I opened my mouth to defend myself, to say I would have understood, or at least tried to. But before I could answer, Helena added in a flat practical voice that hit harder for its honesty:
“Maybe he thought you’d shut it down.”
That shut me up.
Because the Amanda Pierce of three weeks earlier—the rule-following, ledger-balancing, low-risk woman who disliked legal ambiguity and believed in following proper channels—might very well have panicked at the thought of her husband running an unofficial shelter out of a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere without permits, security, or institutional protection.
I might have called it reckless.
I might have demanded he stop.
I might, in the name of safety, have destroyed the only safe place some of these women had ever known.
That thought had barely finished crossing my mind when Clare suddenly gasped and flinched toward the hallway window overlooking the driveway.
“There’s a truck.”
Helena went to the glass, looked down, and went absolutely white.
She whirled back toward me, grabbed my arm hard enough to hurt, and said, “Did anyone follow you here?”
“No.”
“Did anyone see you come?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
Her face told me before her mouth did.