Chapter 3 #2
I’m overtired. A little overstimulated. Maybe thrown off by being out in a fitted dress and heels when I spend most evenings at home with files and takeout.
Maybe some part of my brain is still too tuned to vigilance from work, too accustomed to reading rooms and exits and body language, even when I’m supposed to be off-duty.
That explanation makes sense.
So I cling to it.
The same way I have multiple times these past few weeks. It usually works.
Until it stops.
When Nina lifts her glass for another toast, I lift mine too. When Camille starts telling a story about the first time she met Nina’s fiancé and hated him on sight, I laugh so hard I nearly snort wine, even though I know the story already. I was there for the whole thing.
For a few minutes, it even works.
But later, while Nina is turned halfway in her chair, waving to someone she knows across the patio, I feel it again—that quiet, precise sensation of being watched. A finger sliding down my spine.
My smile stays in place.
By the time we pay the check, the night still feels too lively to end.
Nina is flushed with wine and happiness, Camille is still arguing that an engagement deserves at least one bad decision in its honor, and somehow that turns into all three of us walking toward the Boardwalk instead of heading home like reasonable adults.
“It’s early,” Camille says, which is a lie.
“It is not early,” I tell her, adjusting my clutch higher on my shoulder as we step away from the restaurant patio. “It is just not late enough for you to admit you’re tired.”
“I’m never tired.”
“That is medically impossible.”
Nina laughs, slipping her arm through mine for a few steps. “Come on. Just a little walk. The weather’s nice, I’m engaged, we look hot as hell. This is a historic evening.”
That part earns a laugh out of me despite myself.
The Boardwalk is busy in the easy, drifting way it always is on a Friday night.
Couples stroll past with hands linked. Teenagers move in noisy packs, stopping every few feet to take pictures or argue over snacks.
Music spills out from nearby bars and open storefronts in mismatched layers.
The ocean air rolls in cool against my bare shoulders, carrying salt, fried food, and the faint sweetness of funnel cake from somewhere farther down.
String lights and neon signs throw color across the wooden planks. My heels click against them in a rhythm that feels too sharp in my ears.
Nina and Camille keep talking, bouncing between wedding ideas, old stories, and whether Nina’s fiancé cried more than she did during the proposal. I answer where I should. I smile. I even mean it.
But that unsettled feeling hasn’t left me.
It trails beside me now, quieter than before but more stubborn somehow. A low, nagging awareness that keeps brushing the back of my neck.
I glance over my shoulder.
Nothing.
Just people moving in both directions. A man carrying a giant stuffed animal. Two women laughing over something on a phone screen. An older couple walking slowly hand in hand. No one out of place. No one paying me any particular attention.
“You’re doing it again,” Camille says.
I look back at her. “Doing what?”
“That thing where you scan the horizon like you’re in a spy movie.”
“I do not do that.”
“You absolutely do.”
Nina gives me a sideways look. “Still feeling weird?”
I hesitate just long enough for them both to notice.
“A little,” I admit. “Probably nothing.”
Camille hooks her arm through Nina’s free one. “See, this is why you need to date someone boring. An accountant. A dentist. A man whose greatest flaw is buying bad wine.”
I laugh under my breath. “That is a bizarre response to what I just said.”
“No, it isn’t. A boring man would fix your whole energy.”
“I don’t need my energy fixed.”
“Your energy is one long exhale and a color-coded planner.”
“That is deeply insulting.”
“It’s also true,” Nina says.
I shake my head, but I’m smiling.
The ocean stretches black beyond the rail, waves folding into darkness under a moonlit sky. Somewhere behind us, a burst of laughter rises from a passing group, then fades again. Everything looks normal. Everything feels normal, at least on the surface.
And still, I look again.
To the left. To the right. Behind us.
Nothing.
So I draw in a slow breath of cool salt air, square my shoulders, and keep walking with my friends beneath the lights, trying not to notice how every few steps, my eyes drift back to the crowd anyway.
