Chapter 3 — “Someone’s Watching”
1244 Words
Angela POV
The metro was packed at 6 PM.
Angela stood, one hand on the rail, earphones in — but no music playing. Just pretending. She needed to think.
Hassan’s words kept circling in her head like vultures.
“The real enemy is still out there.”
“They already know you’re here.”
She pressed her lips together. Hard.
Classic manipulation. Create doubt, plant fear, make yourself look like the good guy. She’d read about men like him. Studied them. She knew exactly how this worked.
Except she couldn’t explain his eyes.
There was no satisfaction in them when he spoke. No smugness. No victory dance behind those dark irises.
Just something tired. Something heavy.
Like a man carrying a secret he was sick of carrying alone.
Stop it. she told herself sharply. That’s exactly what he wants. That’s the trap.
She got off at her stop and walked into the evening crowd.
The street outside her hotel was always busy at this hour — food carts, workers heading home, a few tourists looking lost. She usually found it comforting. Easy to disappear in a crowd.
She was almost at the entrance when it happened.
That feeling.
The specific, primal feeling on the back of your neck that every woman knows — the one that says someone is looking at you and they don’t want you to know.
She kept walking. Didn’t change her pace. Pulled out her phone casually and pretended to check it — using the black screen as a mirror to scan behind her.
A man. Grey jacket, dark pants. Standing near the food cart across the street.
Not eating. Not on his phone. Not talking to anyone.
Just standing. Facing her building.
Could be nothing. she told herself. Lots of people stand on streets.
But her feet moved faster anyway.
She went inside.
Her room was exactly as she’d left it. Small, slightly cold, the lamp on the nightstand still crooked from when she’d bumped it this morning. She dropped her bag on the chair and went straight to the window.
Moved the curtain just slightly. Looked down.
Grey jacket was still there.
Same spot. Same posture.
Her stomach dropped.
She stepped back from the window and sat on the edge of the bed. Her mind was already moving fast — calculating, organizing, the way it did when panic tried to come in and she refused to let it.
Think. Who knows you’re here?
Her friend Maya. Her landlord back home who she’d told she was “traveling for work.” And whoever processed her visa.
That was it.
She grabbed her phone and called Maya.
Two rings.
“Hey — how’s Dubai? Did you eat something nice today because I saw this place online that does—”
“Did anyone ask about me?” Angela cut in quietly. “After I left. Anyone at all.”
Silence.
“…Angela, what’s wrong?”
“Just tell me, Maya.”
A longer pause. The kind that meant yes.
“There was a man.” Maya said slowly, carefully, like she was choosing each word. “About two days after you left. He came to your building. Asked Mrs. Fernandez downstairs where you’d gone. Said he was your cousin visiting from out of town.”
The air in the room felt thinner suddenly.
“I don’t have any cousins.” Angela said.
“I know.” Maya’s voice dropped. “I know you don’t. I didn’t think much of it at the time but now that you’re asking me like this—”
“Did Mrs. Fernandez tell him anything?”
“She said you’d gone abroad. That’s probably all she knew.”
Angela closed her eyes for exactly three seconds. Then opened them.
“Listen to me carefully.” she said, keeping her voice low and even. “Don’t tell anyone else anything about me. Not where I am, not what I’m doing, nothing. And lock your door tonight — both locks.”
“Angela you’re scaring me—”
“I’m fine.” she said. “I promise. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She hung up before Maya could argue.
She went back to the window.
The food cart was still there. The people around it had changed.
Grey jacket was gone.
Which was somehow so much worse than if he’d still been standing there.
At least when she could see him she knew where he was.
Angela let the curtain fall back.
She sat down on the bed again and just — thought. Quietly. Carefully.
Someone had tracked her before she even left home. That wasn’t random. That was organized. That took time and money and intention.
Whoever it was, they’d known she was coming to Dubai. They’d sent someone to follow her. They wanted to know her movements.
But they hadn’t approached her.
Why?
What were they waiting for?
She picked up her phone again. Opened her notes app and started writing down everything — grey jacket, the timing, Maya’s information, all of it. Details faded. She couldn’t afford to let anything fade.
Then her work email notification appeared at the top of the screen.
One new message.
Sent eleven minutes ago.
From: H. Malik
Subject: (blank)
She stared at it for a moment before opening it.
“Don’t walk home alone. Starting tomorrow, a car will pick you up at 8:30 AM and bring you back in the evening. Don’t argue about it.”
That was it.
No context. No explanation. No ‘please’ or ‘I’d suggest’ or any of the normal language people used when they were pretending to give you a choice.
Just a decision, already made, delivered like a fact.
Angela’s first reaction was immediate and hot — who does he think he is?
She didn’t need protection. She didn’t need someone making decisions for her without asking. She’d been taking care of herself for three years, through things far worse than a man in a grey jacket standing on a street corner.
She started typing a reply.
Mr. Malik, I appreciate the concern but I’m perfectly capable of—
She stopped.
Deleted it.
Read his message again.
Don’t walk home alone.
He hadn’t said I want to keep an eye on you.
He hadn’t said this is how things work here.
He’d said don’t walk home alone.
Like he already knew she had reason not to.
Angela put the phone down slowly.
Her anger was still there — but underneath it, something quieter and much more unsettling had appeared.
He knew someone was watching her.
He knew before she’d even noticed the grey jacket. Before she’d called Maya. Before she’d put any of it together.
How?
She looked at her father’s photo on her phone screen. That laughing, alive face she carried everywhere like a wound.
What is actually going on, Baba? she thought. What did you get involved in? What aren’t I seeing?
The Dubai skyline glittered outside her window, enormous and indifferent.
Beautiful. Dangerous.
Full of secrets.
And somewhere out there — in one of those towers of glass and light — Hassan Malik already knew things about her situation that she didn’t.
That was the part that scared her most.
Not the man in the grey jacket.
Not the unknown enemy.
The fact that in some terrible, inconvenient way—
Hassan Malik might be the only person in this city who was actually watching out for her.
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