Chapter 4 – Silas - The Hunter’s Reflection #2
Lydia’s barefoot, her heels discarded near the couch. One strap from her dress has slipped down her arm. She hasn’t noticed. Or doesn’t care. A tumbler swings in her hand, half-full of something amber. There’s tension in the way she moves—tight, coiled, like her skin doesn’t fit right.
Her hair’s down now. Messier than she’d ever allow in public. But she doesn’t fix it, doesn’t even touch it. She just walks back and forth, her free hand twitching like she’s looking for something to hold onto.
I don’t blink. I don’t move.
She turns and stops in front of the window.
Not close enough to see me. But close enough for me to see her.
She raises the glass to her lips, but seems to hesitate a moment before she downs it all.
I jerk back when she bursts into abrupt laughter, watching as it propels her against the window with mysterious force. When she presses her forehead to the glass… For the first time, I see the exhaustion.
It’s not physical. It’s something underneath, something hollowed out from too many nights like this. Too many performances. Too many times she’s worn skin that doesn’t feel like hers anymore.
She doesn’t know she’s being watched.
Not yet.
But there’s a shift in her posture.
Her chin lifts. She looks out, not directly at me, but at the dark beyond the window, as if the glass might whisper something back.
I reach out.
My gloved hand brushes the glass of the scope like I’m tracing her outline.
The city disappears. It’s just her and this invisible string between us, tugged at every time she looks away from the world and into whatever place she keeps just for herself.
I could go down there. I could knock. Say something that sounds like a threat or a promise or a warning. She’d answer the door. Maybe. Or maybe she’d shoot me through it.
But instead, I whisper what she’ll never hear.
“You’re already mine.”
And the thing is, I don’t mean that like possession.
I mean it like an inevitability.
From up here, I could see her whole world unfold in pieces—fragments lit by slanted amber, a body in motion, a drink that never quite made it to her mouth. But rooftops are for watching from a distance. Tonight, distance feels like a cage.
But eventually, I go down from the rooftop.
The alley behind her building is uneven stone, the kind that remembers older crimes. A busted steam pipe hisses somewhere close, but I tune it out. Across the street, in the pool of shadow cast by a burnt-out streetlight, I stop and watch the windows above.
Second floor. Her floor.
One of them still glows faintly. Warm, honey-colored. Not bright enough to expose her, just enough to silhouette movement. A figure passing left to right, pausing, then retracing the path.
I can’t count her steps from here. But I can read the rhythm.
Lydia’s pacing again. Not steady. There’s a stagger to it, like her thoughts are moving faster than her body can follow. Every now and again, she stops near the window, just long enough for her outline to come into focus. Her shoulders stay rigid. Her arms mostly stay at her sides.
When she turns away from the window, the glow dims, and all I see is shadow on shadow. But then she passes back again, and her shape returns—blurred, tense, human.
I move to the edge of the sidewalk and tilt my head back.
The window’s too high for her to see me unless she’s looking for something. She isn’t. Not yet.
But I imagine her eyes behind the glass. Not focused on anything in the room. Just drifting, somewhere far enough away that she can’t feel the walls anymore.
I know that feeling. It’s the one you get right before you make a mistake you won’t regret until morning.
Another light clicks on, two windows to the left. She’s moved into another room. I lose sight of her completely.
I don’t move.
Minutes stretch. The city doesn't breathe out here—it holds. Every car horn or slamming door from blocks away feels like a knife dropped on a hard floor.
And then—
Her shadow returns.
Closer now. She steps into frame again, one arm crosses over her body like she's hugging herself, but it might just be instinct.
The sheer curtain flutters. Maybe the window’s cracked open. Maybe not.
She doesn’t know I’m here.
But my body feels like she does.
My fingers curl against my thighs. I should walk away. Log the time, log the pattern, report back.
Instead, I stare.
She shifts again, and for one fleeting moment, her head turns, as if she senses something or someone. A presence.
I stay completely still.
Her hand lifts, just barely. As if she’s simply adjusting her hair. Or maybe she’s about to yank her curtains closed. But she doesn’t. The window remains uncovered. I watch her turn away.
Transfixed, I stay longer than I know I should.,, Long enough to feel it. A shift within me, anything but subtle. A primal territorialism.
Not because I want to own her.
Because I already do.
Not physically. Not tactically. But something deeper… something harder to undo. The kind of pull you don’t name because once you do, it stops being a weakness and starts becoming a vow.
She doesn’t belong to Drazen.
And she won’t be left in this alone.
The walk back to my apartment takes twenty-three minutes.
Fifteen if I took the subway. Nine if I drove. But I don’t. I take every back alley, every cut-through, every dead-end street that lets me move without being seen. Not because I’m hiding from the Bureau, or Drazen, or anyone else who’d like a piece of me.
I’m hiding from the way I feel when I walk away from her.
There’s a rage in it. A hunger with no mouth.
Inside the apartment, everything is where I left it. Gun on the table. Cleaning cloth folded. Surveillance maps stacked in order by quadrant. But none of it feels like it matters anymore.
I drop my coat. It lands in a heap that doesn’t belong here.
I stare at it too long.
Naomi’s flash drive is still next to the Glock. I pick it up, roll it between my fingers. I could plug it in. Could listen to my own breathing through every rooftop mic and window static. But I already know what I’ll hear.
Nothing useful.
Just my obsession replayed in surround sound.
I toss the drive into the drawer and close it harder than I need to.
Then I sit.
Not at the table. On the floor. Back against the wall. Eyes on the door like I’m waiting for something to come through it. But nothing does.
Because she’s not coming here.
And I’m not allowed there.
That’s the agreement. The boundary. The line Naomi keeps drawing with her voice, her warnings, her threats.
You don’t get to keep things.
She said it like a rule.
But rules don’t work when they only move in one direction. When Lydia’s in the room, the world reorganizes around her. Not just mine. Everyone’s.
Drazen thinks he’s using her.
But she’s the most dangerous person in the room, and she doesn’t even need to lift a weapon. She uses restraint. She wears a mask over the look that says she’s already survived worse than you, and she didn’t need your permission to do it. It keeps pulling me toward her.
Not her beauty. Not the elegance. Not even the damage.
It’s that she’s never once asked to be saved.
But I can’t stop thinking about what it would mean if she did.
I tip my head back against the wall.
And I say it out loud, just to hear how it sounds when there’s no one left to lie to:
“She’s not part of the job.”
And then—
Quieter.
“But I don’t care.”