Chapter 8 Jillian
JILLIAN
“What do you want from me? Why don’t you run from me? / What are you wondering? What do you know? / Why aren’t you scared of me? Why do you care for me? / When we all fall asleep, where do we go?”
— “bury a friend” by Billie Eilish
For obvious reasons, I don’t sleep.
I sit on the floor with my back against the door until my tailbone goes numb, then I move to the couch with every light in the apartment blazing.
I check the deadbolt. I check the windows.
I check the closets, the bathroom, behind the shower curtain.
I even check under the bed like a kid afraid of monsters, except my monster was real and he licked my neck and told me he was sent to kill me.
When the moon is almost done with its trek across the night sky, I give up on sleep entirely and take a scalding shower. I scrub my neck where the Masked Man’s tongue was until my skin is raw and pink, but even then, I still feel him there.
Okay. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go to the police.
I don’t need to be a crime reporter to see that as the clear next step.
This case is open-and-shut, really. After all, I have evidence aplenty.
I have a bite mark on my earlobe that’s already bruising purple.
I have a breaker box that was tampered with.
I have a deadbolt that was picked. So, with all that in hand, I’ll walk into the precinct on West 82nd, sit down across from a detective, and I’ll tell them everything.
They’ll take my statement and open a case and assign someone to look into it, and I’ll have done the right thing.
By the time I leave for work, I know with a sinking feeling in my gut that that’s exactly what I can’t do it.
There are practical reasons for this, and I rehearse them on the subway.
If I report a masked intruder who claimed to be connected to the Lazarevs, a few things will happen.
Doug will pull me off the story for my own safety, which means months of work and a missing source go down the drain.
And the cops will open an investigation, which tips off the Lazarevs that I’m being specifically targeted, which blows whatever access I still have.
Both of which mean the story dies and the Lazarevs get to keep doing all the heinous things they’ve been doing.
But that’s not the real reason.
The real reason is that something awoke in me on that floor last night. Not The Fear—I’ve been afraid for five years and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. This was different.
When I knelt in front of him, laced my fingers behind my head and pressed my forehead to the wall and felt his heat behind me and smelled cinnamon and sandalwood and heard that low, commanding rasp tell me I was a good girl—
I felt something.
I felt present. I was there, fully there, not floating above myself watching it happen to someone else.
That terrifies me far more than the Masked Man ever could. Because if I tell someone, they’ll want to know why I didn’t fight harder. And I don’t have answers I’m willing to give.
So I walk into the newsroom before anyone else has arrived, drop my bag at my desk, and open my laptop.
I have work to do.
I spend most of the day going over everything I’ve assembled thus far on my Lazarev story.
I’ve got a renewed sense of energy now, as I pore over everything public I can find on Lazarev Global.
Corporate registrations, property transfers, building permits, tax liens, anything with a name or a signature attached.
Doug told me to build the story from the bottom up, and that’s what I’m going to do, masked psychopath or no masked psychopath.
Little by little, the newsroom fills up around me. Weston drops into his chair at 9:15, gives me a nod, and puts on his massive over-ear headphones. Cheryl from Metro pings me on Slack to ask if I want to grab lunch, but I don’t respond.
By one P.M. I’ve got a decent map of the Lazarev corporate structure spread across dozens of browser tabs and a legal pad full of scribbles.
There isn’t anything like a smoking gun yet, but neither are they squeaky clean.
It’s a Byzantine maze of holding companies nested inside holding companies, most of them registered in Delaware or Wyoming, plus a few in the Caymans.
This sort of complexity screams we are definitely hiding things to anyone who’s ever read a financial filing.
What exactly they’re hiding remains unclear.
I keep going until the sun is almost down. That’s when I check the time and realize I need to move.
I grab my bag, my recorder, and a fresh notebook and head out.
I’ve got a meeting with Giovanni Ochoa. We set this up weeks ago, back when he was still returning my messages.
The plan was always to meet in person, somewhere neutral where he’d feel safe.
He picked the spot: a diner on Tenth Avenue in the low Forties, one of those old chrome-and-vinyl places that somehow hasn’t been turned into a Sweetgreen yet.
Although that was before he vanished.
I’m going anyway, if only on the off chance he shows up. And on the more likely chance he doesn’t, at least I can say I did my job.
The diner is half-full when I walk in. A couple of construction guys munch burgers at the counter and an older woman with a newspaper nurses a cup of coffee in the booth by the window. I pick a booth with a clear sightline to the door, sit down, and order a black coffee.
As I wait, I check my phone. No messages from Ochoa. I pull up our Signal thread and scroll through it. The last message is mine: Hey, just confirming we’re still on for Tuesday at five. Same spot. Let me know.
That was three days ago. I wonder if he was even alive when it was sent, or if the Lazarev meat grinder had already chewed him up and spit him out.
I sip my coffee and wait. Five P.M. comes and goes. Six does the same. By seven, I admit the obvious: He’s not coming.
I knew that before I sat down, if I’m honest. People who want to blow the whistle don’t go dark for days and then show up right on schedule at a diner on Tenth Avenue. They either come early because they’re nervous, or they don’t come at all. Giovanni Ochoa is the latter.
I put a twenty on the table and gather my stuff. The coffee’s sitting heavy in my stomach and my neck hurts from hunching over my laptop all morning. I push through the diner’s glass door and stand on the sidewalk for a second, squinting in the midday sun.
