10. Justin
JUSTIN
Well. That was useless.
I watch Rowan Hale walk away, her pace quick as she cuts across the campus grounds. She doesn’t look back. Not once. Her shoulders are tight, her steps clipped, purposeful.
It has nothing to do with the rain.
I recognize the urgency for what it is. She’s not trying to stay dry—she’s trying to put distance between herself and me.
For all my careful prompting, for every angle I tried to take, I didn’t get a single usable thing out of her. No slips. No tells. Nothing she hadn’t already decided I was allowed to hear.
Rowan Hale is exactly what people mean when they talk about a locked box—sealed tight, edges clean, no obvious point of entry.
Which leaves me with only one option.
I turn in the opposite direction and head for my car.
Rowan has classes scheduled for the next two hours—I checked.
Long enough to do what I need to do without interruption.
I pull away from the curb and drive on autopilot, following an address I already know by heart.
I memorized it last night, right after I ran her background.
Fifteen minutes from campus, she lives in an old red-brick building wedged between newer developments that pretend the area has been revitalized. It hasn’t. I park across the street and get out, taking in the place with a critical eye.
No visible cameras. No secured entry.
I push through the front door and step into the lobby. It’s dim, narrow, and tired—cracked tiles, outdated mailboxes, fluorescent lighting that hums like it’s one flicker away from giving up entirely. The whole space smells faintly of dust and a time gone by.
It looks like it hasn’t been updated since the eighties.
The lift sits at the end of the hall, dark and lifeless, looking like it hasn’t moved in years. I shake my head and head for the stairs, taking the steps two at a time as I climb to the second floor.
The lock gives way beneath my hand with a soft, obedient click.
The sound hits wrong. Too easy and too willing.
A spike of irritation curls hot in my chest as I ease the door open. This shouldn’t have worked—not on the first try. The fact that it does makes my jaw tighten. Anyone with half my skill could have done the same.
I step inside, already furious—not at the door, but at the thought of how exposed she is. At how simple it was to cross the threshold of her private space.
It should feel wrong. Breaking into her apartment should register as a line crossed, a violation I hesitate over. In theory, it probably is.
In practice, it feels inevitable. Necessary. Like this was always where the day was going to end.
I step inside and start digging—quietly, thoroughly.
Her world is small. Quiet and peaceful. There’s no clutter and no mess. The space feels lived in but untouched, like she exists here without really leaving fingerprints behind.
Books stack in even towers across the floor, dog-eared and frayed.
I crouch beside one and thumb through its pages.
There are margins filled with rushed handwriting—urgent, slanted, bleeding words faster than her mind can hold them.
I feel like I’m intruding on her most innermost thoughts and I should go. But I don’t.
My steps move ahead of my conscience, taking me through the quiet—past the worn table and the faint hum of a refrigerator that sounds too loud in this silence.
She exists here lightly. That’s what unsettles me most.
There are no photos on the walls. No framed memories and nothing on display that screams this is who I am. She doesn’t live outward. She obviously learned early on that being seen carries risk, that visibility invites attention she can’t afford.
I move through the apartment carefully, touching nothing. The kitchen is first. It’s clean, functional, arranged with purpose. There are no takeout containers. There’s nothing out of place.
I move on to the only bedroom, where the bed is made tight enough to bounce a coin, corners squared with almost militant precision.
A single lamp sits on the nightstand, practical, unadorned.
No trinkets. No softness. Just stacks of books where decoration should be.
Legal texts. Case studies. Dog-eared and worked hard.
I pick one up and flip it open. The margins are crowded with sharp, cramped notes—arguments layered over arguments, questions circling conclusions.
There’s anger in the writing, but it’s disciplined.
Harnessed. The kind that knows exactly where it’s going and how much damage it intends to do when it gets there.
She’s a writer. No doubt about it.
And if there was any part of me still questioning whether she’s Anonymous, that doubt doesn’t survive the page.
I stop in the centre of the room and let the pattern settle. The lack of a digital footprint. The discipline. The way she observes instead of joins. And I realize that Rowan Hale isn’t running from the world; she’s preparing to confront it.
And whatever she’s planning, she’s smart enough not to draw attention to herself. So she’s learned to live quietly and leave no trail. To make herself unremarkable on paper while sharpening something dangerous in private.
I stand there a moment longer, surrounded by the echo of her restraint, and feel a shift settle deep in my chest. The walls seem to close around her presence. It isn’t perfume that clings to the air—it’s her. A trace of jasmine and mandarin, a scent I don’t know well, but something so uniquely her.
I move again, slower this time. I let my eyes take in everything without jumping to conclusions. Details matter. Especially the small ones.
I sit on the edge of the bed and slide open the top drawer of her bedside table.
That’s where I find the first crack in Rowan’s carefully constructed life.
There’s a photo frame inside.
I lift it carefully, like it might be fragile for reasons that have nothing to do with glass. Two girls stand side by side in the photo, caught in bright sunlight. The glare hits the lens hard, washing part of the image out, but not enough to miss what matters.
They’re smiling. Genuinely. Arms hooked around each other’s shoulders. They look alike—same bone structure, same eyes—but one is taller. Older, maybe. Or just more confident. The girl on the right is Rowan. Younger. Softer. This version of her hasn’t learned how to disappear yet.
