Chapter 7
The day ran the way days ran. Lily was on tickets and runs from the moment she arrived, and it wasn’t until the lunch rush broke that she got to sit down and eat.
She was mid-meal when Jenny came off the printer waving a ticket at the other driver. “Kevin Hill. You’re taking this one.”
Kevin had finished eating and was slouched against his chair. “Lily’s free. Why me?”
Lily put down her knife and fork and looked at Jenny. She already knew where the ticket was from.
Jenny shook it at him, out of patience. “The house across the river. Fifty-dollar tip. You sure?”
Kevin sat up. “Just that one?”
“Just that one. Lily ran into a flasher over there yesterday. You think a thing like that falls in your lap on a normal day?”
Kevin snorted. “That explains it.”
“Are you going or not? Because I’ll ask somebody else.”
He was on his feet. “Going. Obviously going. And if I do run into some pervert, we’ll see which of us is worse.”
That got a laugh out of the room and a few comments back, and nobody actually came over to ask Lily about it.
Things like that weren’t news around here.
Kevin was quick — fifteen minutes, and he came back through the door flapping a fifty.
Jenny looked at him. “Well? Did you see him?”
Kevin leaned on the register, grinning. “You never let it go, do you. Every single time. No, I didn’t. Same as always. No face, no voice, nothing.”
Jenny let it drop.
When the room thinned out she pulled Lily aside. “So he’s after you specifically.”
Lily nodded.
And more than that. There were cameras in that house — hidden ones — because how else would a man who never showed himself know they’d sent someone different today?
Three months of walking in and out of that place while somebody watched. Her back went cold.
Jenny patted her shoulder. “Don’t spiral. You just don’t go anymore. It’s not like he’s going to grab you off the street.”
Lily had no way of knowing, standing there, how precisely Jenny was going to be proven right.
The restaurant closed at eight.
It was the last day of the month, so Jenny had to stay and reconcile the register with Thomas, and told Lily to go ahead.
Lily had been on her feet since morning and wanted nothing except to be unconscious, so she didn’t wait.
She walked out to the road and headed for the bus stop.
And at the stop she saw someone she recognized.
The blond man from yesterday.
Yesterday she’d been so occupied with his face that she hadn’t taken in anything else. Now, from a few paces away, she registered how tall he was.
A plain white shirt and black trousers, which only made him look longer.
His legs were not a reasonable length.
He stood very straight under the streetlight.
The yellow light came down over him and made him look like the lead in a stage production, everything else on the street demoted to set dressing.
At a certain point envy stopped being available as a response.
She’d been looking too long. He turned his head.
Lily’s eyes snapped away with the guilt of someone caught.
She wondered whether he even remembered her.
The bread yesterday — should she thank him?
But if he had no idea who she was, walking up to him would be humiliating.
She was still weighing it when he started toward her.
He’d recognized her. So she stopped avoiding it and gave him a polite nod. “What a coincidence. Twice.”
He stopped in front of her, tilted his head slightly, looked at her.
“No coincidence. I was waiting for you.”
For two full seconds Lily didn’t understand.
Then the voice caught up with her, and she was back in that dark house.
May I bite you?
The pitch of it. The texture. Even the thing underneath it, the assumption that whatever he said was already settled — it lined up perfectly with the whisper in the dark.
Her eyes came up.
It’s him. This is the man from the house.
Her legs went out from under her and she nearly lost her footing entirely.
He caught her elbow — one touch, released the moment she was steady, faultless in every particular.
He even said, politely, “Careful.”
Lily was not going to make the mistake of reading him as a gentleman.
She got her balance, took a step back, and put space between them.
Then she turned and ran, as hard as she could.
Ethan watched the small figure recede and made a soft sound with his tongue.
“You can’t.”
Lily’s fear ran her, and it ran her two full streets before she stopped.
Which put her close to home.
She was about to keep going and then didn’t.
Yesterday’s meeting at the bakery below her building hadn’t been an accident.
He knew where she lived.
If she went home now, what if he was already downstairs?
And if he wasn’t, she still wasn’t going to sit alone in that apartment.
She turned around, intending to walk back to the restaurant and wait for Jenny, on the theory that two people were better than one.
Two steps in, she stopped again.
The bus stop was on the way back.
If he was still standing there, she’d be walking directly into him.
She stood in the middle of the sidewalk with nowhere to go.
And a black sedan came up beside her without a sound and stopped.
Lily’s head turned.
The window came down, and there was the face out of her nightmare.
She backed up fast, already turning.
He spoke before she could.
“Don’t waste your energy. Wherever you go, I’ll find you.”
She knew it wasn’t a threat. It was a description. He knew where she lived and where she worked.
In this city, outside the apartment and the restaurant, she had nowhere.
He was right. There was nowhere to hide.
“What do you want? I — I’ve never done anything to you.”
Ethan didn’t get out.
He rested one arm on the window frame and looked at the wary little thing on the sidewalk, and his mouth curved.
“Come tomorrow. Then I’ll tell you.”
Come meant the house.
He asked again, softly, in a way that didn’t allow for going around it. “Will you come?”
Lily pressed her mouth shut.
She’d have to have lost her mind. She was never setting foot in that house again as long as she lived.
He’d apparently expected exactly that. He laughed under his breath and said it like a weather report:
“You’ll come.”
