Somebody was sitting in that truck watching the street. Marcus's mouth went dry. He let the curtain fall closed and stood in the dark of his own living room with his heart pounding. And for the first time, he understood all the way down in his gut that Victoria hadn't been exaggerating a single word. This wasn't a scared woman's imagination.
This wasn't hotel drama. There was a man in a truck outside his house at 4:00 in the morning and he was watching. He woke Victoria before dawn. Get up, he said quietly. Don't turn on any lights.
She came awake fast the way people do when they've spent a week being afraid. What is it? What's wrong? There's an SUV parked down the street. Been there since 4:00.
Somebody's inside it. Victoria went white. Black. Is it black? Yeah, that's them.
She was already up, already reaching for her shoes, already in that flat, calm voice that scared him more than screaming would have. That's Adrien's. He uses a service. Two men. They don't do anything.
They just they just watch. So, I know they're there. So, I feel it. So, I break. Marcus, I'm so sorry I brought this to your door.
I never should have. Stop. He caught her arm. Stop. Look at me.
She stopped. Are they allowed to be on my street? Marcus asked. Victoria blinked. What?
It's a public street, he said. It's my neighborhood. I've lived here 11 years. I know every house on this block and everybody in them. So, I'm asking you a real question.
Is that man in that truck breaking any law by sitting there? No, Victoria said slowly. That's the whole point. He never breaks the law. He just Then here's what we're going to do, Marcus said.
And something in his voice had changed. The exhaustion was gone. The wall was gone. What was left was a man who had spent 20 years walking onto other people's property and looking bigger men in the eye and telling them how it was going to be. You're going to stay right here away from the windows and you're going to let me handle the man in my street.
Marcus know you don't know what he's capable of. Neither does he, Marcus said, and he walked out his own front door into the gray morning rain in his socks, holding a cup of coffee like a man walking out to get his newspaper. He didn't rush. He came down the porch steps slow. He stood in his own front yard and took a long sip of his coffee and looked up and down his own street like a man surveying his kingdom, which on this block at this hour he was.
Then he crossed the street. The cigarette dot in the SUV went still. Marcus walked right up to the driver's window, casual as anything, and knocked on it twice with one knuckle. For a second, nothing happened. Then the window slid down maybe 4 in.
A man's face appeared in the gap. Heavy set mid-40s the flat professional eyes of somebody who did this kind of work for money and didn't take it personal. Help you, the man said. Morning, Marcus said pleasantly. You lost.
Just waiting on somebody. Yeah. Who? Don't think that's your business, Chief. Marcus nodded like that was a perfectly reasonable answer.
He took another sip of his coffee. Then he crouched down a little so he was eye level with the man in the window. And when he spoke again, his voice was still friendly, still easy. And somehow that made it worse. See, here's the thing.
Marcus said, "This is my street. That's my house right there, the blue one. I painted it myself. I know the Robinsons in that house. I know Miss Eta in that one.
She's 86 and she does not sleep. And I know the two offduty officers who live in the yellow house on the corner because I put a new deck on the back of it last spring and we're friends now. So when a truck none of us recognizes sits on our street for 2 hours in the dark with a man inside it we don't know that becomes everybody's business real quick. The man's jaw tightened. Now you haven't done anything wrong.
Marcus went on. You're allowed to park here. I'm not going to threaten you. I'm not going to touch your truck. I'm too old and too tired for any of that.
But I already took a picture of your plate from my porch. And in about an hour, when the sun's all the way up, I'm going to walk over to the yellow house and have coffee with my friends, and I'm going to show him that picture, and I'm going to tell him there's a strange fellow been sitting outside a house where a 9-year-old girl lives. Marcus smiled. "You got kids? " The man said, "Nothing. Cuz here's what a father hears when you say, "I'm just waiting on somebody. " A father hears a threat to his child and there is no plan, no paycheck, no favor you owe anybody in this world that is worth what happens next.
If the wrong father decides you're a threat to his child, you understand me? I'm not talking about the law. I'm talking about the thing that lives underneath the law. He straightened up, took a last sip of coffee. So, you go on and tell whoever's paying you.
I know he's paying you. Don't insult me. You tell him Marcus Ellis said good morning and you tell him this is the wrong street. He turned and walked back toward his house. He'd made it halfway across when he heard the engine turn over.
He didn't look back. He just kept walking up his own porch steps and let the door close behind him. And only then, with the door shut and his back against it, did he let his hands start to shake. Through the front window, he watched the black SUV pull away from the curb and disappear around the corner. Victoria was standing in the hallway, staring at him like he'd grown a second head.