Chapter Nine
SOMEONE IS FOLLOWINGme.
I first noticed it three days ago, walking back from Professor Sigmund’s lecture hall. A prickle at the back of my neck. The sensation of eyes tracking my movements across the quad like crosshairs finding their target.
I told myself I was being paranoid.
But then I felt it again at the campus coffee shop, where I’d been nursing a lukewarm latte and pretending to study. And again at the library, tucked into my usual corner on the third floor. And again when I was grabbing dinner at the dining hall, my fork frozen halfway to my mouth because I was absolutely convinced I wasn’t imagining it.
Someone is watching me.
And it’s starting to freak me out because I can’t stop thinking about it.
Everything and everyone around me has become a cause for paranoia. The shadow that lingers too long at the edge of my vision. The footsteps that match my pace a little too perfectly. The figure I keep catching in my peripheral, always turning away the moment I look.
My mind has gradually been spiraling into worst-case scenarios with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever chasing a tennis ball off a cliff.
What if Braxton found me?
What if he knows I was at the auction?
What if he’s waiting for the perfect moment to grab me, drag me into a van, sell me to the highest bidder all over again—
What if I disappear and no one notices until my unfinished graphic novel becomes a cautionary tale about artistic procrastination?
I’m so paranoid I’ve even started varying my routes, taking different staircases and leaving buildings through side exits. All the things Detective Eaton told me to do, really, but it’s just not enough.
I still feel like I’m being followed.
By day five, I’m jumping at my own shadow. By day six, I’ve started walking with my keys wedged between my fingers like some kind of ineffective wolverine. By day seven—
By day seven, I snap.
It happens in the late afternoon, the California sun hanging low and golden over the quad, students sprawled on the grass with textbooks they’re pretending to read. I’m cutting through the courtyard behind the humanities building when I feel it again.
That prickle.
That weight of someone’s gaze pressing against my spine.
And something inside me just...breaks.
