“Who is?” Baxter says, looking out the back window. “Who, Mommy?”

I ignore him and check my mirrors, all of them, but the man is gone. The line of parked cars, the hill between here and the busy road, he’s nowhere. Even if I could see the sign from where I’m sitting, there are dozens of people on this stretch of street, pedestrians and runners, employees popping out for fresh air or to the nearby sandwich shops, people socializing on the covered benches. If he’s still down there, it would be easy to conceal himself in the crowd.

And yet he made sure I saw him when I was turning into the lot, didn’t he? The way he was dressed in all black like some kind of daytime cat burglar, how his shoulders straightened and his head popped up when he spotted my car, how he stared at me through the windshield like he was daring me to see him. Like he wanted me to see him and be scared. Maybe that’s why he’s been following me for days.

I gasp as something occurs to me. “Omigod, Cam. What if it’s not me he’s after, but the K-I-D-S? What if that’s why he’s been following me all over creation, because he’s trying to get to them?”

“Why would he be after the kids?”

I cringe at the way he said the word, already dreading the conversation I’m going to have to have with Baxter later. “I don’t know. For ransom. For creepy shadiness I don’t want to say out loud because you’re on speakerphone. Plus, I don’t want to give it energy.”

“Saying the words...” Something clangs in the background, metal on heavy metal. Cam waits until the noise dies down. “Saying them out loud doesn’t bring something into existence, you know that as well as I do. And why would he be after the kids when there are a thousand other families in this city with fancier cars and bigger houses than ours? I mean, one look at our street and it’s clear there are plenty of bigger fish.”

“Yeah, but it’s your face on the cover of Atlanta Magazine.” When Cam walks into a place, everything tilts. Heads turn, bodies shift, gazes stick. Going to a restaurant with Atlanta’s Steak King is like dining out with a rock star. The waitstaff, the chef, the other patrons in the restaurant—they all come over to bask in Cam’s glow.

And Cam knows he’s visible, even without his chef’s gear. Thick black hair, a square jaw, straight white teeth he flashes often. My husband is handsome, but it’s the combination with his height that gets him noticed. Six and a half feet of big, Mediterranean man.

“Go talk to the building’s security guard. That’s what he’s there for.”