Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“That him?” Weston asks.
“Looks like it,” Calder says.
We already did the work on Kozlov. Old photos. Intel. Military background. Every scrap we could get our hands on.
Even though the entry footage is poor, the height and build are a fit, and so is the way the man carries himself.
Once I spot him, I find him in older clips, too. In the past couple of weeks, he was inside the school at least three times, using the same entrance with similar timing, always during transitional windows, when there’s enough normal movement to cover one more man slipping through without drawing attention.
He got close enough to learn where T.J. sat.
Tyler died in a war between grown men, and this bastard tries to get revenge by stalking an eight-year-old through an elementary school.
There’s no honor in that. No soldier’s code. Only a coward with training.
I pass along the new information to the sheriff, whose department has been unsuccessfully searching hotels and rentals in the area for someone matching Kozlov’s description for the past couple of weeks.
Then I spend the first part of the afternoon interviewing school staff, but nobody remembers seeing anything out of the ordinary. Kozlov moved exactly how trained men move when they don’t want to be remembered, and the footage isn’t clean enough to provide a face to identify.
Elena tells me she’ll stop at the station before she goes home. Later, she texts when she’s on her way to let me know T.J. will be coming too, but when she knocks on my office door, Calder is the only one with her.
“Weston’s giving T.J. a more detailed tour of one of the engines,” she explains in response to my questioning look. “Probably answering another long round of questions, too.” The corners of her mouth move, like she’s trying to smile, but can’t. She looks more shaken than I’ve ever seen her, and I silently curse Anton Kozlov to hell.
Calder closes the door behind them, and I launch directly into a summary of my findings, then show her the footage. She watches all three clips without moving. When I cut the last one, she meets my eyes. “You’re sure it’s him?”
“As sure as we can be with this quality.”
“He was inside my school, and inside T.J.’s classroom.” She’s not asking, she’s telling, like she’s letting it fully sink in, even though she’s known it since this morning.
I let it sit for a moment, then say what needs saying. “We need to talk about getting T.J. out of here. Maybe to stay with his grandparents.”
Her head snaps toward me. “No.”
“Elena—”
“No.”
She gets to her feet, and I rise to meet her. “He’s targeted your house and now T.J.’s classroom. I’m not waiting to see what happens next.”
“What does sending T.J. away change?” she fires back. “You think this madman is going to stop just because my son is somewhere else?”
“Distance would make him harder to reach,” Calder says.
Elena turns on him, eyes narrowed. “I’ll be far apart from my child while this man keeps hunting.”
I brace my hands on the back of a chair. “Distance gives us room.”
“From what?” she shoots back. “He already knows who we are. He knows where T.J. goes to school and exactly where he sits. You think I can put my child on a plane across the country and just trust that ends it?”
“It buys us time,” I say. “Sending T.J. somewhere secure gives us options.”
“Secure,” she repeats. “You don’t know if he’d be secure, and your solution is to separate me from my son while a man obsessed enough to burn a child’s classroom keeps coming after us.”
“My goal is to keep him breathing.”
Elena sucks in a breath like I slapped her, and a useless flash of regret hits me.
“Don’t.” Her voice is shaking now. “Don’t stand there and act like I’m the one being irrational because I don’t want to hand my son over to someone else and hope distance keeps him safe.”
I’m willing to carry Elena’s hatred if it keeps her boy alive, but I don’t say that. Instead, I flatten my palms on the table between us. “I’m trying to keep our options from narrowing until we don’t have any left.”
“You’re trying to take the decision away from me.”
The accusation hits hard because she’s not wrong.
“I’m scared all the time,” she says, her voice shaking. “Every time T.J. is out of my sight. Every time the phone rings. Every time something is late or off or wrong. I can’t send him away and sit here wondering if I handed him over to danger somewhere else. I can’t.”
I move around the table and stop in front of her. When she doesn’t back away, I pull her against me with a hand on her back. “I know,” I tell her, my voice rough.
Then she does pull away. “No, you don’t,” she whispers. “You don’t know what it would do to me to lose him, too.”