Chapter 7
DANE
The engine growls to life, and I pull into the empty street, Manhattan's lights smearing across my windshield like running mascara. I check my watch to double check—a habit from deployment I can't shake. As if time matters right now. As if anything does.
I laugh at myself, the sound hollow in the confined space. What did I expect? That she'd bat those green eyes and say, "Why yes, mysterious stranger who beat three men unconscious, I'd love to have dinner with you"? Christ.
The Charger hugs a corner too fast, tires protesting. There's comfort in the machine's response—predictable, reliable. Unlike people. Unlike me, apparently, losing my goddamn mind over some bartender with sad eyes.
I've taken down cartel enforcers, tracked cheating billionaires through five countries, and stared down the barrels of guns held by men who'd kill their own mothers. Yet… I'm thrown by a simple rejection from a woman I barely know.
"Pathetic," I mutter, accelerating through a yellow light.
The city at midnight is a beast feeding on itself: drunks stumbling into cabs, dealers making corner exchanges, couples fighting or fucking against brick walls. Human entropy in action. We're all just broken pieces colliding, pretending we're whole.
I check my watch again. Twelve minutes since I walked out of the bar. Twelve minutes of wrestling the urge to turn around.
My father once told me, "Wolfe men don't chase women who run from them." One of the few true things that ever came out of his mouth. Or is it?
I take the long way home, letting the night air blast through my cracked window. It smells like rain and exhaust—like reality. Whatever fantasy I'd built about Lila Marks deserves to die in that cold wind.
I am Dane fucking Wolfe. I don't need green eyes and freckles and that slight rasp in her voice when she says my name.
Tomorrow, I'll be smarter. Tomorrow, I'll be who I've always been.
Alone.
I check my watch again, going around another block. I tell myself I'm just heading home after driving around for an hour. Just happens to be through this neighborhood. Just happens to be at 12:58 a.m.
Just happens to be that I park across from The Old Haunt.
"This is fucked up," I mutter, killing the engine but keeping my hands on the wheel like it might save me from myself. Rain starts pattering against the windshield, distorting the bar's neon sign into bleeding colors.
I'm not waiting for her. I'm not following her. I'm a private investigator taking a goddamn break between surveillance shifts. That's the story I'm selling myself as I check my watch for the hundredth time.
1:02 a.m.
The door opens. Her silhouette appears in the threshold—small, hunched against the rain.
She tugs her jacket tighter, phone already out, probably calling an Uber.
Some primal part of me wants to march over there, offer her a ride again.
The sane part knows that's exactly how restraining orders happen.
She already said no , Dane. What the fuck are you doing?
I sink lower in my seat, disgusted with myself. What is this, high school? Grown men don't stake out women who've made their disinterest clear.
And yet… she's alone, at the mercy or any asshole who decided she fits his type.
Her Uber arrives—Toyota Camry, white, New York plates. I memorize the numbers automatically. Professional habit. Not obsession.
I give the Uber a thirty-second head start before pulling out, keeping three car lengths behind. I already know where we're going. I've also memorized her address. Rain makes following easier—everyone's just headlights and brake lights through the wet glass.
Funny how life circles back on itself. Here I am, trailing someone through New York at night—exactly what I'm paid to do. Except nobody's paying me to follow Lila Marks. Nobody's asking for evidence of anything.
What am I even looking for? Proof she lives where I already know she lives? Confirmation she's exactly who she appears to be?
Or maybe the truth is simpler. Maybe I'm drawn to broken things. Maybe I recognized something in those green eyes.
The Uber stops outside her building. She steps out, hurries inside without looking back. I sit in my idling car, rain drumming overhead, wondering what kind of man I've become.
Not my father's son. But something not entirely better.
The rain stops abruptly, like someone flipped a cosmic switch.
My windshield clears, giving me a perfect view of her window—dim light glowing from behind cheap curtains.
I imagine her peeling off that work shirt, damp with beer and sweat from the bar.
