“You said you weren’t coming with me.”

“That was before—”

“Before you learned there were consequences?”

Lauren stopped. Ethan stepped onto the porch, glanced at the sedan across the street and then at his own car in the driveway, and moved quickly. His keys were still in his pocket.

The investigator in the sedan didn’t follow — there was no warrant, no court order preventing him from traveling, no legal reason to detain him. We had frozen the visible accounts.

We had served the notice. We had secured the documents. But Ethan himself was still free to go.