Andheleaned forward.
I didn't hear him do it. I didn't see it. But Ifeltthe weight of his attention sharpen, and my pulse kicked up.
Did the music sing to his blood like it did mine?
I smiled at the thought and let the final notes ring out into silence before transitioning into Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu. Fast, dramatic…reckless, and my last song of the night. The kind of piece that demanded your full attention or you'd stumble.
I didn't stumble.
My fingers flew across the keys, and I played for him. For the stranger in the shadows who'd been watching me for weeks. Who'd followed me to the bus stop and watched me walk into my apartment.
Who'd been in the alley that night.
The realization had come to me yesterday as I stood at my kitchen sink with soap-slick hands, my heart trying to claw its way out of my chest.
I'd been replaying that night again—because of course I had, it was the only excitement I'd had in years and all I could think about—and I'd remembered something I'd dismissed at the time.
When I'd stepped through the back door into the alley, before I'd taken more than a few steps, I'd stopped because I'd stepped in what I thought was a puddle. But there'd been something else in the air. A heaviness that made the space feel occupied even though I'd heard nothing at all. No breathing. No footsteps.
And there'd been a scent. Faint. Almost lost beneath the stench of the trash and the smells from the restaurant.
The scent was clean, masculine, and it reminded me of the ocean. And THAT'S what made me stop.
Someone had been there. Someone had watched me walk through that alley, step into what I now knew was blood, and pause with my cane hovering over the slick pool.
Then that same someone had watched me walk away.
And they were still watching me now.
My hands crashed into the final chord of the Fantaisie-Impromptu, and the sound reverberated throughout the restaurant, too loud and violent for people trying to enjoy a nice dinner.
Abruptly, I stood, ignoring the polite applause scattered through the room. My fingers found my cane, and I moved through the tables on autopilot, my mind already three steps ahead.
He'd follow me tonight. He always did.
I stepped out of the restaurant through the side entrance, my cane sweeping the familiar path to the bus stop one block east. The rain had stopped, but the streets still smelled like wet concrete and exhaust.
I counted my steps to the corner. Right turn. Twenty-three more to the crosswalk.
Behind me, measured and careful, I heard a distinct set of footsteps.
Most people wouldn't notice. The city was full of footsteps, a constant percussion of strangers moving through their lives. But I'd learned to filter sound the way sighted people filtered visual noise, cataloging what mattered and discarding the rest.
These footsteps mattered.
They were too deliberate to be a random person who happened to be going the same way. Maintaining exactly the same distance between us, block after block.
I stopped suddenly at the entrance to a bar, tilting my head as if considering whether or not to go inside, and the footsteps behind me stopped when I did. Something threw off heat I could feel against my right cheek. Probably the large neon sign I remembered from before the accident.
Did neon signs get warm? I honestly didn't know. But I wasn't about to try to touch the source of the heat to find out. I'd learned that the hard way during the first few months of learning to live with my blindness.
I counted to five, then continued walking.
The footsteps resumed. Same distance. Same careful rhythm.
There was no mistaking it, I was under professional surveillance.
My heart kicked into a faster tempo, but it wasn't panic flooding my veins. It was something else entirely.
