Without Your Persmission

Chapter 9: Careful, Darling

Alicia.

The name sat in my mouth like broken glass I couldn't spit out.

She wasn't supposed to be here.

She was supposed to be a ghost in the margins. An accident of my obsession. A meaningless echo I had misread in the frenzy of watching him.

But she wasn't a ghost. She wasn't an echo. She was real.

And she had found my door.

I hovered just out of sight, listening through the wall as Gretta kept her voice light but careful. The actress in her always came out when she sensed something off.

"Well, welcome," Gretta said, slowly. "You're new to the building?"

"Just moved in last week," Alicia replied. Her voice was unassuming. Soft in a way that could pass for harmless. "I'm across the street actually, but I've been in and out of this complex for some paperwork. Figured I'd say hi before people assumed I was creeping."

Too late for that.

Gretta offered a polite laugh. "And you two—?"

She meant me. She was giving Alicia a chance to confess an acquaintance. A connection.

I strained to hear the answer.

"I just thought I recognized her," Alicia said, easily. "From around."

From around.

That was it.

She didn't say where. She didn't say when. But that was the problem, wasn't it? She'd been everywhere. Always one frame removed from him—and now, one layer too close to me.

Gretta made some excuse to keep the conversation short. She had a sixth sense for intrusions. A protective streak she rarely showed with anything more than jokes or eye-rolls.

The door closed with a finality that almost convinced me we were safe again.

"She creeped me out," Gretta said bluntly the moment I emerged from the hallway. "I didn't like her tone. Or her timing."

I said nothing. I couldn't yet.

Because my ears were still ringing with the strange symmetry of it—how Alicia had arrived exactly when the static around my stalker escalated. How she had suddenly become real, tangible, like a physical manifestation of all the things I'd refused to name.

"She say what she wanted?" I finally asked, voice thin.

Gretta gave me a look. "No. Which is why I don't buy that it was innocent. She's scouting. Mark my words."

I swallowed. Hard. "You think she's the stalker?"

She didn't answer right away. That in itself was answer enough.

Instead, she folded her arms and leaned against the counter like she was trying to hold the whole apartment up with the force of her suspicion.

"I think it's weird she showed up right after you started laying low," she said. "I think it's weirder that she didn't mention how she really knows you. Because let's be honest, Rory—if you've seen her before, it's not because she lives across the street."

I turned away under the guise of getting water, but it was only to buy time. My heart thudded painfully in my chest, too close to the surface.

Because Gretta didn't know that I'd already started researching Alicia two weeks ago. That I'd tried to find her online and came up with... nothing.

No last name. No social presence. No obvious connection to Alistair—except the recurring proximity.

And now, her sudden presence.

"Maybe she's just being polite," I murmured. "Maybe she's lonely."

Gretta scoffed. "And I'm a nun."

I didn't argue.

I couldn't.

⸻

Later that night, I pretended to sleep.

Gretta had insisted we keep the lights on, at least the ones near the windows. She was still operating in protect mode, though I knew it wouldn't last. She didn't have the stamina for paranoia. That was my realm. My fortress.

I waited until her breathing slowed and steadied. Then I slipped out of bed and padded silently across the room to my desk.

I opened the laptop.

The photo from earlier was still there, sitting like a weight in the inbox. I didn't open it again. I didn't need to. I had already memorized every detail. The way the light hit the brick. The reflection in the puddle. The angle—one I'd used myself, when watching him.

That's when it hit me.

This wasn't just surveillance.

It was a mirror.

Whoever had sent it wasn't just watching. They were telling me: I see you.

They weren't trying to hurt me. Not yet. They were trying to speak my language.

Which meant they knew it.

They knew the shape of my obsession.

They knew how I moved.

They knew how I thought.

I exhaled shakily and navigated to the encrypted folder I kept hidden inside a file named "tax documents."

Inside: timelines. Coordinates. Tagged photos. A complete behavioral grid I'd mapped over the last six weeks—Alistair's routines, his preferred routes, his coffee orders, his subtle tics and daily variations.

I hadn't updated it since the night of the club. Since the touch of his hand against my shoulder had scrambled every system I thought I could control.

Now, I opened it again.

There, embedded in the column for Wednesday mornings, was the note I'd added two weeks ago:

"7:45 a.m. — always jogs alone past the corner of Alcott and Market. Same route, same music. Alicia spotted in parked car near bakery. Noticed me noticing her."

I reread it. Three times.

It was the only mention I'd written of her. The only note.

Until now.

I clicked to expand the file. Added a new line beneath it:

"Alicia. New variable. Escalated proximity. No digital trail. No real address. Introduced herself to Gretta with false familiarity. Possible surveillance inversion. Possible..."

I stopped.

Hovered over the keyboard.

Possible what?

I didn't want to write it. Because writing it meant giving it shape.

But I typed it anyway.

"Possible: she's not watching Alistair. She's watching me."

⸻

I closed the laptop softly.

Behind me, Gretta shifted in her sleep, muttering something unintelligible.

And still, I couldn't move.

I felt watched even in the dark. Especially in the dark. The kind of watched that doesn't leave fingerprints or sound. The kind of watched that studies you the way you study a painting you can't quite interpret.

The kind of watched that knows.

That's when I heard it.

Not a knock. Not a message. But a click.

The sound of a shutter. A camera. Somewhere near the window.

By the time I reached it, there was no one on the street.

No car. No footsteps.

Just a quiet wind threading its way through the alley, whispering like it had secrets too.

Gretta was unusually quiet the next morning.

