Chapter Eight — You Should Have Stopped
893 Words
She was still standing at the window when the car across the street finally pulled away, no hurry in it at all, like it had gotten exactly what it came for. Nora didn't move until the taillights disappeared around the corner. Then she checked every window twice, locked the door, and set her recorder running on the nightstand — just in case tomorrow needed evidence that tonight had happened. She told herself it was paranoid. She left it running anyway.
She didn't sleep so much as surface every hour, listening for a sound that never quite arrived.
By the time the sun came up, she'd convinced herself the worst of it was over, at least for one day. She was wrong by that evening.
The hoodie appeared three blocks from her apartment on her way home from work, on the opposite side of the street and moving at exactly her pace.
She sped up. He matched her.
She ducked into the first open restaurant she reached, ordered something she had no intention of eating, and sat facing the window until her pulse settled and the street outside stayed empty of anyone matching his shape. Twenty minutes. She counted them.
By the time she let herself back outside, he was gone — or invisible, which felt worse.
Julian called it in before Adrian had finished getting out of his meeting.
"She had near contact tonight. Someone tailed her three blocks before she lost him."
Adrian didn't sit down. "Is she hurt?"
"No. Shaken, probably. She's home now."
"Put someone on her, every hour, starting tonight."
"Already moving on it, boss."
"And Julian — I want to know who he is. Not just what he looks like on a camera. Who."
"Understood."
"And Julian."
"Boss?"
"If it's who I think it is, don't approach him alone."
A pause on the line. "You think it's connected to the leak."
"I think it's connected to something I haven't finished proving yet. Watch him. Don't touch him."
Adrian ended the call and stood a long moment with his phone still in his hand, the city outside doing nothing to distract him from the one thought that wouldn't sit still: he'd told her working with him would make her untouchable. It hadn't. It had made her a target with a countdown attached.
The next morning, Nora took the long way to the office out of habit now more than caution, and it was Renee who caught her by the elevator, coffee in hand, studying her with the particular focus of someone deciding whether to say something.
"You look like you haven't slept."
"I haven't."
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
Renee didn't push, which surprised her more than the offer had. "Fine. But if you ever do — I'm right there." She nodded toward her own desk, close enough to Nora's that they'd been ignoring each other on purpose for weeks. "For what it's worth, whatever's going on with you — it's not the Kane thing anymore, is it. Not just that."
Nora didn't answer, and Renee didn't wait for one, just headed off toward her desk like the question had never needed a response in the first place.
Nora managed something like a thank you before her phone buzzed. A calendar notice, dropped in without warning. Meeting — 2:00 PM.
No sender name attached. No agenda.
How convenient, she thought, and didn't have the energy left to wonder why anymore.
The meeting came and went without answering anything — budget language, a vague mention of "reputational exposure" from someone two levels above Richard's pay grade, nothing that named her directly but everything that seemed aimed at her anyway. By the time it let out, the newsroom was already emptying for the evening, and she took the back route home again, the longer one, because it was different and different currently felt like the only kind of safe she had access to.
The street was quiet. No hoodie. No car idling too long at the corner. She let her guard down half a degree, which was exactly when her apartment felt wrong the moment she stepped inside.
Her laptop screen was lit, though she was certain she'd closed it that morning.
She crossed the room slowly and touched the trackpad.
A notification. New message.
You should have stopped.
Her pulse didn't spike so much as drop out from under her entirely. She set the laptop down like it had gotten hot in her hands, and when she looked up, an attachment had loaded beneath the message — photos, three of them, in a row.
Her. This morning. The back route. A different angle than she'd have thought possible from the street.
Her, again, that evening. Same street, closer.
The third one closer still. Close enough to see the exact expression on her face the moment she thought no one was watching.
She didn't move. Didn't breathe, for a second longer than felt safe.
Someone hadn't been guessing at her routine. Someone had been standing near enough to touch her and she hadn't felt it at all.
For the first time since any of this started, the fear wasn't the feeling of being watched from somewhere far off and anonymous.
It was the feeling of being seen — up close, deliberately, by someone who wanted her to know it.
- Writer