I turn the frame over and ease the backing open.
Missy & Rowan 2013
There’s no explanation as to who the other girl is, but they look so similar, I’m guessing they’re related. Sisters? But the background check gave up no siblings.
I slide the photo back into place and stare at it for a long moment. Then I take my phone out and snap a picture. If Missy exists anywhere beyond this frame, I’ll find her.
I put the photo back in the drawer.
There’s nothing else inside. Just the frame.
Whatever Missy meant to her, this wasn’t a casual keepsake. It’s preserved. Untouched. And it’s the only personal thing Rowan keeps within arm’s reach when she sleeps.
It’s also the first real proof I’ve found that there is anyone else in her life.
Which raises the obvious question.
Why hasn’t it changed in over a decade?
That’s when I hear movement outside the room.
The jangle of keys. The front lock turns. There’s a pause before the door closes, followed by footsteps.
Fuck. She’s not supposed to be home for hours.
Her voice follows, quiet, humming a tune I don’t know.
My blood stills. There’s no time to leave through the window. No time to do anything but hide, because I have no intention of reintroducing myself to her in her own apartment.
I drop to the floor and slide beneath the bed. Dust sticks to my hands. The air is tight, stale.
From here, the world reduces to sound and shadow—the soft fall of her steps, the creak of the floorboards beneath her weight.
I hear the water running in the bathroom, before she steps into the room and moves around, unhurried. I hear the rustle of fabric. The small, fragile sound of her setting something down on her bedside table.
I close my eyes and breathe her in.
Something shifts in my chest, something quiet and sharp. I tell myself I’m only here to understand what she’s looking for. But even I can hear the lie in that.
She mutters to herself as she moves around the room. Something about a deadline. Her voice is low, threaded with frustration and fatigue, the kind that doesn’t invite comfort. Each word falls too close, brushing the edges of my restraint.
Then she steps closer to the bed—and that’s when I see it.
A scar. Thick and pink, carved deep into her skin, a twisted map of trauma that runs from the edge of her ankle up along the curve of her calf before disappearing beneath the shadow of the bed frame.
It isn’t new. It’s old—faded and healed, but not forgotten.
It’s ugly in a beautiful way. The kind of imperfection that demands attention, that whispers for me to look closer.
I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t even notice. But my gaze catches there and refuses to let go.
There’s a story in that scar. Was it an accident? A punishment? Something she ran from, or something she endured?
I recognize its provenence. It doesn’t belong to innocence. It belongs to survival. To a body that’s fought and lost and still kept breathing. And maybe that’s why I can’t look away—because survival recognizes itself.
Rowan Hale thinks she’s the only one here looking for answers. Digging. Hunting. Pulling at threads she believes no one else has noticed.
But the truth is, she isn’t alone.
She isn’t the only one searching.
We all are, in one way or another—circling the same shadows, chasing the same ghosts, hoping we find what we’re looking for before it finds us first.
The bed creaks as she sits down. The noise shoots through me like a current.
My hand curls against the floor to keep it from reaching out to touch her leg as my fingers itch to scale the length of the scar.
I watch the dip of the mattress, and imagine the way her shoulders slump, the exhaustion bleeding from her in waves.
She exhales. A sound too human, too soft for this room.
For a heartbeat, I think about what it would feel like to speak. To break the silence. To let her know someone sees her—even the parts she keeps hidden behind her scars.
After a while, her breathing steadies—deep, rhythmic, unguarded. The kind of sound that makes the world slow down to listen.
I wait until her breaths fall into a perfect rhythm. Then I move—inch by inch—sliding out from beneath the bed as the air thickens around me.
Every sound feels amplified. The whisper of fabric, the stretch of wood, the pulse in my throat.
By the time I’m standing, she’s asleep. Oblivious to me standing in her world, surrounded by everything she is.
I shouldn’t be here. But leaving feels wrong. Because for the first time in a long time, I’ve found something I can’t stop looking at. Even as she sleeps.
Who are you, Rowan Hale?
A strand of hair falls across her cheek, catching the lamplight like a thread of gold. The glow crowns her in something soft and holy—too pure for the likes of me.
I should leave. Instead, I stand there and stare.
At the gentle curve of her shoulder beneath the blanket. At the scar along her leg, peeking out from the edge of the fabric—pale, deliberate, unmistakable. A reminder etched into skin that time, for all its mercy, had chosen not to erase.
I cross the room and pull the blanket higher over her shoulders. It’s risky, but I can’t help myself. Consequences be damned. Her breathing catches for a moment, then evens out again. She doesn’t wake.
The door clicks behind me as I leave the apartment.
Outside, the air is cold enough to sting. I breathe it in, let it burn through the guilt clinging to me.
She’ll never know I was here. But I know her now.
I know what she keeps, and what she doesn’t. I know how carefully she’s learned to live on her own.
I know she hums when she’s afraid—low and steady. Not for comfort, but for control. As though in doing so, nothing else can get in.
And that scar—pale, thin, jagged and old. Healed, but not erased. It’s more than a mark. It’s a record.
I store it away, untouched for now.
Because one day soon, I’m going to find out exactly how she got it.