"Don't touch it."
"I'm not." Still steady. Still that careful, constructed calm. "It's a photograph. Margit's headstone. There's a note. Block capitals, same paper as the first ones."
My keys are in my hand. Across the table, Vance watches me with the quiet attention of a man cataloging a detonation in real time.
"What does it say?"
She reads it. Four words. She wouldn't leave either. The sentence lands in my sternum like a round.
"I'm on my way. Twenty minutes. Don't move. Don't go downstairs."
"I know."
"Kari."
"I know."
I hang up. Not because I want to — because if I hear anything else in her voice I will say something I can't take back.
"Cade." Vance doesn't stand. Doesn't need to. "What's happening?"
"Escalation. He was in the bedroom. Photograph of the great-aunt's grave, threatening note, placed on the pillow." I'm at the door. "I need to go."
Vance studies me. Two seconds. Feels like surgery.
"Drive safe," he says.
Which is Vance for I see exactly what's happening to you and we'll discuss it later.
Sycamore Lane is quiet. Oren's porch light is on. Nina's shop is dark. Gary's chipped grin catches the glow from the parlor windows.
I'm through the front door before it finishes closing behind me. Ground floor — kitchen, parlor, back porch. Clear. Clear. Clear.
The cellar hatch. East side of the house. I've walked past it a dozen times, checked it once on Day Two, categorized it as secure because the door was heavy and the latch was old but functional.
Old but functional.
I pull the hatch open. Narrow wooden stairs. At the bottom, stone walls, low ceiling, cold mineral smell.
The window is at the far wall. Ground-level, hidden behind the overgrown boxwood along the east foundation. Below any camera angle. The kind of window designed to let in light and nothing else.
The latch is broken. Not recently. Corroded at the break point, screws loose in soft wood. Someone discovered this months ago. Pushed it in, found it swung free, learned that the cellar connects to the rest of the house through an interior door into the utility closet beside the kitchen.
The utility closet I checked once. On Day Two. Never again.
Scuff marks in the dust. Shoe treads, partially obscured but clear enough when you know what to look for. Someone has been using this route. Repeatedly. Every escalation. Every note that appeared while the doors were locked. Every time the cameras showed nothing.
This is how.
I press my palm flat against the stone wall.
The anger underneath the failure isn't hot. It's structural. The kind of rage that doesn't burn — it settles, becoming part of the foundation, permanent and load-bearing.
I board the window with scraps from Kari's lumber pile. Install a deadbolt on the cellar-to-closet door. Should have been done on Day One.
Kari unlocks the bedroom door when I knock — two short, one long, the pattern we established without ever discussing it. She's standing just inside, arms wrapped around herself. Shoes still on.
The photograph sits on the pillow. Margit Engstrom's gravestone, shot from a low angle. Beside it, the slip of paper. She wouldn't leave either.