Too close.
People screamed. Someone fell. The sidewalk erupted as the crowd surged away from the car in a wave of shock and instinct.
Duke didn’t release her.
His arm came up around her shoulders, pulling her tight against his chest, shielding her as his body turned instinctively between her and the street.
The driver leaned halfway out the window, face pale, hands raised. “Sorry! I don’t know what happened!”
Voices overlapped—anger, disbelief, nervous laughter already creeping in as the danger passed.
Andi’s heart hammered so hard it felt unmoored, her breathing shallow and uneven. She pressed her hand into Duke’s jacket, grounding herself in the solid reality of him still there.
“You okay?” Duke murmured near her ear, his voice steady, anchoring.
She nodded, though it took effort. “Yeah. I think so.”
Eventually, someone waved the car on. The crowd resettled with eerie speed, the scare already morphing into something people would joke about later.
They started walking again.
But Andi couldn’t shake the sensation crawling under her skin—the sense that something had shifted.
A block later, she slowed. “Hold on.”
She slipped her bag from her shoulder, fingers fumbling slightly as she opened it.
Wallet. Phone. Keys?—
Then she stopped.
A folded slip of white paper lay neatly on top.
She hadn’t put it there.
Her pulse spiked as she unfolded it.
Four words. Neat. Deliberate.
That one was close.
Her stomach dropped.
“Andi?” Duke squinted as he studied her.
She handed him the note without speaking.
He read it once. Then again. His jaw tightened.
“This wasn’t an accident,” he said.
“No. It wasn’t.”
Someone had been close enough to pull her back from death—or push her toward it—then slip away unseen.
Right through the noise.
Right through the light.
