Soon, she’ll understand: the real danger isn’t in the files or the feds. It’s in the dark, in the silence, in the man who never stops watching. In me.
When she does, she’ll realize she never had a choice at all.
Chapter Seven - Seraphina
I can barely keep my eyes on the spreadsheet. The numbers blur; columns swim, rearranging themselves every time I blink.
I’m supposed to be triple-checking expense claims, but my mind refuses to settle. All I see is the shadow of last week stretched out across the glare of my monitor: the vanished man, the black car, the coded messages I can’t explain away.
The building hums around me, colleagues shuffling papers, the occasional bark of laughter echoing through the glass partitions.
Everyone else is busy with deadlines and lunch plans. I’m counting the seconds, trying not to jump every time a door slams or a printer whirs to life. Paranoia knots my stomach, winding tighter each day.
I check my phone, the unread message thread sitting heavy at the top of my screen. The unknown number is still there, two days old.
Meet me. Bring evidence. I’ll be watching.
I haven’t told anyone, not even Izzy. Who would believe me? Tom’s phone is still silent, his social media inactive, no reply to the one shaky message I sent just in case he was alive, just in case he’d explain why he left me stranded and terrified in a hotel room. His profile might as well have been wiped from the face of the earth.
When I tried to photograph the black car parked across from my building last night, I discovered the license plate didn’t match any local registration. The app spat out a string of nonsense.
A shiver still crawls up my spine every time I remember the way the driver’s window lowered an inch, just enough to let me see a shadow of a face before the car slipped away.
I keep returning to the messages. The encryption isn’t quite standard—there’s something almost playful in the pattern, a familiarity to the numbers that irritates and intrigues me at the same time. I cracked the first one after midnight three days ago:I see you.
Since then, every night, a new string appears buried in my work email, tucked into a dummy Dropbox folder, even disguised as a calendar alert. Each time, I solve it faster, heart hammering, dread mingling with something dangerously close to excitement.
A new message waits for me this morning. The subject line reads,Almost there.My breath sticks in my throat as I run the algorithm again, fingers moving automatically now. The decoded text is simple, intimate in a way that chills me:You know who I am. Come find me.
My hands tremble as I close the laptop, pressing my palms to my temples. I want to scream. I want to run. Instead, I just sit—cold, wired, staring at the pale gray partition as if it might split open and reveal the answer.
The phone on my desk rings, cutting through the silence. My stomach drops. The same number. I stare at it, paralyzed, before snatching it up.
“Hello?”
A pause, then the voice—smooth, measured, no accent, nothing I can pin down. “Miss Hale. Just checking in. You haven’t forgotten our meeting tonight?”
My mouth is dry. “No. I remember.”
“Good. You have everything you need?” His tone is almost kind, as if he’s talking to a nervous child.
“What happens after?” I ask, the question tumbling out before I can think better of it. “Are you going to protect me?”
A small, humorless laugh. “That depends on what you bring me, Miss Hale. This could be very beneficial for you, if you cooperate.”
A thousand questions push at my lips, but I only manage, “Who are you really? Why do you care so much about me?”
He lets the question hang. “You’re valuable, Seraphina. People like you are rare. You see things others miss.” His voice shifts, almost gentle. “You need to be careful who you trust. I’ll send the address later. Bring everything you have. Don’t be late.”
I start to protest, but he’s already gone. The line clicks dead.
I let the phone fall to the desk. The silence returns, but it’s different now. Charged, menacing.
A colleague pops their head over the partition, eyebrows raised. “You okay, Sera? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I force a smile. “Headache. Too much screen time, probably.”
He nods, disappearing back into the normal world. I stare at my laptop, at the encrypted files stashed on the drive, at the text messages that read like a warning and a dare.
