Chapter 16
Paula
The street is empty.
Quarter past two in the morning. Seattle's typical drizzle. The streetlights throwing yellow circles on the wet pavement.
I walk down the avenue with the phone pressed to my ear and my eyes checking every doorway, every parked car, every shadow.
Trent said he'd be here in eight minutes. If I find the stalker, I hope that's true, because I don't know if I'll be able to control myself. I scan the gaps between buildings where someone could stand without being seen.
Nobody.
I open my firm's app on the phone. First month we got authorization to place two perimeter cameras. I rewind. 1:47 a.m. A male figure. Wearing glasses. Walking slow. Stops in front of our entrance. Eleven seconds staring at the building. Turns the corner. Gone.
Eleven seconds. It doesn't sound like much, but it's enough time to do a lot of things.
Trent arrives with two more people from my firm. They comb the street end to end, but find nothing. We check every corner again, every car, every doorway. The next block. The side alley. Nothing. Derek Linden has vanished into the Seattle night.
I get back to the apartment at three and find Iris sitting on the bed, back against the wall, hugging her knees. Waiting for me.
“Was it him?” she asks the second she sees me.
“Probably. The camera doesn't have enough resolution to confirm,” I say, shrugging.
“But you think so.”
“Yes,” I sigh.
We take a long time falling asleep even though Iris has a game tomorrow.
We sit on the bed with the lights on and the bedroom door open.
At four, she falls asleep with her head on my thigh.
I stroke her hair, close my eyes, but I don't sleep.
I listen to the street. Every car that passes.
Every sound that could or couldn't be a twenty-six-year-old man with thick-framed glasses standing in front of our building.
At five in the morning, Iris wakes up screaming.
A nightmare. Derek Linden inside the apartment. She bolts up, heart racing, knuckles white on the sheet, mumbling, “I don't want to be alone.”
I hold her. I brush her cheek with the back of my hand until she falls asleep again and I stay awake staring at the ceiling.
I should get up and cross-reference the press credentials against the risk profile database.
I should check them one by one, same as I've done before every game.
But every time I move, Iris stirs in her sleep, and she needs rest.
At six, she sleeps calm. Her right hand closed over the fabric of my shirt. Her breathing slow, deep, steady.
I pick up the phone and text Trent.
“Need you to run the credential check for the game. Please.”
Trent is competent. Very. But Trent hasn't studied Derek Linden's face every night for two months.
Trent doesn't know the angle of his jaw, or the different thick-framed glasses he wears, or the brown hair cut straight above the ears.
Trent has a file with data. I have that psycho's face burned into my brain.
***
West section, upper deck, row fourteen.
I spot him at the twenty-third minute of the first half.
My brain reads the signals before my conscious mind catches up. A man who isn't watching the game. Hands in his pockets with his thumbs out. A wool beanie. Too close to the side corridor that connects the stands to the players' tunnel. Everyone around him screams, jumps, lives the game. He doesn't.
“Trent. West section, row fourteen, seventh seat from the left. Male, brown hair, dark glasses. Wool beanie. Confirm visual,” I say over the radio.
“Confirmed. I've got him.”
“Don't approach. Just confirm.”
I calculate distances and times. By his build, I don't expect Derek Linden to be any kind of athlete.
From his position, he could reach the field in about two minutes.
From mine, running, I'd make it in half.
Plenty of margin, but only if I move when he does.
The stadium has security, but I can't rely on them. Not when Iris's safety is on the line.
Twenty-fifth minute of play. He shifts posture. Leans forward. Checks the scoreboard clock. Looks at the tunnel.
Twenty-seventh. Stands. Sits back down.
Thirty-fourth minute. Takes his hands out of his pockets. He's holding something in his right.
Forty-second minute. Whistle. Foul. Play stopped.
I move.
I take the side stairs at a fast walk. I don't run. Running draws attention. I reach the base of the corridor as they take the free kick.
First half ends in three minutes. Three added for stoppage. Iris will walk toward the tunnel in six minutes.
I position myself twelve feet from the tunnel mouth. Back to the wall. Eyes locked. I see Iris on the sideline, getting instructions from Hades. Derek Linden is no longer in the stands.
The halftime whistle blows. The players walk toward the tunnel. Iris pulls off her cold-weather gloves. Laughs with Tina. Punches her shoulder. Turns toward the tunnel.
Derek Linden reaches the base of the corridor, and Trent cuts him off.
“Sir, this area is restricted,” he tells him.
“I have a press credential. Just going to take a couple photos,” he says, holding up the badge.
“David Santos. Freelance photographer,” Trent repeats into the mic while checking it.
Iris is twenty feet from the tunnel, her back turned. Derek Linden slips past. Fast. More agile than I expected. He's carrying something in his right hand. Something that catches the floodlights. Metal. Small. His fingers tighten around it.
I run.
