By contrast, Tyler’s ardent refusal seemed to change something in Jack—as if he had been yanked from a reverie with the snap of someone’s fingers. Jack took his seat at the table, patted Tyler on the back, then turned to me.

“What do you need?” Jack asked me, in this explicit way, like we were making a deal—like I was a man he was paying to stay away from his daughter.

Tyler wouldn’t look at me.

“I don’t want anything from you,” I said. “All I want is to be left alone to finish my paintings. No police, no Charles Eliot, no trouble. I’ll be gone soon.”

I pushed back from the table and walked to the door.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four

In the morning, all of their cars were gone. I stopped in the Mission to find sunlight bleaching the naked wooden circle of the table we’d sat at the night before. The canisters were gone, too.

I drove to the studio with a rock in my stomach.

Fifty feet away, I spotted the edge of Marlin’s black truck, parked in front of my studio, where the front door was wide open. I slammed on the brakes, jammed it in park, and ran full-speed toward the studio. Were they touching my paintings? Were they ruining my life?

Panic pushed me forward, filling my lungs, pumping my legs up and down. I gripped my keys so hard they drew blood. I don’t know if I’ve ever been as terrified as I was during those fifteen steps to the door, and I burst through it like a bomb, the scream already forming in the bottom of my throat.

All four of them—Tyler, Jes, Jack, and Marlin—were sitting patiently on the hayloft steps in the back, coffee mugs in hand. Jes was reading my notebook. I ran, scanning my paintings, out of breath, sweat running down my inner arm. Nothing—they hadn’t moved anything. That I could see.

“What are you doing in here?” I shrieked.

“You slept in,” Tyler said. I felt his eyes on me, but I couldn’t even look at him.

I turned in a circle, tears ready to leak from my eyes as I looked for any sign of damage, but there was nothing, and it made me even more suspicious. What had they done?

“What are you doing in here?” I shrieked, again, borderline hysterical. “Don’t touch anything.” My hands flew to my collarbone and I worried it, over and over. “I thought I had the only key.”

“Chill,” Marlin said, brows up, hands pressing the air in a calming motion. “We’re here to help.”

“Why are you reading my notebook?” I barked.

Jes turned another page. “You go through our stuff, we go through yours,” she said with a shrug.