No text. No fight. Just silence, thick as the summer humidity.

The other guy stepped forward. “You heard her. Move along.”

One cruel. One crazy.

But he couldn’t.

Three days later, the pier burned. Not an accident. Not arson, they said—just spontaneous, like the bay itself had finally rejected everyone.

Then she vanished.

He learned her patterns. Watched from the dunes. Collected receipts she left at the gas station. Memorized the way she tilted her head before lying.