“All right. The angle of the backyard photo suggests it was shot from high up. A tree or a roof.” She leaned in close and squinted at the photo, which almost gave me a look down her shirt. I forced myself to look away.

  “Agreed.”

  “Angle of photo two is low,” she said.

  “Like a camera attached to the bottom of a car?”

  “Exactly like that.”

  “What about the photos of you for that day?” I opened the files. Two of her in running gear. One fresh and one sweaty. Exact same angle. She looked unnecessarily hot in both photos. Her shorts were short. Her sleeves were nonexistent. Her muscles were popping. She’d been doing more than recreational trail runs.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I said.

  “I know, right?”

  “Yeah, totally.” I had no fucking clue what she was talking about. I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with her being irritatingly sexy.

  “It’s just so creepy.”

  “So creepy.” I clicked open the remaining three photos to see what was creepy. There was one of her outside a beige building. CHP Marin Area was painted on the side of the building behind her. The next was her at a cafe with a beefy older guy in a khaki uniform. Photo five was her walking into an office building. There was a sign next to her, but I couldn’t read it without enlarging the photo. “Okay, so that solves the tracker versus camera debate.”

  “Yep. These all look like they were taken from the same height and distance.” She frowned and clicked.

  “So he was using surveillance cameras to track both of us. It’s not that difficult to deduce.”

  “For that day, yeah. Let’s pick a another day and see what we can glean.”

  “Okay. What day?”

  “I don’t know. March.” She clicked. “Twenty-second.”

  “March twenty-second.”

  LK, 03/22, 8:15 a.m. Liam Salvi drops LK at Muir Woods visitor center.

  LK, 03/22, 8:30 a.m. Begins run at Redwood Creek. Takes Canopy View to Old Railroad Grade to top of mountain. Returns on same route.

  LK, 03/22, 11:15 a.m. Meditates off Redwood Creek Trail.

  LK, 03/22, 11:35 a.m. Salvi picks up LK.

  LK, 03/22, 12:00 p.m. LK and Salvi return to house.

  LK, 03/22, 4:30 p.m. Private appointment at Mill Valley Clinic with Carolyn Plaskett.

  LK, 03/22 5:30 Returns to Salvi’s house. Stays for reminder of evening.

  “It seems like he’s got a lot more information on my movements this day,” she said.

  “Yeah. The whole knowing what trail you’re on eliminates any sort of vehicle camera. He was either following you himself or had someone else following you. I mean, assuming there’s no cameras on that trail,” I said.

  “There’s not. The parking lot doesn’t even have surveillance.”

  “Could he have installed cameras on the mountain? That would explain the super accurate trail names.”

  She slowly shook her head. “He could, but there are a ton of trails and I ran them at random. It would be difficult to cover them all. Even just the junctures between trails would be prohibitive. And he would need to regularly change out batteries and transfer recordings, which would be damn near impossible. There are rangers all over that area because there are so many hikers.”

  “Okay, so we’re going with the theory that you were physically followed that day.”

  “And not the other day since he didn’t note what trails I was on.”

  “Right. Because you were clearly on different trails?” I had no clue. I clicked back to the other day to see what it said.

  “Yeah. I mean, same mountain, but they start in totally different places.”

  “Well, duh.” A fact I was absolutely aware of before that moment.

  “Hey, Cash, what mountain was I running on?”

  “Runner’s Mountain.”

  She grinned. “Yep. Nailed it.”

  I looked for photos and found pre- and post-run again. This time the sweaty photo was Laurel meditating on a wooden bench. She looked like a tool. I still wanted to make out with her, but that was irrelevant. The third photo was her in front of the same office building. The angle was a bit different and the sign was easier to read. That was it.

  “This makes me want to punch someone,” she said.

  “Why’s that? I mean, aside from the violation of being stalked.”

  “Mostly that. I remember that run. It was a gorgeous day. The top of the mountain was almost too hot, but the view was clear. You can never see far, but the fog lifted and it was just perfect.” She shook her head. “And I’d been meditating seriously for a couple weeks, but that was the first time I had the courage to just sit on a trail in public and go for it. And this motherfucker was watching me. It feels tainted.”