By the time I finally say goodnight to Nina and Camille, my feet are throbbing and the uneasy feeling I’ve been trying to outrun all evening has worn a groove through my nerves.
I laugh one last time at something Camille says, hug them both, and step back from the curb as their Uber pulls away. They’re going in the same direction.
I step to my own Uber and get in. I wish I had driven instead of hiring a car.
I didn’t get quite as sloshed as Nina planned.
I had wine with dinner, spaced out over hours and balanced with enough food that I’m fine.
But the truth is, I don’t want to walk through a parking garage alone in these heels with this strange, prickling awareness crawling over me.
I don’t want the extra steps. I don’t want the delay.
But I also don’t want to be in the back of a car with a stranger.
I lean my head back against the seat as the city slips by in a wash of lights and reflections.
Storefronts. Traffic signals. Bars still spilling music and laughter onto sidewalks. Couples heading somewhere else. Groups of girls in dresses and high heels, loud and bright under the streetlights. A man smoking outside a corner store. Nothing remarkable. Nothing that should get under my skin.
Still, I look out the rear window twice.
The driver glances at me in the mirror once, then goes back to the road.
“You okay, miss?”
“Yes,” I say automatically. “Just tired.”
That is probably true. Tired enough that everything feels a little too sharp. Tired enough that I might be making more of this than it deserves.
But I don’t fully relax until the car turns onto my street.
My house sits on a quiet block with enough space between properties that it usually feels private without feeling isolated.
I picked it carefully. Good locks. Good sight lines.
Exterior cameras. Motion lights. A solid security system—one of the best I could find when I moved in.
Not because I’m dramatic, but because I’m practical.
Women should be practical.
Women in my line of work, especially.
I pay the driver, wait until he pulls away, then walk up the short front path with my keys already in hand.
That feeling hits me again before I even reach the porch.
Not a sound. Not a movement. Nothing I can point to.
Just that same sick little drag low in my stomach. That sense of attention landing on me from somewhere I can’t place.
My steps quicken.
I hate that they do, but they do.
I unlock the front door faster than usual, step inside, shut it hard behind me, and slide the deadbolt into place with a metallic snap that sounds much too loud in the quiet house. I arm the security system. The panel gives a soft confirmation tone. Perimeter secured. Motion sensors on.
Good.
Better.
Still not enough.
I stand there for a moment in the dark foyer, breathing. Listening.
Nothing.
No movement upstairs. No shift of floorboards. No sound except the faint hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen and the blood beating a little too hard in my ears.
I turn on the lamp by the entry table and set my clutch down.
I take off my light jacket, then pause and look down the hall toward the kitchen.
I know self-defense. Not casually. Not in the shallow way people talk about it over coffee after taking one seminar.
I trained because it seemed essential, and because it is.
It is smart for any woman who spends her professional life around violent offenders, and I have never been embarrassed by that logic.
I know how to strike, how to get free, how to use my body well.
I also own a gun, legally and properly stored, and I know how to use that, too.
All of that should make me feel better.
It does, mostly.
But something still feels off.
And I’m not one to ignore my instincts.
I move through the house with purpose, heading first to the small safe in my bedroom where I keep my weapon. I take it out and check it automatically, then keep it low at my side. I kick off my heels as I start a slow circuit through the second floor.
My bed is made. My reading lamp is off. The ensuite beyond is dark and empty. I turn on the lights quickly and check it anyway. Empty.
Guest room next, then my office. The office is neat, just like I left it—files stacked on the corner of the desk, lamp off, one legal pad angled slightly over another. The hall linen closet. The second bathroom.
Then the first floor.
Kitchen. Dining room. Living room.
Everything is in place.
The back door is still locked. The windows are closed and latched. The blinds are exactly as I left them. I check the mudroom, the pantry, the little half bath near the stairs. Nothing.
