Prologue
I always forget how quiet this neighborhood gets right before sunset. It’s the kind of quiet that makes people feel safe, like nothing bad could possibly happen on a street with trimmed hedges and solar‑powered garden lights. I stand at the edge of the cul‑de‑sac, half in shadow, half in the warm spill of a streetlamp, and I breathe it in.
This place is perfect.
She picked well.
The woman I’ve been following isn’t nearly as graceful. She bursts out of the tree line like a wounded deer, stumbling, gasping, leaving a messy trail of panic behind her. She’s bleeding, shaking, and making way too much noise. I can hear her sobbing before she even hits the pavement.
She sees the houses and lights up with this pathetic flicker of hope. She picks the first porch with a light on—Alice’s porch—and runs for it like salvation is waiting behind the door.
She pounds on it with both fists.“Please! Someone help me!”
I watch her from the sidewalk. She doesn’t see me yet. She’s too busy begging a door that isn’t going to open. Alice isn’t home. Her car isn’t in the driveway. The house is dark except for the porch light she always leaves on.
The woman keeps screaming.Keeps pounding.Keeps hoping.
It’s almost sad.
Almost.
She finally turns and sees me standing there. Her whole body goes rigid, like she’s trying to press herself through the door.
“Please,” she whispers. “Please don’t.”
I tilt my head. “You shouldn’t have run.”
She shakes her head so hard she nearly falls. “I won’t tell anyone. I swear. I won’t—”
Footsteps crunch behind me.
He arrives right on time.
He always does.
He steps up beside me, staying just outside the porch light. Taller than me, broader, calmer. His voice is low, familiar, almost bored.
“Why her?”
I shrug. “She hated Roadblock.”
He pauses. “...The band?”
“My favorite band,” I remind him.
He lets out a soft laugh. “You’re fucking unbelievable.”
“She said they sounded like a blender full of angry raccoons.”
“That’s... harsh.”
“She meant it.”
He shakes his head, amused, then glances at the house. At the empty driveway. At the porch light glowing over the welcome mat.
“You’re getting bold,” he says. “This is too close.”
“No,” I tell him, looking at the door. “This is exactly where I want to be.”
He studies me for a long moment. “Because of her?”
I don’t answer. I don’t need to.
Instead, I reach into my coat and pull out the note. Thick paper. Clean handwriting. The little pink cross over the eyes—my signature. I crouch and place it on the welcome mat, perfectly centered. Perfectly aligned. I take pride in the details.
She’ll see it the moment she gets home.
I straighten, take one last look at the door, and feel that familiar spark in my chest—the one that only ignites when something is about to begin.
“She’s going to notice me soon,” I murmur.
He slips back into the shadows. “She already has. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
I follow him into the dark, leaving the porch light flickering behind us.
And that’s when I hear it.
The low rumble of an engine.The crunch of tires on gravel.A car turning into the driveway we just stepped away from.
I stop. He does too.
Headlights sweep across the cul‑de‑sac, bright enough to cut through the dark. The car rolls to a slow stop in front of the house.
Alice’s house.
My pulse kicks, sharp and electric.
“She’s early,” he murmurs.
“No,” I say quietly, watching her silhouette move behind the windshield. “She’s right on time.”
We slip deeper into the shadows as her car door opens, her footsteps soft against the pavement, unaware of the note waiting for her.
Unaware of us.
Unaware of everything that’s about to begin.
