Ice runs through my chest. I shove the fear back. “What?” It isn’t a question. More like the beginning of a threat.

North shoves away from the door. “The cameras didn’t pick up a thing.”

“Easy,” Martin says, bland as dry toast. “She didn’t come close enough to the house. Just sat in her car two gates down the road. My guys were watching her.”

It’s that knowledge that lets me sleep at night. And it’s that knowledge that also makes my skin feel too tight. All my hard-earned freedom has once again been whittled down to tightly controlled monitoring. The restrictiveness of it yanks at my neck like a choke collar, and for an airless second, I’m back under my father’s watch.

No. This time I’m the one in control.

“We need to report this,” North says. “Have them arrest her.”

Martin shakes his head. “She hasn’t done enough to warrant any charges. None that we can prove at the moment, anyway.”

“But if she was there . . .”

“He’s right.” Sighing, I reach for my drink. “We don’t have any proof.”

“At the very least, we can report her as a person of interest,” North pushes.

“Already did that.” Martin pockets his phone. “They’re going to question her. In the meantime, we keep vigilant. I haven’t seen Brown around, but that doesn’t mean she lost interest.”

“Fucking great,” I mutter under my breath.

North lets Martin out, and I head back to my room. It’s early. If this had been a month ago, I’d be at an exclusive bar, surrounded by people I barely know, letting their chatter lull me into a mindless calm. I’d feed off the energy of everyone and everything, all the while remaining apart from it. Not a perfect life, but adequate. Enough to stop me from thinking about things best left in the past.

Now, all I want to do is take a painkiller and crawl into bed. I slow down as I near Delilah’s door. The house is so quiet I can easily hear the television playing. She’s watching About a Boy.

A memory hits me, as bright and painful as a spotlight.

We were on the big brown sectional couch in her family room, watching this very movie. Delilah was fourteen, chubby cheeked and wearing a thick braid that ran like a dark snake over her hunched shoulders. She was curled up on one end of the couch, while Sam and I were tucked into the other.

As usual, Sam leaned on me until I lost feeling in my shoulder and tried to nudge her off. She found her way back, digging her bony elbow into spots she knew annoyed the hell out of me.