Jason Thorne sat in the back of his black sedan, the engine idling with a low, expensive hum that barely vibrated through the leather seats. He didn’t need binoculars to see the bakery door; his eyes had been trained on that specific entrance for years. In his mind, he wasn’t just looking at a storefront; he was looking at a cage.
He watched the blue and red lights of the police cruiser fade into the morning mist. It didn’t surprise him that someone had called the police—after all, Myra’s indecent photos were plastered all over town. He’d calculated for the sirens. In his version of the morning, the police were the cleanup crew, coming to haul away the wreckage of a reputation.
He’d expected to see Myra being escorted out in handcuffs, or at the very least, sobbing as she boarded up the
