Chapter 4 Eamon
Chapter four
Eamon
The building's lobby smelled like money trying not to advertise itself. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving—time to check out Mac's condominium.
The lobby's concrete floors were polished to a dull sheen. Minimalist furniture that no one sat in. The elevator required a key fob. Glass, steel, and mirrors multiplied us into infinity.
Mac pulled out his phone. Checked it. Put it away. Thirty seconds later, he pulled it out again.
Compulsive. Anxious.
Twenty-seven floors up. My ears popped.
Mac fumbled his keys at his door. Caught them. His neck flushed pink.
Training made me move past him into the unit first.
The space told its story immediately.
Hardwood minus any scuff marks. Ceramic bowl on the console table—empty except for a single key. Bon Iver playing faintly from deeper in the unit. For Emma, Forever Ago.
The living room: high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, furniture arranged for conversations that had never happened. One indent in the sofa cushion. Left side only.
I walked to the kitchen. Ancient coffee maker on the counter— thirty years old, utterly wrong for this sterile space.
Mac moved past me. Filled the carafe with water. His hands knew the ritual without thinking—the exact amount, the filter placement, and the particular angle you had to hold the basket so it would seat properly.
Light from the windows caught him in profile—sharp jaw, elegant bones—the architecture that photographed well from any angle.
He wasn't trying. Wasn't aware of how the light hit him.
This was what the stalker had documented, what they wanted to preserve.
I understood the impulse, even as it sickened me.
"My dad's," he said, gesturing at the coffee maker. "Ma tried to throw it out last year. Said it made terrible coffee."
He pressed the button. The machine wheezed to life. "She's right. It does."
We stood there while it brewed. The sound filled the silence— imperfect, mechanical, alive in a way nothing else in the apartment was.
"I drink it anyway," Mac said.
Not to me. To the machine. To his father. To whoever was listening.
Beautiful and unaware. The stalker wanted to preserve this—turn it into something still and perfect and controlled. I wanted to protect his right to be unselfconscious. To move through his father's ritual and exist without being documented.
The coffee maker stuttered. Hissed. Kept going.
"Yeah," I said. "I would too."
Down the hallway. Bedroom: king bed, perfectly made. Two nightstands. The left one held a phone charger and a water glass. The right one held dust.
Only one side of the bed showed use.
Second door: office. Boxes with labels in the closet. College. Phoenix misc. Dad's things. Still packed after three years.
I returned to the living room windows. Lake Union spread below. Beautiful. Completely exposed.
Four windows in adjacent buildings with clear sightlines.
I spotted a dead plant on the console table—brown leaves in a handmade ceramic pot.
"Your mom made that."
"Yeah." His voice was softer. "The plant was supposed to—" He stopped. "I killed it."
He stood there staring at the dead plant in his mother's handmade pot. The brown leaves crumbled at his touch.
"She tried," he said quietly. "To make this place feel like home. Brought me this. Told me the plant was resilient, that I couldn't kill it if I tried." His laugh was bitter. "Guess she was wrong."
I watched him pick up a dead leaf. It disintegrated between his fingers.
"Or maybe I'm just that good at killing things that are supposed to survive."
The self-loathing in his voice made my chest tighten.
"Mac—"
"Three years," he continued. "This has technically been my home for three years, and I've never unpacked those boxes. Never slept on the right side of the bed. I bought it after I came out."
"Show me the balcony."
No one had engaged the door's deadbolt in months. Outside: two metal chairs no one sat in, with grime on the seats.
I pulled out my phone. Zoomed to maximum. Through the lens, Mac's face sharpened into focus, still inside the living room—tension in his jaw, and his shoulders held stiff.
"Don't use this," I said. "Any of it. You're visible from at least four buildings out here."
Mac stared at the windows. His reflection ghosted in the glass— half-present, half-city lights.
"I used to like this view," he said quietly. "It meant success. It proved I'd made it. That I deserved to take up space. That I was worth—"
He stopped. Swallowed hard.