I tell myself I’m proving the obvious. That this is what happens when you spend too much time evaluating threat. Your mind and body get good at seeing it everywhere.
I exhale, long and slow, and some of the tightness finally starts to loosen.
Ridiculous, I think.
Actually ridiculous.
I laugh softly at myself, but there’s no real amusement in it.
I relax and head back upstairs to my bedroom, set the gun down carefully on the dresser, and my phone next to it.
“You’re being paranoid,” I mutter into the empty room.
And maybe I am.
Maybe tonight got to me more than I realized. The crowded restaurant, the Boardwalk, the sense of being watched with nothing to back it up but instinct and imagination. Maybe my body picked up a thread of tension somewhere and never let it go.
That happens.
Even professionals don’t exist outside their nervous systems.
I rub at the back of my neck, then look toward the bathroom.
A shower. That’s what I need. Hot water. Makeup off. Dress off. Hair up. Something to mark the end of the night and clear my head.
I go to my closet and pull out my favorite robe, snatch my phone off the bed, and walk into the bathroom. I hang the robe up and argue with myself for a minute.
Paranoid or not, I’m not stupid.
I go back out to the bedroom for the gun.
With it in my hand, I pivot and head back to the bathroom.
It happens so fast that my mind never catches up.
A force hits from behind and to the side, brutal and precise.
One second, I’m walking.
The next, I’m slammed off balance so hard the world tilts.
The gun is gone before I can even think of using it.
A hand—gloved, I think, or maybe only rough—locks around my wrist and wrenches my arm back.
Another clamps across my upper body with crushing strength, pinning my arms and lifting me just slightly before I can turn, before I can plant, before I can do a single useful thing with all the training I’ve spent years telling myself would matter if it ever had to.
Panic detonates instantly.
Fear. Panic.
Hot and total.
I try to twist. Drop weight. Drive an elbow backward. Stomp. Anything.
Nothing lands.
Nothing even comes close.
Whoever has me knows exactly what they’re doing. There’s no fumbling, no hesitation, no wildness. Just a fast, overwhelming shutdown of every point of leverage I could use.
I open my mouth to scream.
A cloth slams over my nose and mouth.
The smell hits first—sharp, chemical, wrong.
I jerk violently, thrashing against the arm holding me, trying to turn my face away, trying not to breathe, trying to bite through fabric I can’t even fully feel because the panic is too big now, swallowing everything else.
No.
No no no—
I can’t see him.
I still can’t see him.
My vision catches on stupid things instead. The edge of my bedroom doorway. The lamp on the dresser. My own bare foot sliding against hardwood as I fight for purchase and get none.
I try to hold my breath.
My lungs burn almost immediately from the force of the struggle alone. My body wants air. My body doesn’t care what else comes with it.
I buck hard, once, twice, trying to throw weight backward into whoever has me, but the grip only tightens. My wrist feels like it might snap. The arm around me bands tighter across my ribs and chest, locking me in place with terrifying ease.
I still haven’t gotten a hit in.
Not one.
That fact slices through me almost as sharply as the panic.
I am trained. I am armed.
I am in my own house with one of the best security systems money could buy.
And none of it matters.
My inhale breaks without permission.
The chemical floods in.
My head goes light almost at once.
Too fast.
Way too fast.
I make a broken sound against the cloth, half choke, half cry, and try again to wrench free. My limbs already feel wrong. Heavy and frantic at the same time. My thoughts scatter, then slam together again in useless bursts.
Move.
Fight.
Do something.
I can’t.
The room tips.
The doorway stretches strangely, then blurs.
My knees buckle, and I’m held upright anyway, pinned against a body I can’t see, can’t turn toward, can’t identify.
My heart hammers so hard it hurts.
Then even that starts to feel far away.
The last thing I register is how impossible this is, how unreal, how there should have been a warning I could use, a sound, a sign, something—
And then everything goes black.