He was scared the last time we talked. Something had spooked him, something beyond what he already told me: that the unidentified bones of a middle-aged female had been found at a construction site in Astoria, and that there might be some possible connection to the Lazarev family.
Now, he’s gone.
But the sun is setting and an uneasy feeling is stealing over me.
I want to be home, with the door firmly shut and several blankets mummifying me on the couch.
So I shove my hands in my jacket pockets and start the walk back to my apartment at a fast speed.
The sidewalk is crowded with the usual evening mix of commuters and tourists, but none of that makes me feel any less exposed.
Every face that passes could be his. How would I know?
I swing by my neighborhood coffee shop on the way home.
I want to caffeinate myself and keep working for a while, and this place makes a killer chai latte.
There’s a short queue at the counter, so while I wait, I pull out my phone and call Rae, since I haven’t spoken to her since we exchanged brief texts on her birthday last week.
She picks up on the second ring. “Hey! I was literally just thinking about you.”
“Good things, I hope.”
“Always. What’s up? You sound tired.”
“So do you, actually.”
“You go first,” she suggests.
“No, you. I’m sick of my own drama.”
“No, you.”
“No, you!”
“Jillian Rose—”
“Oh, God, not the middle name—”
“—I, Rae Everett, hereby demand that you tell me what’s got you sounding so beat.”
I sigh as I shuffle forward in line. “Fine. You win. It’s been a weird couple of days.”
“Weird in what sense?”
“I mean, every sense, really,” I say with a forced laugh. “But I’m mostly talking about the fact that—”
“Hey,” a blunt, bored voice breaks in, “are you Jillian?”
I blink and look up to realize that everyone in line is staring at me as the barista holds out a cup in my direction. “Uh, yeah…?” I say. “Sorry, Rae, hold on a sec.” I lower the phone and look around. “But that’s not mine.”
“Chai latte with oat milk and a shot of vanilla?” the barista asks. She’s holding out a cup with my exact order written on the side in black marker.
“Uh, yes,” I admit, “but I didn’t order yet.”
She repeats the order and waggles the cup at me. “Chai latte, oat milk, vanilla shot. For Jillian.”
“Yes, I heard you the first time, and yes, that’s me, and yes, that’s what I was going to order, but— Look, I’m sorry, I’ve had a really long day and I’m not quite sure what’s happening right now.”
“You’re at a coffee shop and I’m giving you your coffee, is what’s happening,” Miss Attitude informs me. She plunks it on the counter hard enough that a little dribble of brown liquid goes trickling over the lip. I start to riffle through my purse, but she shakes her head. “Already paid for.”
“I remain highly confused.”
The barista shrugs, exasperated. “Look, lady, some guy came in and paid for it like ten minutes ago. Said you’d be coming in, described you and everything.” She’s already looking past me to the next customer.
“Jill?” Rae’s voice in my ear. “You still there?”
“Yeah,” I manage. “Hold on.”
I pick up the cup. It’s warm. I turn around and scan the shop. There’s a guy in a beanie on his laptop, two women sharing a scone, a mom wrestling a toddler into a high chair. Nobody is looking at me and none of them seem out of place.
But he’s here. Or he was.
My fingers tighten around the cup until the cardboard sleeve crumples. My pulse picks up fast and hard. I’m drowning in that prickly, animal awareness of being observed, the same feeling from the R train yesterday morning, except now it comes with context.
Now, I know exactly who’s on the other end of it.
I take a step toward the door and peer out through the glass. No one out there looks like a masked stalker, either.
My throat is dry. I look down at the cup in my hand. He knew my order. Not just the drink, but the milk and the extra shot. I don’t know how he knows, but he fucking knows.
I bring the cup to my nose and sniff it, then immediately feel stupid. It smells like chai. What was I expecting, arsenic? Rat poison? A love potion?
But I don’t drink it. I set it back on the counter.
“Jillian.” Rae again, more insistent now. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Sorry. Got distracted. The barista mixed up an order, that’s all.”
“Oh. Okay. You were saying something? Before?”
Yeah, I was. I was about to tell her everything. The man on the train, the break-in, the mask, the gun, the tongue on my neck, the confession that I broke into your apartment to kill you. All of it was right there, ready to spill.
But he’s watching me.
“It’s nothing,” I say to Rae. “Just work stuff. I’ll call you back later, okay?”
I hang up, leave the chai on the counter, and walk out of the shop empty-handed. The thought of drinking cinnamon-flavored anything doesn’t sit well with me right now.
I keep my keys sticking out between my fisted fingers like I’m Wolverine as I stride home as fast as I possibly can.
My eyes never stop moving. I track every pigeon, pedestrian, and shadow that comes anywhere near me.
I brush past my doorman without my usual hello, then take the stairs instead of the elevator because at least in the stairwell I can hear footsteps.
My calves burn by the time I reach the top.
I stop at my door and inspect the lock. It looks intact. I turn the key, push the door open, and step inside.
One step. That’s all I get.
Then I see that the living room window is open. Six inches of Manhattan’s finest evening air, pouring through the gap, rustling the curtain.
I did not leave that window open. I never leave that window open. Not ever, but especially not after last night.
My brain is running through options. Leave. Go downstairs. Call Rae. Call 911. Do literally anything other than stand here like an idiot in a horror movie. But my legs aren’t cooperating. They’ve gone heavy and wooden, rooted to the floor.
Then, from right behind me, close enough that I feel the warmth of it on the back of my neck, comes a man’s voice:
“Jillian.”