"Worth what?" I asked quietly.
"Keeping." His voice cracked. "I bought it to prove I was worth keeping. And then I couldn't figure out how to live in it. Because living in it alone just proved I wasn't."
The raw honesty of it hit like a physical blow.
"That's not what this proves," I said.
"Then what does it prove?"
I moved closer. Close enough to see the exhaustion in his eyes, the tension in his jaw, and the way he was holding himself together by force of will.
"It proves you've been trying to survive alone for so long you forgot that's not the same thing as living."
His eyes filled. He looked away fast, but not fast enough.
The city spread behind him. Thousands of windows. Thousands of ways to be seen.
I understood then: the stalker obsessed over what Mac's life had always been. Performance. Display. The constant awareness of being watched.
Back inside, I found an Alexa unit.
"Exploitable," I said, and unplugged it.
"Really?"
"If your account gets compromised, they hear everything. Know when you're home, and when you're not."
I kept moving. The HVAC hummed. No voices from adjacent units. No footsteps. Pure isolation.
Mac tracked my movements. Not anxious now. Focused. The way he'd been focused at Ma's house when I'd explained countersurveillance—paying attention with his whole body, leaning forward slightly, pupils dilated.
It was want, barely restrained. The kind Mac probably didn't know showed on his face.
I looked away first.
"Install new locks," I said. "Deadbolts. Motion sensors on the balcony door." My voice was clinical and tactical. "And vary your routines."
"Routines are what keep me sane."
"Routines are what get you mapped." He turned back toward me. "They've been watching for eighteen months. Every pattern is a data point."
"I can't vary everything. Morning training's at six. Sunday dinner's at Ma's—always has been when I'm in town since I was ten." He exhaled. "The things that matter have patterns."
He was right.
"We manage risk," I said. "Not eliminate it."
"That's not very comforting."
"It's true."
Mac pulled out his phone. Scrolled and held it up.
When I extract you, you'll never have to perform again.
"They think they're saving me," he said quietly.
I took the phone from his hand. Our fingers brushed.
Mac's breath caught. Barely audible.
I forced myself to focus on the message.
"Saving you from what they perceive as damaging conditions." I handed the phone back and kept space between us. "They're treating you like an artwork in crisis. Something requiring controlled restoration."
"That's fucking terrifying."
"Yeah."
Clinical obsession was patient. Persistent. Convinced of its own righteousness.
"I'll run countersurveillance," I said. "Map their patterns the way they've mapped yours."
"You think you'll find them?"
"They've been close enough to document you for eighteen months. That leaves evidence." I headed for the door. "Someone alone with a laptop at the same coffee shop. Same corner seat. Someone in a parked car too many mornings. Someone walking your route but maintaining distance."
"That sounds like half of Seattle."
"There's a difference between unremarkable and consistent. Come on," I said. "Let's get out of here."
***
We sat together in my rental car outside the building. Engine running.
Mac typed something on his phone. Put it away. Pulled it out again. The compulsive checking had returned.
I started driving. It began to rain, and the wipers beat a steady rhythm. Traffic was light. It was after rush hour, the city's brief exhale.
"This morning," Mac said. "You said the last time someone trusted you, you hesitated."
My hands tightened on the wheel.
I prepared to deflect, but we'd been too honest when I met him at a local coffee shop.
"The betrayal was only part of the story," I said. Eyes on the road. "I saw the threat approaching, but I thought we'd cleared him, so I hesitated."
The wipers beat. One-two. One-two.
"She didn't make it," I said.
Silence from Mac.
Then: "My rookie year, I made an error in the playoffs. Routine ground ball. I'd fielded a thousand just like it." His voice was flat. "I hesitated. Just for a second. Thinking instead of reacting. It went through my legs. We lost."
I glanced at him.
"After," Mac continued, "everyone wanted to talk about it.
