PROLOGUE
May 14, 2020
I was uncharacteristically unfocused as I left the pharmacy that night, not paying attention to my surroundings as I normally would have. I was in such a rush to get home and get this medicine back home to my sick baby nephew. As it was, I had already arrived late at the pharmacy. They had been just about to lock up the doors when I rushed up, probably looking like a hot mess.
"Oh no," I said breathlessly to the pharmacist at the door. "Am I late? Are you guys closing?" It was a pretty stupid thing for me to say because it was already pretty clear that they were, in fact, closing.
The pharmacist was an older guy, maybe late fifties or early sixties. His light brown hair was starting to become more grey than brown. He smiled at me kindly and said, "What was it that you needed tonight?"
"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to be so late. My sister called in a prescription for my baby nephew. I'm just here to pick it up for her." I explained to him.
"Ah, yes." He said. "The amoxicillin, right? I have it set aside here because she said on the phone that someone would be by to pick it up right away. It won't take more than a minute. Come on in."
"Thank you so much," I said gratefully. "Again, I'm so sorry I'm so late, but I appreciate this so much." I followed him inside and walked up to one side of the counter while the pharmacist went around to the other side. He pulled open a drawer, took out a small prescription bag, and rang it up on the register.
"It's no problem. I've been where you are before. It's hard work being a parent, especially to a sick child. Or an aunt, for that matter." He said, again with his kind smile. "Here you go. The total is twenty-three sixty-eight."
I pulled some bills out of my wallet and handed them over to him. I quickly tucked everything into my purse, thanked him profusely again for his kindness and his patience, and then I hurried out of the pharmacy.
"You have a good night." He said as I walked out.
"Thank you. You too." I replied smiling back at him.
I heard the bolt click into place as he locked up the doors behind me. The street was unsurprisingly deserted as it was just a little after midnight. The air was cool and the strong wind chilled me right through my favorite thick sweater. The dim light cast by the street lights made every nook and cranny of the street look dark and menacing. The tall brick buildings that surrounded the empty street made it feel even more deserted than it was like I was the last person left in the whole town.
I paused on the sidewalk to dig out my keys. Had I put them in my purse or one of my pockets? I had had such a long day today. I was so exhausted and I felt so scatterbrained, like I could barely even form a coherent thought. I felt like my brain was working through a fog. The sound of my ringtone startled me so badly that I jumped and nearly dropped my phone on the dirty pavement. It sounded so much louder than it should have in the quiet of the night. I hit accept on the screen and tucked my phone between my shoulder and my ear, still digging for my keys. I answered with a distracted "Hello?"
"Did you get it? Are you on your way back yet?" I could barely make out her voice on the other end of the line over the sound of a baby boy screaming at the top of his lungs.
"I have it," I said loudly to be heard over the noise. That baby has quite the lung stamina. "I'm just heading back to the car now. I'll be maybe twenty minutes."
"Okay. Please, please hurry." Then the line went dead.
I tucked my phone into the back pocket of my jeans and kept digging through my bag for my car keys. I finally found them, pulled them out, and fumbled them. They slipped from my fingers and hit the ground with a loud clatter. I sighed heavily and bent down to pick them up. When I straightened up, I felt the weight of a warm, heavy, sweaty hand on my shoulder. I jumped, startled again, and dropped my keys back down on the sidewalk. I spun around to see who stood behind me and I was horrified by who I saw looking back at me. The face that has haunted my nightmares for more than five years. My heart stopped. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. Panic took me over. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was ashamed of my reaction. I had trained for years for situations just like this one and this was how I reacted? I'd faced worse situations than this before, hadn't I? I had to have, I was sure of it, even though I couldn't think of any such situations at the moment.
None of that mattered right now, however. I couldn't remember a single thing from any of my training. It was like my mind had been wiped blank. This man standing in front of me was one of the men who had ruined my entire life. One of the men who had destroyed my entire family. I would wake terrified in the middle of the night, worrying that my nightmares had somehow come true and this man had somehow found a way to terrorize me and my family once again. I felt like the little, helpless, defenseless girl I had been the last time I had seen him.
His dirty blond, almost light brown hair was shorter than I remembered and he looked like he'd gained a few dozen pounds as well. He looked plump and pudgy now, compared to the fit physique that he had once been so proud of. His eyes, however, were exactly the same as I remembered them; dark brown and almost familiar, except that they were cold and full of rage.
"I've been looking for you." He said with a big smile that showed all of his bright white teeth. "How convenient it is for me to run into you here." His voice sent chills down my spine. He took a step towards me then and I quickly found my mobility again, stumbling back a couple of steps.
"I know what you did," I said, trying (and failing) to sound unafraid. "Don't touch me. Don't come near me."
His loud bark of laughter sent more chills down my back. "What are you going to do to stop me?"
"I will kill you," I said with much less conviction than I'd intended. My voice betrayed me by shaking slightly with fear. He threw back his head and let out a loud, deep, from-the-belly laugh.
Finally, I snapped to my senses. I threw my hands out towards him with enough force to knock a man twice his size backward at least half of a city block, but nothing happened. He didn't even move an inch. I looked back at him in shock and disbelief as his grin widened. He reached up and pulled a cord around his neck out from under the collar of his T-shirt. From it hung an aged bronzed amulet. Some sort of protection charm, I assumed.
He dropped the cord and the charm bounced against his chest as he lunged at me. I dodged to the left, almost losing my footing and narrowly avoiding a collision with him. He stumbled into the brick building behind me. I scrambled on the sidewalk for my car keys. Once I had them firmly in my grasp, I hurried to my feet and ran to my car as fast as I could, unlocking the door as I went. The small blue Honda that I had driven into town today was easy for me to spot as it was the only car left in the parking lot. I flung open the car door, fell into the driver's seat, and slammed the door shut behind me. I was only able to take a deep breath and relax a small amount after I'd hit the lock button on the door a dozen times or more. My fingers were shaking violently as I tried to get the key into the ignition.
A loud bang on my window made me jump, screech, and drop my keys once again. He had caught up to me and continued to bang repeatedly on my window, trying to shatter it, it seemed, while loudly and angrily demanding that I unlock the car door for him. I tried to steady my breathing and my heart rate while I groped blindly around in the dark on the dirty floor for my fallen keys. I felt them under my fingertips after what felt like an eternity but was only several seconds, shakily got them into the ignition and started the car. I slammed the gear shift into reverse harder than was probably necessary and flew backward out of the parking spot faster than I'd meant to, still trying my best to ignore the lunatic at my window. As I shoved the gearshift into drive and started picking up speed, he tried to hold on to my side view mirror. I heard the crunch sound that it made when it fell off and he fell to the ground. In my rearview mirror, I watched as he slowly got to his feet and yelled after me. His reflection grew smaller and smaller until, thankfully, I couldn't see him anymore.
My breathing and my heart rate slowly went back to normal as I drove aimlessly around town for another thirty minutes or so before finally heading back home. Part of the reason for the scenic detour was to give me time to calm down so that no one would ask me why I was so visibly upset when I got home. The other part of the reason was to make sure that there was no possible way that he would be able to follow me home.
'When I do get home,' I thought to myself, 'I'm going to have to double down on all of our protective measures.'
