You’re getting good at this.
Where are you? We can’t see you…
Eris:
Don’t praise me for catching you lying.
Who are you? I think you should tell me your name before I voluntarily disclose my every step to you.
A beat passes, and I wonder if I pushed him too much. This one is so quiet sometimes, I almost feel like I’m taking advantage of him every time he says more than a few words. Then I roll my eyes at myself. He’s literally stalking me, not that I’m complaining. Yet.
Locke:
Cipher.
The name seems like something he hides behind. I hardly believe he has no personality or importance. He’s too precise and sharp with his words, making me think he’s one of those guys you don’t realize is smart until they talk about a topic that feels like listening to an alien language.
If he’s a hot, nerdy guy confident enough to stalk me and lie to me while not sensing the darkness that surrounds me, I’ll expire on the spot. That combo is fucking dangerous for my health.
Eris:
Cipher… tell me something.
Are you real?
Or is this all app logic and testing?
A manipulation?
What should I believe?
The typing dots appear and disappear and reappear. My impatience grows into something I can hardly contain. Now that I’ve asked, I need an answer. I don’t want to play this game if it’s just a test of their system.
Locke:
Everything I say to you is real. Even if it started as something else…
We’re past testing now. And you feel it. I know you do.
My throat tightens, certainty and reality choking me with just howrighthis words feel. I’m not quite ready to tell him he’s figuring me out, though. I need to meet them first, find out if I can have no secrets or if I’ll need to kill them before they expose me.
And that hits harder than anything Daniel could do to me. I don’t mind the prospect of killing him, but the thought of killing my HimLock guys turns my stomach sour.
The photo Eris forwarded is time-stamped 9:12 this morning, taken at the corner of 8th and Hartwell.
That’s more than enough information to find her ex, to see how close he got to her.
The idea of him touching her has me crawling out of my skin.
I pull the street cam footage in a two-block radius, my attention tracking the flow of people and cars in slow motion. I’m looking for a tail. A pattern. A shadow. Something that shouldn’t be there.
My first thought was that Daniel wouldn’t be on foot. It’s too sloppy… But my intuition revolts every time I glance at the picture.
No, he would follow her by car to her destination and wait. When he saw she left the hotel on foot, he got out to trail behind her. That means he was at the bar last night and watched her leave with Kieran.
As I piece it together, I know it to be true. I can feel it in my gut, that sense of being right about the wrong.
I tap faster, pulling security logs from the storefronts lining the downtown block around the hotel. And that’s where I find him, caught in the corner of the cameras around Yang Laundromat. A black sedan idles at the curb all night, the driver readjusting his position every so often to stay comfortable while he stalks his ex. The image is too grainy to confirm his face, but the posture is familiar enough to turn my stomach.
