I stand still.
Another sound. Softer this time. A sigh of fabric.
“Who’s there?” I ask, lower now. “I have”—I almost say a gun. I don’t have a gun—“a phone.”
I don’t, of course. My phone is still sitting on the table, right where I left it.
Silence holds a beat too long, and the hairs on my neck say run. I don’t. I hate that I don’t. I edge toward the living room, shoulders tight, chin tucked like that will help if something flies at my face.
A man steps out from just beyond the doorway.
I stop so fast that my feet slide on the runner.
He’s mid-forties maybe, lean the way runners are, not bulky. Dark hair cut close, a few silver strands. He’s the kind of average that hides in a crowd. Medium height, medium build. A face you’d forget if not for the eyes.
No, you’d remember those. Flat, dead. The kind of eyes that you can’t help but notice. The eyes of a very dangerous man.
He doesn’t posture or spread his arms or do the movie-villain smirk. He just steps fully into the hallway light and lets me see him. One hand is empty and open at his side, palm relaxed. The other holds a phone, screen dark against his fingers. He takes me in quickly—shoes off, the little knife in my hand, the breath I’m not quite catching.
“Bianca,” he says, like he’s confirming a reservation.
My grip tightens on the paring knife. “You need to leave,” I manage, and hate that my voice isn’t as firm as the words. “Right now.”
He scans the room once more, then looks back to me. “I will. With you.” The voice matches the eyes—level, unhurried, the kind of tone that assumes compliance because no one’s ever said no to it.
“No,” I say. I reach behind me without looking, fingers finding the moldings on the doorframe. “You’re leaving. I’m calling the police.”
Though my phone is closer to him than it is to me right now. And he probably knows it.
He doesn’t move toward me. He lifts the phone and taps the screen with his thumb, turns the display so I can see.
It’s my mother, in her living room, the same throw on the back of the couch, the same bad lamp I keep telling her to replace. She’s standing at the window with a mug in her hand, looking outlike she hears something on the street. The video jitters slightly—someone shooting from across the way, through the glass. The timestamp in the corner is tonight. It’s live.
I feel the floor drop out from under me without moving an inch.
“Don’t,” I say, and I’m not sure whom I’m saying it to. Him. The phone. The terrible possibility curling at the base of my spine.
“We won’t,” he says. “If you come with me. Quietly.”
I look at the knife in my hand like it can fix any of this. My fingers loosen. I hate the sound the knife makes when I set it on the console table—small, defeated.
“And if I don’t?” My tongue feels thick.
“If you don’t,” the man in my entry says, “my colleague will go inside and speak with your mother.”
“Speak,” I echo, stupid.
He gives me the nearest thing to a smile I’ve seen yet. It doesn’t reach anything but his mouth. “You don’t want him to speak with her.”
“What do you want from me?” I ask, forcing each word through a throat that wants to close.
He doesn’t answer. He tips his head toward the door instead, a patient usher. “Shoes,” he says, like he’s reminding me not to forget my coat at a restaurant.
“I’m not—” The rest dies in my mouth. On his phone, my mother sets the mug down and reaches to adjust the curtain. A shadow slides across the frame. My stomach ices over.
“Now,” he says, still mild.
“Don’t touch her,” I say, and my voice is steadier than I feel. “She hasn’t done anything.”