No over-caffeinated quips. No breezy teasing. Just silence and the slow scrape of a spoon against her yogurt cup as we sat across from each other at the breakfast bar. I didn't ask. I didn't explain. We both had our rituals. This was hers: stony disapproval wrapped in passive politeness.

Finally, she broke. "You didn't sleep."

It wasn't a question.

I didn't lie. "No."

She set the spoon down. "Is it because of her?"

Alicia Crestwell. The name felt like vinegar in my mouth. "Partly."

Gretta studied me the way she studied scripts, like looking hard enough could reveal the character behind the performance. "I can't help you if you won't tell me the truth, Rory."

I bristled. "I am telling you the truth."

She leaned forward, voice softening. "Then tell me what you're not saying."

A long silence passed between us.

I almost told her everything—the photos, the shutter click, the certainty that Alicia wasn't some random girl but a calculated element inserted into my periphery.

But I didn't.

Because Gretta didn't believe in ghosts. Or mirrors. Or the intricate spiderwebs of fixation.

She believed in boundaries. Restraint. Recovery.

If I told her how deep I was now—how impossible it was to come back—she'd try to save me.

And I didn't want to be saved.

"I'll be careful," I said instead. "I promise."

She didn't smile. "You've said that before."

Then she stood and left the room. Quietly. Like a mother who couldn't watch her child touch the flame again.

⸻

I waited until she was gone for the day before I began to dig.

I needed to understand Alicia Crestwell.

I needed to unmake her.

But for someone who had injected herself directly into my life, she'd left so little digital dust that it almost seemed intentional. No detailed profile. No listed job. No apartment records under the full name. Nothing tied to the local directory or public real estate databases.

So I changed tactics.

I went back to him.

To Alistair.

The original center of gravity.

I poured over every photo I'd logged, every angle where Alicia had appeared.

She was always at a distance. Always looking in—but never enough to suggest she knew she was being seen. It was uncanny, like she knew how to disappear even while being present.

And then something shifted.

I noticed a reflection in the side mirror of one of the parked cars—two weeks ago, just outside the café he frequented. I zoomed in. Enhanced the frame. There, behind the mirrored glass, was the faint outline of a phone held vertically. A shape that suggested she had been photographing him.

Or me.

I went still.

She wasn't just watching him. She was documenting it.

Suddenly I remembered the shutter click last night. The moment I thought I'd imagined.

It hadn't been paranoia.

It had been a response.

Like two hunters catching sight of each other in the woods.

⸻

By late afternoon, my chest felt like it was caving in.

So I left the apartment.

I needed a place where the obsession didn't feel like a noose. Somewhere I could breathe without counting the seconds between shadows.

I took my sketchbook and walked the old route. Not his usual one—not anymore. I didn't want to stumble across Alistair. I didn't trust myself not to fall into him if I did. The club was still too recent, the memory of his voice still too loud in the hollows of my mind.

So I avoided the market. The cafés. The park.

Instead, I went down to the pier, where the gulls screamed like madmen and the air reeked of salt and metal.

I sat on a bench that looked out into the gray water, opened my sketchbook, and tried to draw.

But it wasn't his face that came out.

It was hers.

Not as she had looked at the door. But the way I'd seen her in shadows—elongated, diffused, unfinished.

I added more lines. Sharper angles. Pulled her eyes out of the page until they looked like they were watching me.

I didn't stop until the sky turned the color of split peaches and the sketch trembled in my hands.

It looked nothing like her.

But it felt like her.

⸻

When I came home, Gretta was on the couch scrolling through her phone, a half-eaten dinner beside her. She looked up when I entered.

I waited for her to ask where I'd been.

She didn't.

Instead, she said, "I had a weird moment at the studio today."

I blinked. "What kind of weird?"

"A girl came by. Said she wanted to inquire about gallery space for an event. But when I told her we don't really rent it out, she just smiled and said she was just curious."

I froze. "What did she look like?"

Gretta gave me a loaded look. "Tall. Pale. Dark red hair. Black coat. Kept glancing at the back office. And she asked about you. By name."

A chill curled at the base of my spine.

"She's not subtle," I whispered.

Gretta exhaled. "So you do know her."

"No. That's the thing. I don't."

Gretta pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead like she was bracing for impact. "Rory. This is not normal. This girl? She shows up at your apartment, at your studio, near your subject of interest—"

She didn't want to say his name. I could hear her hold it back like a swallowed scream.

"I think she's studying me," I murmured.

Gretta shook her head. "No. I think she's threatening you."

It didn't sound paranoid anymore. It sounded reasonable. Like fear given structure.

Like truth.

⸻

That night, I returned to the file.

Updated the timeline.

Alicia Crestwell:

– Spotted 6x near Craven.

– Introduced self (under no context).

– Showed up at studio. Asked about me.

– Pattern escalated after club.

– No prior trace before Alistair entered picture.

And then, with trembling fingers, I added a new folder.

Title: "She knows."

Inside, I uploaded every cropped image I had of her from my surveillance archive. Every hazy outline. Every warped reflection. Every possible sighting.

I logged the dates. The hours. I began to construct a shadow timeline—her timeline—layered over his.

And in the intersections, I saw the truth: we weren't just two people circling a man.

We were two people circling each other.

Only difference was, I hadn't knocked on her door.

Not yet.

⸻

At 2:14 a.m., I received another message.

No name. No subject.

This time it wasn't a photo.

It was a line of text.

Just one.

"Careful, darling. He's not the only one who sees you."