17
RETH
Flashback
I’m on the street by six. Different position, different coat—adjustments that happen without thought when you’ve been doing it for so long.
By nine, I know something’s wrong. Sophia Sinclair has a shape to her mornings. Like water finding its path—not programmed, but flowing the same way each time because that’s the shape her life has carved into the days.
Every day, she’s out by seven-thirty. Always. I know this the way I know her coffee order and her deadlines and the specific playlist she puts on when she’s writing case notes—not because I chose to learn it. Because I was paying attention. I always pay attention when it comes to her.
It’s ten a.m. and there’s still nothing. The curtains on her apartment windows are still closed, and if I hadn’t seen her arrive home last night, I’d think she didn’t spend the night there. But I know for a fact she’s in there.
Worry’s already slithering up my spine, and I don’t like it. I’ve always only worried about one person, but I’ve learned to control it, knowing nothing would happen as long as I do my part. But this is different. Sophia’s different. The kind of different that gets under your skin and stays there, making you do stupid shit like standing on a freezing street for hours in the morning because she didn’t walk out her front door at the usual time.
Something’s crushing my ribs from the inside. My jaw’s locked so hard it aches. I keep telling myself it’s nothing—just a late start, just a bad night—but the longer the door stays closed, the louder the wrongness gets.
I reposition twice. Watch her building’s entrance with the quality of attention I reserve for targets—exits mapped, variables tracked, the slow accumulating picture of an environment withholding something. There’s no movement, no shadow, nothing.
I go into the building, take the stairs to her floor, and stand outside her door, straining to catch even the faintest sound from the other side. I can’t hear a thing, no movement, no humming—she always fucking hums.
The silence is wrong. Too heavy. Too complete. My hand twitches at my side, fingers already remembering the shape of her lock. Eleven seconds. That’s all it would take. I could be in there, making sure the apartment is empty of threats, making sure she’s still inside and breathing like she’s supposed to be.
The thought sits in my gut like acid. I’ve broken into a hundred places without hesitation. I’ve stood in rooms while people slept three feet away and never once felt this… this fucking pull. Thisneed to know she’s okay that’s starting to feel bigger than any job. Bigger than control. Bigger than me.
I force myself to turn away. Each step down the stairs feels like dragging chains. The burn in my chest grows hotter with every floor I descend. What if something happened? What if she’s alone in there and needs help? The questions keep coming, uninvited, ugly, and I hate how much they matter.
By the time I hit the street, the decision is already made.
I find a kid on the steps across the road. Twelve, maybe thirteen. Phone in his hands, the boneless patience of someone with nowhere to be. I give him twenty dollars and the simplest instructions I can manage.
“Knock on 3C. Tell her you’re looking for apartment 3B and got the floors mixed up. Ask if she knows where 3B is. That’s all. Then come back and tell me what she says and how she looks.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. I probably am.
Nine minutes later, he’s back with his hands in his pockets and an expression like he’s seen something he didn’t sign up for.
“She answered,” he says. “She looks like fucking shit.”
“Watch your mouth, kid.”
He scrunches his nose. “You’re not my mom.”
“What did she say?”
“Who? My mom?”
I wipe a palm down my face. “No. The woman in 3C.”
There’s a glint in his eyes, one I instantly recognize as he holds out his hand. “That’ll be an extra twenty bucks.”
I press my tongue against the inside of my cheek, then reluctantly hand him another twenty. “There, you little menace.”
He shoots me a smug look. “She’s got the flu,” he says then bolts down the road.
The flu? Sophia’s got the fucking flu? I stand on the pavement with the words and don’t know what to do with them. Of course it’s something so human, so normal, so unworthy of the panic clutching my spine.
I shove my hands deep in my pockets and walk, not really registering where I’m heading. My thoughts are all wrapped up in that woman in apartment 3C, and I just can’t get the picture of her out of my head, lying in bed, probably with a fever, body aches, feeling like shit. No one to take care of her.
