I pulled her in closer, needing to feel her body flush with mine. She hadn’t put the pillow barrier in place last night. Anna had curved herself against me and let me hold her all night long. I hadn’t pressed for anything more than that. What she’d given was already such a gift. “It’s a Google Voice number, and there’s no data on it.” I knew from my time in law school that we wouldn’t be able to get any additional information from the company since the texts hadn’t been overtly threatening.

Anna’s shoulders slumped. “I was really hoping there would be something.”

I pressed my lips to the top of her head. “Me, too.”

“What’s going on?” Juliette asked.

I hadn’t even heard her get up from her chaise lounge. I looked around to see if the kids were within earshot, but they’d become engrossed in a splash fight. “Anna’s been getting some less-than-kind texts.”

Juliette’s lips pressed into a thin line. “And you had a P.I. trace them?”

“Yeah. It comes back to a Google Voice number.”

Her shoulders straightened as she faced off against Anna and me. “Wake up, Mase. She probably sent them herself. Those things are ridiculously easy to set up and hide your identity.”

Anna had gone stiff as a board in my hold. I pulled her tighter against me, trying to keep my anger in check so I wouldn’t say something I regretted. “Jules, that’s enough.”

“What? I can’t even have an opinion anymore?”

I looked down at Anna. Beneath the carefully blank mask was hurt. I felt the beginnings of a pull that had started the moment I’d told Jules that I’d gotten married. The tug between my sister and the woman who was beginning to mean everything to me. “I think it’s best if you leave.” The words burned as I let them loose.

Her mouth fell open. “Are you serious? She has completely blinded you. I’ve asked around about her in town, and people know almost nothing about her, even though you said she’s lived here for ten years. Where? Scamming off some other idiot?”

“I lived at the homeless shelter,” Anna said. Her voice was soft, but it was in no way timid. “I lived there for six years before I started working there full time and took an employee apartment in the building. I lived there because when my boyfriend framed me for selling his drugs, my parents decided I wasn’t worth their time and cut off all contact with me. I had no one. But Hope House gave me a safe place to rebuild. That’s where I’ve been.”