Alliance

The Rusty Anchor smelled like spilled beer and bad decisions, which was exactly why I liked it. Nobody came here to be seen. They came to disappear, and that suited me just fine.

I sat at the far end of the bar with my club soda, my back to the wall and both exits already mapped in my head. Left door, twelve steps. Right door, nine. The habit was so ingrained by now that I didn't even register doing it anymore. It was just breathing. It was just survival.

The bar was dim, lit mostly by a string of orange lights above the pool tables and the glow of a muted TV in the corner. I liked the low light. It made me invisible, and invisible was the only thing I ever wanted to be anymore.

I was watching two guys argue over a bad shot at the pool table when I saw him.

My brain refused it at first. It told me I was tired, that the shadows were playing tricks, that three years of looking over my shoulder had finally cracked something loose inside my head. But then he shifted his weight and turned slightly, and the orange light caught the line of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, and I knew. I knew the way you know the sound of a voice from a nightmare, even when you're wide awake.

Ben Sterlinger.

He was broader than I remembered. Harder. He stood near the far pool table with a beer in his hand, not playing, just watching the game with that quiet, predatory stillness that always made my skin prickle. His dark eyes were fixed on the table, but I had learned a long time ago that Ben was never fully looking at what he appeared to be looking at.

The air went out of me like I'd been hit.

Everything came back in a single, ugly rush. The screaming. The blood on the floor. The thing I lost that I have never, not once, spoken out loud since. My hands went cold around my glass. My chest locked up tight.

I set the club soda down, very carefully, and I left.

I didn't run, not inside. Inside the bar, I walked with my chin down and my hood up, threading between bodies until the cool night air hit my face and then I moved fast, my combat boots loud against the sidewalk. My heart was slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat. I cut down an alley, doubled back on the next street, and spent ten minutes taking a route home that made no sense geographically but made all the sense in the world to a woman trying to make sure she wasn't followed.

By the time I got to my apartment building, I had almost convinced myself it wasn't him. It was the light. It was the anxiety. It was my brain doing what it always did, conjuring the one face guaranteed to break me open.

I locked the deadbolt. Then the chain. Then I checked the window latch in the kitchen, the one in the bedroom, and the sliding glass door I never opened anyway. Twice each. I stood in the middle of my living room with my coat still on, listening to the building settle around me, and I told myself to breathe.

It wasn't him. It couldn't be him. He had no reason to be here.

My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.

Unknown number. One message.

I stared at it for a long moment before I picked it up. The text was short. Eleven words.

You shouldn't run in combat boots, Sandy. You'll trip.

The phone slipped out of my hand and hit the floor. I didn't pick it up right away. I just stood there while something cold and absolute settled into my bones, the kind of cold that no amount of locked doors fixes.

He had seen me leave. He had watched me walk out of that bar and disappear into the dark, and he had thought it was funny enough to comment on.

Ben wasn't just back. He had been here long enough to know my name, my number, and the shoes I wore on a Tuesday night.

I picked up my phone off the floor. I read the message again, slower this time, like reading it twice would change what it said. It didn't.

I went to the kitchen and pulled the biggest knife out of the block on the counter. I felt stupid doing it. I did it anyway.

I turned off every light in the apartment except the small lamp in the hallway, the one I always left on because total darkness was something I gave up being able to handle three years ago. Then I sat down in the corner of my living room, back against the wall where I could see both the front door and the hallway at the same time, and I waited.

The shadows stretched long and slow across the floor as the hours moved. Every sound the building made, I catalogued. Pipes. Wind against the glass. A neighbor's TV through the wall. Normal sounds. Safe sounds. I repeated that to myself like a prayer.

Around two in the morning, I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested the knife across my thighs. My eyes burned from not blinking enough. Outside, the street was quiet. Nothing moved on the fire escape. No shadows passed the window.

I told myself I was fine.

I told myself it was just a text. Just words on a screen. Just Ben being Ben, doing what he always did, which was reminding me that no matter how far I ran or how carefully I hid, he always knew exactly where I was.

The lamp in the hallway flickered once, then held.

I didn't sleep.