Cruz answered on the second ring.
"Wren." His voice was already sharpened to alertness, some instinct in him tuned to the specific pitch of a call that came before its expected time. "What's wrong."
"He was here." Her voice came out thinner than she wanted, betraying the tremor still working through her hands. "Preacher. At the end of the road. He just — sat there. On his bike. For eleven minutes."
"Did he approach the house?"
"No. He just watched." She pressed her free hand flat against the kitchen counter, grounding herself against the cool stone the way she'd learned in therapy sessions she'd stopped attending months before any of this started. "Then he left."
There was a beat of silence on the line, and when Cruz spoke again, his voice had dropped into something controlled, delibe