Sports psychologists. Hitting coaches. My teammates said it happened to everyone.
And I just kept thinking—they're right. It does happen.
But it happened when it mattered most." He looked out at the rain.
"So yeah. I get it. The part where one second changes everything. "
His words lifted some weight off my shoulders.
It wasn't absolution. Mac wasn't offering that. Just recognition. The understanding of someone who'd lived in that same frozen moment where everything went wrong.
"Did you figure out how to trust your instincts again?" I asked.
"I'm still working on it." He turned to look at me. "You?"
"Same."
The highway curved. Seattle's lights spread below us, refracted through rain into something almost beautiful.
"For what it's worth," Mac said, "you didn't hesitate today. At the condo. When you moved in front of me before checking if anything was wrong." He paused. "You just moved."
I had. Without thinking. Pure instinct.
"Muscle memory," I said.
"Maybe. Or maybe you're better than you think you are."
I didn't know how to respond to that.
So I drove.
Ma's neighborhood was quiet. Christmas lights on half the houses, bare trees skeletal against the evening sky. I parked two houses down—better sightlines to the street.
Mac reached for his door handle. Stopped.
"Thank you," he said. "For not making me stay at the condo and understanding why I need to be here."
"The house has shit security," I said. "Old locks. A basement window I don't like. No cameras."
"But?"
"But it's full of people who'd hear you scream. Who'd come running." I looked into his eyes. "Sometimes the less secure place is safer."
Mac smiled. Not the public one. The real one that made him look younger.
"Plus," I added, "Ma's already got that basement room set up for me. If I tried to leave, she'd hunt me down."
Mac laughed. "Yeah. She would."
We got out. The rain was light but steady.
Halfway up Ma's front walk, Mac stopped. Tilted his face up.
I watched him stand there—water darkening his hair, running down his temples and catching in his eyelashes. Eyes closed. Breathing.
Present.
Alive.
Beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with cameras or control.
The stalker had documented 847 images in an attempt to capture this.
They didn't understand that you couldn't preserve something that only existed in motion and in the unguarded moment when someone stopped calculating angles and breathed.
When he opened his eyes, they found mine immediately. "I forget sometimes," he said. "That I have a body. That I'm allowed to... feel things."
We reached the porch steps. Light spilled from the windows. Inside, I saw movement—someone setting the table, someone else gesturing as they spoke.
"The condo's safer structurally," I said. "Better locks, harder to access, defensible position."
"But you're keeping me here."
"I'm keeping you where you can breathe." I looked at him. "Fear makes mistakes. You need to be somewhere you can think clearly."
"And you?" Mac asked. "You need that too."
It wasn't a question.
He was right. The condo's sterile perfection would've made me worse—every surface a reminder of control I couldn't maintain, every silence an opportunity for my thoughts to spiral.
Here, with the noise and the chaos and the people who interrupted before you could disappear too far into your own head—
Here I could do my job.
"Yeah," I said. "I do."
The want I'd seen earlier returned to Mac's gaze, banked but present. He didn't try to hide it.
"Good," he said quietly. "Then we're both where we need to be."
The front door opened. Ma, backlit and already talking.
"There you are! I was about to send Michael out looking.
Did you stop for groceries like I asked?
No? Well, come in anyway, you'll freeze out there.
Eamon, Marcus wants to talk to you about the basement window, says you'll know what he means.
Mac, sweetheart, you look exhausted. Dinner's in twenty minutes. Go wash up."
She disappeared back inside.
Mac and I looked at each other.
"Twenty minutes," he said.
"Better move fast."
"She means ten."
"I know."
Neither of us moved.
Then Mac smiled—that real one again—and climbed the steps. Held the door open. Waited.
I followed him into the warmth, light, and noise.
Into the vulnerable house with forty years of love holding it together.
And I thought: We can make this work. We can keep him safe here.
Not perfect. Not without risk.
But safe enough.
For both of us.