Page 6 of Prey

Leo sends me the first surveillance report eighteen days after Grey starts.

Background checks are automatic, credit, criminal, and social media. HR runs them, sends me a summary, expects me to skim it and trust their filters.

Grey's file comes back clean.

Too clean. No social media. No digital footprint before five years ago. No photos, no tagged locations, no drunken tweets from college. No forum posts, no high school reunion lists, no family birthday shout-outs.

It’s like he appeared out of thin air with a résumé and a polite smile and nothing else. I read the report once. Then again.

"Where was he before twenty-one?" I ask Leo.

Leo hesitates on the phone. Paper shuffles. Keys tap. I hear the sound of him digging.

"There’s…a gap," he says finally. "Prior addresses in another state, then nothing. No employment records. No school transcripts we can access. And there’s a sealed juvenile record. We can’t see the contents."

Sealed, juvenile, problem words in HR language. In mine, they mean interesting

"Dig deeper," I tell Leo. "I don’t want speculation, I want facts."

"You sure?" he asks. "If this is…sensitive, we might not have the right."

"You have whatever rights I give you." I cut in. "Find what you can."

That was four months ago.

Now I have a folder labeled Grey with over a thousand files. Not HR’s sanitized report. Mine. Emails, keylogs, screenshots, audio, and Camera feeds.

Everything the system sees when he moves through my building belongs to me.

I know he uses the same password for everything. Winter2019. The year he graduated. I know because he typed it in front of me once, fingers fast, careless, like he forgot other people might be watching. I know about the shoebox. The things he’s taken from me. Leo’s audio picked him opening it. The cardboard squeak. The soft thump of objects hitting the bottom. Greys breathing, shallow, fast.

Tonight, I watch him through the hallway camera.

Grey is sitting at his desk. The lights are off. His face is lit only by the glow of his laptop screen. He’s not working. He’s just sitting there. Staring at my door. I switch feeds. Watch his screen.

He’s googling me. Cain Micheals net worth. Cain Micheals house. Cain Micheals divorced. Then Cain with Rose Sophie.

Ah. So he noticed lunch.

I had lunch with her because she’s good at her job. Because she keeps the board docile, numbers up, questions down. Because she knows how to play a long game.

He opens a folder. Labeled C.

Of course.

Schedule. Contacts. Photos. Audio. Hundreds of images. Screenshots of my calendar. Photos of me across the street, through windows, in parking garages. One is from inside my apartment.

What the fuck.

My living room, my couch, my fireplace. The book I was reading left open on the arm of the chair. This was taken from inside the room. More photos of my kitchen, my bedroom.

The rational part of my brain screamed at me to call security. To write a report. To protect myself. I heard it clearly. And then I ignored it. Because it was the most interesting thing that had happened to me in years.

I close the laptop. Walk to the window, the city is dark. Below, Grey is cataloging photos of my life, dreaming of ways to get closer.

And I’m letting him. No. I’m encouraging him. The late meetings. The we instead of you. The way I said I’ve noticed, letting the words hang like a dare. The little compliments I rarely give anyone, dropped like breadcrumbs in his path.

Grey thinks he’s the predator.