Ann managed a tight smile. "Yeah, see you."
"You sure you're okay?" Miriam's brow furrowed with concern. "You've been jumpy all day."
"Just tired," Ann lied, the words feeling hollow even to her own ears. She pushed through the back door before Miriam could press further.
The employee parking lot was half-empty now, the afternoon shift having replaced the lunch crew. Ann's car waited in its usual spot, unremarkable among the other vehicles. She walked quickly, keys clutched in her right hand with the longest key protruding between her fingers.
Each step on the asphalt seemed to echo too loudly. Ann glanced over her shoulder twice before reaching her car, though the parking lot contained nothing more threatening than a stray paper bag tumbling in the breeze. She unlocked her car, slid inside, and immediately pressed the lock button, the solid thunk of the mechanisms engaging providing momentary comfort.
For several seconds, she sat motionless, hands gripping the steering wheel, staring at nothing. Marcus's face appeared in her mind—his watchful eyes, his precise movements, his smile. Threedays of the same routine. The traffic stop that couldn't have been a coincidence.
Ann started her car, the engine's familiar rattle grounding her slightly. She was being ridiculous. Plenty of people had routines. Plenty of cops regularly patronized the same restaurants. It didn't mean anything.
She backed out of her parking space and headed for the exit, following her usual route home—left onto Maple, right at the second light onto Westfield Avenue. The flow of afternoon traffic enveloped her car, anonymity providing a sense of security that began to ease the tightness in her chest.
At the first stoplight, Ann glanced in her rearview mirror—a habitual check that became anything but routine when she spotted the white and blue patrol car two vehicles behind her. Her hands clenched involuntarily on the steering wheel, knuckles blanching white against the black vinyl.
"It's not him," she whispered to herself. "It can't be him." But she couldn't see the driver clearly through the windshield glare, couldn't confirm or deny her suspicion.
The light changed. Ann accelerated, perhaps a touch too quickly, earning an irritated horn blast from the car beside her. She eased off the gas, forcing herself to drive normally. Her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror again. The patrol car remained two vehicles back.
At the next intersection, one of the cars between Ann and the patrol car turned right. Now, only one vehicle separated them. Ann's breathing grew shallow, her chest tight with each inhaled breath. She turned left onto Henderson Street—still her regular route home, nothing unusual, nothing that would suggest she was aware of being followed.
The car between them turned into a strip mall parking lot.
Now the patrol car was directly behind her.
Ann's fingers tightened further on the steering wheel, her knuckles now bloodless. She could feel her pulse in her temples, a rapid drumming that seemed to match the frantic pace of her thoughts. Was it Marcus? Was he following her? Or was this anordinary patrol, a coincidence that her paranoia was transforming into something sinister?
Three consecutive intersections, and the patrol car remained behind her. Not tailgating, not flashing lights, just… present. Persistent. Following the same route she took every day from work to home.
The route Marcus would know if he'd been watching her.
Ann made a decision that felt like it belonged to someone else—someone braver or more foolish than she considered herself to be. At the next intersection, instead of continuing straight toward her apartment complex, she turned right, toward the grocery store she occasionally visited but hadn't planned to stop at today.
Her heart hammered against her ribs as she watched the rearview mirror, waiting to see if the patrol car would make the same unexpected turn.
It didn't.
The police cruiser continued straight ahead, growing smaller in her mirror until it disappeared from view altogether. Ann pulled into the grocery store parking lot, steering into a space near the back, and killed the engine. For several long moments, she simply sat there, hands trembling slightly as she released her death grip on the steering wheel.
"You're overreacting," she told her reflection in the rearview mirror. "It's a patrol car. They patrol. That's literally their job."
But the rational explanation did nothing to slow her racing heart or ease the tightness in her chest. Ann forced herself to take several deep breaths—in through the nose, out through the mouth. Gradually, her pulse slowed, though her hands continued to tremble.
After five minutes, she started the car again and pulled back onto the road, resuming her route home. Every few seconds, her eyes darted to the rearview mirror, checking for white and blue vehicles. Each mirror check became more frantic than the last—side mirror, rearview, other side mirror, rearview again—a compulsive pattern that left little attention for the actual road ahead.
A siren wailed in the distance, the sound faint but unmistakable. Ann jolted so violently that her car swerved, crossing briefly into theopposite lane before she corrected with a jerky motion of the wheel. A horn blared as an oncoming car passed, its driver gesturing angrily through the windshield.
"Sorry," she whispered, though no one could hear her. "I'm sorry."
The siren grew fainter, headed in another direction, responding to some emergency that had nothing to do with her. Ann forced herself to focus on driving, on maintaining a steady speed, on signaling properly for turns—all the mundane details of operating a vehicle that had never required conscious thought before.
By the time she turned into her apartment complex, her shirt was damp with sweat despite the car's air conditioning. She scanned the parking area before pulling into her assigned space, checking for patrol cars, for unmarked vehicles that might contain watching eyes, for anything out of the ordinary.
Nothing seemed amiss, yet Ann couldn't shake the feeling of exposure as she walked from her car to her building, keys clutched in her defensive grip once more. She found herself looking over her shoulder every few steps, scanning rooftops and parked cars for any sign of surveillance.
The rational part of her mind understood she was spiraling, seeing threats where none existed. But another part—the part that had cataloged Marcus's precise arrivals, his consistent seating position, his unwavering gaze—whispered that patterns never lied, and coincidences accumulated past the point of random chance became something else entirely.
