CHAPTER ONE
Rose Michaels stepped out of Martin’s Sports Bar after two hours of drinking, and she idly wondered why more people weren’t full-blown alcoholics.
It just made everything easier. With the liquor in her system, it stopped her from thinking about everything that had gone wrong over the past year, and sure, people would judge you, but you didn’t care about that either.
A constant three-drink buzz was like a superpower, and Rose liked to believe it brought out the best in her.
In the past year, Rose had also discovered the unexpected perks of insomnia.
While everyone else slept, she could get stuff done, be it work, working out or hardly working.
Sure, she sometimes needed a sugar overdose to stay awake the next afternoon, but it was a small price to pay for squeezing an extra four hours a day into her life.
Rose zipped up her jacket against the chill and started her walk home.
New Orleans was uncharacteristically quiet at this hour, almost disturbingly so.
Rose had never known this city to be anything other than non-stop, like a kid who’d eaten too much candy on Christmas morning.
But in the dead of night, she felt like she got to see this place at its most vulnerable.
When the sirens and voices faded, all that remained was the city’s true face, and Rose had to admit that she liked it.
There were worse places to live, despite everything that had happened.
Rose cut across the street and started walking along the bank of the Bayou St. John.
The signs clearly stated that pedestrians were prohibited, but she figured the rules didn’t apply at this ungodly hour.
Besides, it would shave a good ten minutes off her walk home.
The alternative was to hike up to the overpass and loop around, but if she was already taking her chances walking solo at two in the morning, what was a little trespassing to boot?
She kept her wits about her because you didn't get to her age without a healthy skepticism of dark corners.
With one eye on the water and the other on the path ahead, Rose mentally cataloged what the rest of the night – or morning – might bring.
Work didn't start until midday, so there was still time for a little recreation before sleep beckoned.
Maybe she could binge that crime series she kept scrolling past on Netflix, or get started on that book that she'd been using as a coaster since Christmas.
At the end of the embankment, Rose came to a road that was usually uncrossable given the amount of traffic. But now it was dead, and Rose felt like she was pillaging uncharted lands by walking across it so brazenly.
But as she reached the middle of the road, a shadow caught her eye.
A flicker of movement coming from somewhere.
Too slow to be a vehicle, too big to be an animal.
She rushed over to the other side of the street, glanced back and saw it was another late-night fiend.
A man in a brown jacket, beanie hat and hiking boots.
It stalled her for a second, but she reasoned that it was just another midnight walker. Another chancer taking liberties for a quicker route home. Still, it was a jolt to the system seeing someone else in this dead zone, especially in the middle of the night with nothing for company.
Rose picked up the pace. Home loomed a few miles ahead, but as she peeked back, she saw the figure had done a one-eighth and was now retracing her steps.
The man kept his gaze down, but there was an intensity to his walk, like one of those tunnel-visioned commuters she saw on the New York subways.
Someone who was already an hour late to his destination.
Nothing to fear. She couldn’t be the only night owl in a city of half a million. Although, other than a few passing cars and this stranger, Rose was yet to see much proof of that.
Still, she kicked things into high gear.
Rose’s footsteps ate up the pavement towards her apartment, which suddenly felt like it might as well be on another planet.
She told herself she was being paranoid but couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes boring into her back.
She risked another look over her shoulder, and the man was looming closer, close enough for her to hear his footsteps slamming into the concrete.
Her fight or flight kicked in. A primal reaction. One Rose had entertained quite a few times recently.
This was how it happened, wasn't it? A lone twenty-something woman walks through the streets at night, and a few months later, the police find her in a dumpster.
Then they'd make a TV show about her. Her friends – what few she had left – would call her an all-American girl, they'd say her smile lit up a room, they'd say she was the life of the party.
None of it would be true. Except the dumpster part. But Rose had seen enough true crime to know that if you wanted to survive, you had to abandon all shame.
And so Rose began to run across the pavement, down the sidewalk, across another road, over a small grassy knoll.
Rose had no intention of stopping until she reached something that resembled civilization.
Somewhere with light, houses, parked vehicles.
Somewhere someone could hear her screams should she need them to.
Rose must have covered a mile before glancing behind her again, and when she did, the man was still out there – but far enough away that Rose breathed a sigh of relief.
She watched him a little longer, confident that she’d made her escape, and then the stranger took a hard left in another direction.
She gulped air into her burning lungs with her hands on her knees. Sweat trickled down her spine despite the chill. She patted herself down, checking for anything lost in her unexpected marathon. Phone? Still there. Keys? Jingling in her pocket. Purse? Still present.
It was all accounted for. There was no psycho on her tail, merely an overactive imagination working overtime.
A part of her wanted to laugh. What if the guy was just making his way home? What if he had no intention of hurting, mugging, or assaulting her? Maybe tomorrow morning he'd tell his wife, 'Honey, the weirdest thing happened last night.'
Strange old world. When had the world tilted so far off its axis that a stranger’s footsteps sent women running for their lives? But here she was, pumped full of adrenaline over a shadow. Rose shook her head. She guessed trust was a luxury in the modern world.
But as Rose composed herself, she realized that she’d veered off course. This wasn’t anywhere near her neighborhood. A street sign said she was in a place called Natkin Way – a name that meant nothing to her.
But she wasn’t worried. Her internal GPS had gotten her home from far worse situations. How many times had she miraculously found her way home after abusing her liver? More than she could count, despite her young age.
So Rose began walking. The neighborhood was sparse. She passed a lumber mill, a row of dead buildings with boarded-up windows. Then beside it, a narrow alley beckoned, seeming to point her in the direction that her geographic senses screamed led back home.
In the alley, trash cans lined one side of the wall.
Graffiti and faded posters lined the other.
Rose was six steps into the alley when the world suddenly became a series of blurs.
One moment she was walking, and the next her airway was gone, and she was being pulled backwards off her feet, and the pressure was tight and high against her windpipe, and whoever was behind her knew exactly where to apply it.
Rose grabbed at the sudden intrusion with both hands.
She dug her nails in and raked and felt fabric tear and skin underneath but the grip didn’t change.
Her feet scraped against the ground and found nothing to push against. She tried to twist, to buck sideways, to drive an elbow back, but the person behind her had his weight set low and his body pressed against hers and there was nowhere to go.
Her hands stopped clawing. Her legs buckled and the ground came up slowly, and then she was on her back looking at a strip of sky between the buildings.
As she felt something warm against her palm, Rose’s last thought was of Leo, and how he’d elongate the ‘a’ when he said mama.
Then she felt her fingers being closed around something in her palm and held there.
The warmness bonded fast, fusing something to her skin, and in the last few seconds of consciousness Rose Michaels understood that whatever was in her hand was never coming out of it.