  I didn’t have a brilliant response to that. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  “Why? It’s not your fault.”

  “It kind of is. If not for me, you’d never have met Henry Brewer and been the focus of his obsessive bullshit.”

  “You’re not responsible for his behavior. You know that, right?”

  “That’s not really true though.”

  “It is true. He would have snapped eventually. The dude is unhinged. We just happened to speak to his damaged psyche or whatever.”

  “Well, I’m still sorry.”

  “Thanks.” Laurel adjusted her laptop screen nervously. “So what did you do that day?”

  “Let’s find out.” I opened the Cash file for the same date.

  CB, 03/19, 9:30 a.m.–11:00 a.m. Coffee on back deck.

  CB, 03/19, 2:00 p.m. Leaves for meeting with Kyra Daneshmandan and Irene Terzi at S Street building.

  CB, 03/19, 6:00 p.m. CB and Daneshmandan meet Van Bertram for drinks at Citrus & Salt.

  CB, 03/19, 11:15 p.m. Arrives home in a Lyft. Stays for remainder of evening.

  After reading, I remembered that day. I was pretty sure it was when Kyra and I bought the gallery building.

  “That’s pretty bare bones,” Laurel said.

  “And missing some pretty basic details. Just a sec.” I grabbed my phone and went back in my calendar. “Yep. That’s the day Kyra and I signed all the documents to buy the gallery.”

  “Which means he definitely didn’t have any eyes or ears on what you were doing.”

  “But he also missed what we did afterward. Kyra and Van and I met for drinks, but after that we walked to Aglio for dinner. Then Kyra dropped me and Van off at the Depot because she had an early morning. I took a Lyft home and picked up my car the next day.”

  “That supports the video on the car theory.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And challenges the accomplice theory,” she said.

  “Also, it suggests he didn’t put video on Kyra’s car because there’s no record of her driving us to the bar.”

  “Great.” Laurel clicked and started typing. “So now we just need to do this for the other two hundred and forty something days.”

  “What?”

  “I already did September, which means we’ve got just over eight months of notes to read,” she said. I assumed she was exaggerating and we weren’t going to actually read all eight months of notes. I was incorrect.

  “Fuck Henry Brewer and his fucking bullshit.”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m going to make some coffee. I’ll be back in a minute.” I set the laptop on the bed. Laurel gave me an ironic thumbs-up.

  Chapter Ten

  Two hours later, I’d gone through a pot of coffee, ordered pizza delivery for both of us, and we’d knocked out three and a half months.

  “I guess it’s good we’re not very exciting,” Laurel said.

  “Speak for yourself, man.”

  “We just went through an eleven-day stretch where all you did was drink coffee in your backyard, and have groceries delivered.”

  “I was doing a lot of exciting stuff though. It was just indoor stuff.” Like reading dark poetry and being depressed. Those were important winter activities. Especially when the woman you were in love with had abruptly left you.

  “Exciting indoor stuff. Right.”

  “No one goes out in January. It’s cold. If I left the shelter of the heat lamps on my porch, I’d probably die.”

  “I went out in January.”

  “You went to therapy once a week, group therapy once a week, got your hair cut, and had ten business meetings in the entire month.” I ticked off her activities on my fingers.

  “I had a lot of shit to work through, thank you very much.”

  “I’m just saying people who live in beige subdivisions shouldn’t throw boring stones.”

  “I don’t live in a subdivision.”

  “It’s a metaphor, Laurel.”

  She rolled her eyes and dove back into January. It was infinitely weird to see an itemized list of my ex-girlfriend’s movements in the months following our breakup. Weirder still was reading through the lists with said ex-girlfriend. We were being careful not to ask what the hell the other was doing, which I had especially appreciated when we read December and I did nothing except mope and drink beer and cry. Thankfully, most of the crying had occurred indoors where Henry and his cameras couldn’t document it. The moping, however, was well documented.

