I feltalive.
For over two years, I'd been suffocating under the weight of everyone's pity and careful handling. I'd been sanded down into something smooth and harmless, a fragile thing to be protected and managed.
But this…this stranger in the dark tracking my movements…he wasn't treating me like I was fragile. He was treating me like I was dangerous.
The thought gave me a rush.
Maybe I was a fool for not being scared. Too much attention from the kind of people who'd killed a man in an alley and left him bleeding out onto the pavement was never a good thing.
And yet my pulse was racing with something that wasn't entirely fear.
I followed the corner of a building and turned down what I thought had to be an alley judging from the lack of traffic noise.
The footsteps hesitated.
Then followed.
I walked until the sounds from the street faded to almost nothing. Then I stopped…
And I turned around.
"I know you're there." My voice cut through the low, muffled sounds of the city, steady and clear. "So you might as well introduce yourself."
Complete and utter silence met my request.
I waited, my cane gripped in both hands, my heart hammering against my ribs. As the minutes passed, I began to wonder if I'd only been imagining that someone would actually have this much interest in me. For any reason.
Then I heard it.
He made no effort to hide his approach this time.
The footsteps stopped a few feet away. Close enough that I could smell him. It was that same scent that's been haunting my dreams. This time, underneath it, I could swear there was theslightest odor of chemicals. Or perhaps it was just the particular chemistry of a dangerous man.
"Milo."
His voice was low. Warm. Almost casual. The kind of tone a man used when he was leaning across a bistro table, not standing in the shadowy throat of an alley being confronted by the woman he was stalking.
But it was a lie. That tone.
The warmth in his voice didn't match the heavy, oscillating pressure radiating off him. I could feel it against my skin. A static charge that made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. Violence had a specific weight, a density that displaced the air around it, and this man was heavy with it.
"Milo," I repeated. My tongue flicked against the roof of my mouth, testing the texture of the name. It sounded completely innocuous. But I knew better. "Why are you following me, Milo?"
I didn't step back. I refused to give him the satisfaction of showing any kind of fear. Instead, I tilted my chin, staring blindly into the void where his voice had originated.
"Because."
The judgment was dry, delivered without heat. Like he was stating a fact about the weather.
A laugh tore out of my throat. It was sharp, brittle, and entirely devoid of humor. "That's not an answer."
He inhaled through his nose, then released the breath long and slow. After a slight pause, he said, "But it's the only one you're getting."
The voice came from my left now. and it was closer than before.
My fingers tightened on the handle of my cane. He'd moved without me noticing. He'd closed the distance between us, and I hadn't heard a single scuff of leather on pavement. No shift of fabric. No intake of breath.
My auditory map was my lifeline. If he could bypass it, he could also kill me before I even knew he was there.
