All fifty-two windows were boarded up, in fact, because the O’Bannion house had been abandoned twenty-three years ago. And it showed.

The brick stood, weathered but intact, but the gingerbread woodwork she’d once loved was faded and cracked. The porch sagged, the glass of the front door covered with decades of grime.

Gingerly, she picked her way across the patchy grass to the front gate. The fence was wrought iron. Old-fashioned. Built to last, like the house itself. The hinges were rusty, but the gate swung open. The sidewalk was cracked, allowing weeds to flourish.

Faith took a moment to calm her racing heart before testing the first step up to the porch.

No, not the porch. The veranda. Her grandmother had always called it “the veranda” because it wrapped around the entire house. They used to sit out there and sip lemonade, she and Gran. And Mama, too. Before, of course. Afterward . . . there was no lemonade.

There was no anything. For a long time, there was absolutely nothing.

Faith swallowed hard against the acrid taste that filled her mouth, but the memory of her mother remained. Don’t think about her. Think about Gran and how she loved this old place. She’d be so sad to see it like this.

But, of course, Gran never would see it again, because she was dead. Which is why I’m here. The house and all it contained now belonged to Faith. Whether she wanted it or not.

“You don’t have to live here,” she told herself. “Just sell the property and go . . .”

Go where? Not back to Miami, that was for damn sure. You’re just running away.

Well, yeah. Duh. Of course she’d run away. Any sensible person would run if she’d been stalked for the past year by a homicidal ex-con who’d nearly killed her once before.

Some had said that she shouldn’t be surprised she’d been stalked, that by doing therapy with scum-of-the-earth sex offenders, she’d put herself in harm’s way. Some even had said she cared more about the criminals than the victims.

Those people were wrong. None of them knew what she’d done to keep the offenders from hurting anyone else. What she’d risked.

Peter Combs had attacked her four years ago because he’d believed that her “snitching” to his probation officer about missed therapy sessions had sent his reoffending ass to prison. Faith shuddered to think of what he would have done had he known the truth back then, that her role in his reincarceration had been far more than marking him absent. But given the cat-and-mouse game he’d played with her in the year following his release, the fact that his stalking had escalated to attempted murder four times now . . . Maybe he did know. Maybe he’d figured it out.