  The guy Laurel had moved in with when she left Sac appeared to be an old buddy, but I’d never heard her talk about a Liam Salvi. According to Henry’s notes Salvi was law enforcement, but there wasn’t any other information. His insistence on not stalking anyone other than Laurel was very inconvenient.

  Laurel broke the silent code first. “So why were you and Nate meeting with Jerome St. Maris so often? I thought you hated the guy?”

  “My answer depends on how dedicated to the law you still are.”

  “I cannot be regulated by the laws of man,” she said grandly.

  “New you is fun.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m a hoot.”

  I almost didn’t tell her the truth, but then I couldn’t think of a reason to lie. “We sold him our business.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We sold him everything. Our connections, our supply, our customer base.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Shit.”

  “How do you think I bought the gallery building?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. With a bank loan like a normal person?”

  “Well, yeah. The business wasn’t worth millions and Kyra insisted we buy in midtown. But we needed a down payment.”

  “You’re like officially, officially not a drug dealer,” she said.

  “And you’re like officially, officially not a cop.”

  “Well, I do consult with cops.”

  “So you’re just officially not a cop?” I emphasized the single “officially.”

  “Correct. Only one officially.”

  “Is it weird?” I wouldn’t have asked in the daylight. But it was pushing eleven and the house was still empty and Nickels wasn’t awake to judge me.

  “Yeah.”

  That was it. That was all I got. We kept working. The pizza went cold. So did the second pot of coffee. Around midnight, I heard Lane get home. She moved around for about twenty minutes. Nickels scratched at my door to be let out. I opened it and she ran for Lane’s room. A few minutes later, Lane hit the lights and closed her door. My eyes got gritty. I fell asleep in mid March.

  “Cash. Hey, Cash wake up.”

  I opened my eyes. The laptop screen seemed harsh in the muted warm light of my bedroom. “Shit. Sorry.”

  “It’s cool. Look at the documents. April third.”

  I blinked a couple of times until my vision fully cleared. I pushed myself upright. Laurel had finished filling in March on our shared document, but April third was blank so I pulled up Henry’s notes.

  CB, 4/03, 9:15 a.m. Van Bertram arrives at CB’s. They pick up supplies at Home Depot.

  CB, 4/03, 10:15 a.m.–1:00 p.m. Bertram and CB sand building floors.

  CB, 4/03, 1:00 p.m. Kyra Daneshmandan brings them lunch.

  “What am I looking for?” I asked.

  “Unless Brewer was standing inside and you didn’t notice him, he’s got cameras inside your gallery.”

  “Fuck. Seriously. Fuck that guy.” I thought I’d burned off my rage at Henry, but it shot through me again. I could deal with a camera on my car. I could even maybe ignore the one looking into my backyard. But inside my gallery? Fuck that guy.

  “Any idea how he managed that?”

  “I don’t know.” I grabbed my phone again. “Kyra tracked all the work we did.” I scrolled through the spreadsheet. “Any idea what date he definitively did not have cameras?”

  Her eyes shifted to a different area of the screen as she scrolled. “March twenty-seventh he’s got you and Andy going in the building for about three hours with no other information.”

  “I think that’s the day Andy helped me take measurements so we’d know how much paint and shit to buy. Just a sec.” I switched from Numbers to my bank app. “Yep. We walked to lunch. We parked in the back of the gallery, but left through the front.”

  “Okay so twenty-seventh to the third.”

  I switched back to Numbers. “The next day, nothing. Twenty-ninth was all planning and making calls and shit.”

  “Yeah, he’s got you and Kyra in the back garden doing clerical work.”

  “Does he have anyone else meeting us?”

  Laurel chewed her cheek as she read the notes. “Nope.”

  “We met with Patricia Chadwell that day. Inside the gallery. She runs a shop that refurbishes vintage furniture. She wanted to scope the space to put together a selection for us.”

  “I remember her. You laundered money through her, but we couldn’t prove it.”

