YOU BELONG TO ME,MRS STONE

The garage swallowed the streetlight the second I stepped inside. Level two. My car was in the usual spot. I took the stairwell two steps at a time, my coat still buttoned wrong, my footsteps clanging off the concrete in a rhythm that suddenly felt too loud. Then I heard voices,coming from the dead corner by the pillars,the light that had been out for weeks. I stopped. Three men,two in ski masks,one in a suit too expensive for a parking garage, his hands raised, his voice cracking. "I don't have it. I swear to God. Someone set me up..." Turn around, now! Every instinct I had screamed at me to leave. I didn't move.My feet wouldn't listen. One of the masked men drew a gun as if it were nothing. As if he were pulling out a phone. "Wrong answer." Crack. It wasn't like the movies. There was no dramatic echo. Just one flat, final sound. The man in the suit folded sideways.He didn't get back up.Something spread across the concrete that definitely wasn't water. My lungs stopped working. The second masked man turned.Toward the stairwell,toward me.His eyes found mine through the mask. One second.That was all it took. There was no panic in them...nothing human at all. Just a cold, effortless calculation, as though I were another variable he'd already solved. Run. Not back the way I had come. That would leave my back exposed the entire way down. Sideways. Toward the ramp,toward the streetlights bleeding through the concrete grid. My shoes skidded across the painted floor. I slammed into a pillar hard enough to feel it in my teeth. "Hey..." It wasn't a shout. Footsteps followed behind me...not sprinting, just jogging at an easy pace, as if he already knew exactly where the ramp emptied onto the street. Cold air hit my face. I didn't stop. I didn't look back. I cut across the street against the light. A horn blared as a car flew past close enough for me to feel the heat from its engine. My car was in the opposite direction but it didn't matter.I wasn't ever going back for it. My heart pounded against my ribs like a clenched fist.The back of my throat tasted like copper. Every streetlight blurred into the next. Four blocks. Six. I lost count. I ducked into an alley, doubled back along a street I didn't recognize, trying to break whatever trail he had on me, until my lungs gave out before my legs did. Finally, I stopped.I looked back.Nothing,just the city being itself. Neon signs. A couple laughing outside a bar and a woman walking her dog as though the world hadn't come apart three blocks away. He's still out there.He saw your face.My apartment was eleven minutes away. I knew because I kept checking the time obsessively, as though watching the minutes pass proved I was still a normal person...someone things happened to one at a time instead of all at once. Fourth floor.I climbed the stairs two at a time, my key already in my hand, one jagged edge wedged between my fingers. I dragged the bookshelf beside the door across the floor, books and a framed photo of my mother rattling as I shoved it against the handle. Some detached part of my mind knew it wouldn't stop anyone who truly wanted to get in. But I did it anyway. The moment I finished, my legs gave out.I slid onto the floor, still wearing my coat. Then it all hit me. My hands wouldn't stop shaking.Neither would the rest of me. I pressed my palms against my eyes until all I saw was white instead of the man collapsing onto the concrete. Instead of hearing that sound,my mind said "call the police,now". My thumb hovered over the keypad.It shook too violently to press the numbers. I didn't call.I couldn't explain why. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his flat, empty eyes behind the mask.Eyes that made me believe calling 911 wouldn't matter. As though people like him lived in a world where police were little more than an inconvenience.As though he'd almost laugh if I tried. I lowered the phone onto the floor and forced myself to breathe. Slowly, my pulse began to believe the door might actually hold. Then my phone buzzed. Not a call. I flinched so hard my elbow slammed into the wall. Unknown number,just a string of digits I didn't recognize. Beneath it, an image slowly loaded onto my cracked screen, sharpening one line at a time. My stomach dropped before I even understood what I was looking at. My building. Yellow brick. The crooked number four beside the entrance. The picture had been taken from across the street, close enough to capture the light still burning in my fourth-floor window.My window. The timestamp read four minutes earlier. The phone slipped from my hand and struck the floor, the screen still glowing. I couldn't bring myself to pick it up. He knew exactly where I lived.