I'm not walking anymore. I don't care about drawing attention. The players start filing into the tunnel. In the stands, twenty-five thousand people who have no idea what's happening twenty feet from the field.
I reach him from behind. My left arm wraps around his neck, bicep closing on his carotid, forearm against his trachea. I lock the choke and pull back. His body folds with almost no resistance.
His fingers open, and something hits the ground.
A silver pen clipped to an envelope. Small, cramped handwriting. Next to it, a small bouquet of lilacs that he must have been carrying in the other hand, but my brain was too busy processing the threat.
Lilacs. Her favorite flowers. The son of a bitch knows her favorite flowers.
Trent gets there a second later.
“Ease up, Paula. Please.”
I've squeezed harder than I needed to. I know it. My head knows it. But the rage has me.
Derek Linden's face goes red. He claws at my forearm, nails scratching without force. A wet, choked sound escapes his throat. His legs give out and his full weight hangs from my arm.
“Delgado!” Trent yells. “Let go. You're going to kill him.”
I don't let go.
“Paula, please,” Iris breathes behind me. “Let him go.”
I let go.
Derek Linden drops forward, and stadium security catches him before he hits the ground.
He coughs. Spits. Breathes with a long wheeze that echoes off the tunnel walls.
He's conscious. He's fine. More or less fine, considering I compressed his throat for six seconds longer than necessary with considerable force.
“I just… I just wanted to give them to her,” he says as they take him away.
Iris wraps her arms around me. Rubs my back while I shake. Those were the longest seconds of my life.
“I thought he had a knife in his hand,” I whisper.
“I know,” she sighs, and kisses my cheek while security leads Derek Linden away with the compliance of someone who believes he was doing something good.
***
The second half starts, but I don't watch it.
Twenty-five thousand people screaming and all I can do is replay what happened, over and over.
Last night: the alert from my firm. Derek Linden on our street.
Then Iris's nightmare. Then the exact moment I delegated the credentials.
Trent ran the list but didn't catch the fake badge.
It wasn't a knife, but it could have been.
Or a gun that somehow got past security.
He could have been faster than me and reached Iris. It could have been so many things.
And I didn't check the credentials.
Iris scores in the seventy-eighth minute. She raises her fist and screams. She's turned her rage into fuel.
The game ends in a win.
Iris walks off the field.
“Did they take him?”
“Yes. The police have him now.”
“Is it over?”
“It's over,” I repeat with a sigh, and she disappears toward the locker room.
I stand alone on the sideline. The stadium empties. The floodlights go dark.
I type the incident report on my phone.
“The bodyguard did not personally review credentials by her own decision. This was a serious error that resulted in an inexcusable breach.”
I send the report. Walk onto the field. Sit on the bench.
Nightmare. Iris. I didn't want to wake her. I didn't check. He got in. She could have died.
Valentina.
***
Iris shows up a while later, hair wet, street clothes, and sits next to me.
“What's wrong? You should be celebrating.”
“I made a serious mistake,” I say to her and to twenty-five thousand empty seats.
“What mistake?”
“I should have reviewed the credentials myself. I delegated,” I admit, running a hand through my hair.
“You delegated? When?”
“Early this morning, after your nightmare. I chose to stay in bed with you instead of checking those damn credentials. If I had, if I'd even glanced at them, I would have caught it,” I tell her.
“That's not a mistake. That's a woman choosing to take care of her girlfriend.”
“It's a critical mistake, because my job is to protect you and I chose to stay in bed with you instead of doing my job. And the result is that man got within ten feet of you, and he could have had a knife or something worse. All because I was in your bed instead of at my laptop checking credentials,” I insist.
“Paula.”
“It's what happened with Valentina. I crossed a line I shouldn't have crossed and I put you in danger.”
“Paula. I'm here. In one piece. Not a scratch, unless you count the two kicks I took during the game. You stopped him. He didn't have a knife. He was just a sad, lonely guy with a bunch of lilacs.”
“A sad, lonely guy who got past every layer of security because I didn't do my job.”
“You were doing something more important. You were taking care of your girlfriend,” she reminds me, kissing my temple.
“Nothing is more important than your safety.”
“I am more important than my safety,” she corrects.
I don't answer. I stare at the empty stands.
“Are you hearing me?” she asks, raising her voice.
“I am more important than my safety. That person who had the nightmare, that woman you chose to stay with instead of checking a list of names at dawn, she's your girlfriend.
She's not a fucking security protocol. And if you give me a choice between you staying with me and you reviewing a list at three in the morning, I choose you. Every time.”
“Iris, you can't—”
“Yes, I can. Because it's my life. And it's my choice. The problem is whether you can choose me over your job, and if you can't, I need you to tell me now. Not tomorrow. Now.”
I don't answer.
Iris waits a few seconds.
“You know what? I'm going home. When you figure out what you actually want, let me know. But don't take long,” she snaps. “And they say I'm the one who doesn't know how to commit,” she mutters as she walks out of the stadium.