criminal referral."

She looked at the diner's parking lot. A man in a pickup truck was eating a sandwich. An older woman was getting into a car with a small dog in her arms.

"What do I do?"

"Right now? You have a permanent restraining order. He's not supposed to contact you, come near you, or send messages through third parties. The letter already violates that — which is why we're filing a contempt motion next week." He paused. "The letter is actually useful, Liza. It shows he's escalating. It shows he's watching. The contempt motion will give the court grounds to extend the order or add additional conditions."

"And the fire thing?"

"Hold it. Don't give him anything. If he knows you have it and you're using it as leverage, that's a different kind of case. But if you just hold it — if he doesn't know what you know about what he knows — that could be an asset."

She hung up and sat in the car for a while.

The diner had a sign in the window: Open 6 AM - 2 PM. She thought about going in and ordering coffee and sitting there for an hour and then going home. She thought about calling Gavin back and asking him more questions about the storage unit and what else was in it.

She thought about what it would mean to use this — the letter, the fire, Raymond Drake's old crime — as leverage. And she thought about what it would mean if Drake already had something better.

Her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

You're not as alone as you think.

She saved it. She photographed it. She sent it to Aaron.

She went into the diner and ordered coffee.