  I laughed. “I don’t appreciate your allegations and I don’t think Ms. Chadwell would either.” Which was exactly why we had laundered money through her.

  “Whatever.”

  I kept reading the spreadsheet. “March thirtieth through April first we had electrical repairs. The second, internet was installed. The alarm system went live when the internet did.”

  “So he either went in at night or whenever the building was empty,” she said.

  “Or he somehow went in with the electrician or the dude installing internet.”

  “Or he could have bribed either of them to do it for him.”

  So either Henry invaded my space or one of the people we hired had no moral compunction. Either way it sucked. “How do we find out?” I asked.

  “We don’t. I’ll give the info to Reyes and have them follow up. They can check for cameras. With any luck, they’ll be able to use the equipment to reverse track down Brewer. They have more resources than we do anyway.”

  “Can he do the same for the cameras in my neighbor’s tree and on my car?”

  “He could, but then Brewer would know we know about them. The gallery is something Reyes ostensibly might check on his own,” she said.

  “Right. Because we only know the location of the cameras based on the photos you stole.”

  She looked offended. “I didn’t steal them. He dropped his phone. That’s on him.”

  “I meant from Reyes.”

  “Oh.”

  “He’s going to be fussy when he finds out you stole his files.”

  “Maybe.” She shrugged. “I think he left them out hoping I’d snoop.”

  “Solid friendship you’ve got there.”

  She seemed unconcerned. “You want to call it for tonight?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “You sure?” she asked.

  “Yeah, the faster we do this, the faster we find Henry’s punk ass. I want to go back to drinking my morning coffee alone.” I was tired of having my every move monitored. Well, not every move. Laurel seemed to have gotten the short end of the stalking stick. I only had him taking remote photos of me. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “What are the chances he has audio in the gallery?” I asked.

  “Probably slim. Video is much easier to set up. Or just audio, but a combination would be difficult.” She screwed up her face. “Actually, that’s not true. He could bug the space pretty easily if he wasn’t concerned about the audio and video matching up. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s possible that Kyra and I had a discussion in the gallery office about my feelings for you earlier this week.”

  Laurel swallowed visibly. “Oh.”

  I cringed. “Yeah.”

  “Did you say something that would negate what you’re planning on saying to his grandmother.”

  “Maybe? I honestly don’t know. Kyra was giving me shit and I blew her off.”

  “Well, I’ll just make sure Reyes checks for bugs when he checks for cameras.”

  “And then we’ll know if Henry possibly heard me talking?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Cool.”

  “Cool.”

  It was approaching the witching hour when I found an entry for Laurel that gave me pause.

  LK, 05/12, 9:00 a.m. Arrives at CB’s house. Watches.

  LK, 05/12, 9:45 a.m. Returns to Shaw House in Placerville.

  A few days later, she did it again.

  LK, 05/15, 11:15 a.m. Arrives at CB’s house. Watches.

  LK, 05/15, 12:30 p.m. Returns to Shaw House in Placerville.

  I was too old for all-nighters and we were on our way to one. And I’d run out of filters. “Hey, Laurel.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What the fuck were you doing May twelfth and fifteenth?”

  “Oh. Umm. You’re reading faster than I expected.”

  “That’s not really an answer.”

  “I told you I came back for you.” She said it like it was the most normal thing in the world.

  “There’s a pretty big difference between coming back for someone and sitting outside their house and watching them.”

  “I wasn’t watching. I was trying to get the courage up to go knock on the door.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t say.” She pressed her lips together and shrugged exaggeratedly. “I told you I wouldn’t bring up my feelings. If I explain why I was at your house, I have to tell you my feelings.” She was fucking obnoxious.

  “Stop being weird and shit.”

  “Okay. I was there to tell you I’d moved to Placerville for a job because I wanted to be closer to you.” She didn’t even look at the camera. She just kept reading the documents on her screen and sporadically typing. “I wanted to tell you I was an idiot and I missed you and I was still in love with you. And tell you where I was staying in case you felt the same way.”