Stepping out of her jeans. Her pale skin freckled everywhere, not just her face.
My mind paints her slipping into the shower, water tracing every curve, auburn hair darkening under the spray.
"Jesus Christ," I mutter, adjusting myself. My cock strains against my jeans—apparently having no moral qualms about this situation.
I need to move. Need to do something besides sit here thinking about a woman who rejected me while my dick betrays every ethical boundary I pretend to have.
I exit the Charger, the night air cool against my face. Across the street, an abandoned commercial building slouches against the skyline—brick facade crumbling, windows either boarded or broken. Six stories, probably from the 1920s, when this neighborhood actually mattered to someone.
Perfect.
I circle the structure, keeping to shadows from habit. The city's architecture tells stories to those who know how to read it. This one's saying: forgotten, dangerous, useful. My kind of place.
A rusted fire escape clings to the south wall. I test the lowest rung—it holds. The climb is easy, methodical. One floor, two, then the roof. Gravel crunches beneath my boots as I survey my new vantage point.
From here, I can see half the block—including her apartment. Fifth floor, first window from the right. I can make out shapes through the glass: a small table, the edge of a bookshelf, movement that must be her.
This isn't surveillance. It's worse.
I pace the rooftop, cataloging exits, checking sight lines, mentally mapping the building below me. Part of me knows this is just busywork—something to justify why I'm really here. The other part... has plans.
Manhattan spreads before me like a circuit board, a million connections I'll never understand. Somewhere out there, Brian Langford might be preying on another student. Somewhere, his wife sleeps alone, unaware.
Everyone has secrets. Everyone has patterns.
I pull out my phone and snap several photos of the building's layout, the surrounding streets, the positions of a few security cameras on nearby storefronts.
Not for a case. Not for a client.
For her.
I'm up here playing the role I know too well—the watcher. The planner. The ghost who knows too much about strangers.
My mind kicks into operational mode—the same calculations I made in battlefield, in a dozen shitty spy nests across the globe. Only this time, it's not a high-value target or a cheating spouse.
It's Lila.
"You need a fucking therapist, Wolfe," I mutter, but my brain's already running the inventory.
Directional microphone—I've got a Takstar SGC-598 in my trunk that could pick up conversations through her window from here. Pair it with my night vision monocular, I'd have eyes and ears. Simple. Effective.
Completely fucked up.
I pace the rooftop, gravel crunching under my boots like bones.
This building has line of sight, structural integrity, minimal foot traffic.
It's perfect. I could plant a MURS radio transceiver near her window—small enough to look like a cable box, strong enough to transmit clear audio to this rooftop.
I could watch her eat breakfast. Hear her sing in the shower. Know if she cries herself to sleep.
The thought of her crying twists something inside me. I've seen men die and felt a lot less than this.
"What the fuck is wrong with me?" I whisper to the night, but the city doesn't answer. Cities never do. They just watch, like me, collecting secrets no one asked for.
I sit on the edge of the roof, legs dangling over six stories of darkness, and pull out my phone again.
I could order the few spare items and upgraded gadgets I need right now.
One-day shipping. By tomorrow night, I'd know her favorite songs, how she talks to herself when she thinks no one's listening.
I thumb through listing, adding items: RF detector to sweep for competing surveillance, mobile hotspot to create a secure connection, a new weatherproof case for the equipment, just in case.
This isn't protection. It's not even professional curiosity. It's something darker, something that lived in my father, something I swore I'd never become.
My finger hovers over "Proceed to checkout."
One tap, and I cross a line I can't uncross.
I take the final step, tap the button, and the rush hits me like a drug. It feels exhilarating, intoxicating, yet it’s laced with a heavy dose of guilt. A high from the thrill of crossing that line, followed by the weight of knowing I’m spiraling into something I shouldn't.
I let out a sharp breath, staring at the screen like it just handed me a loaded gun.
Obsession is a strong word—stronger than I ever thought I'd apply to myself. I’ve spent my life in control, tracking down bad people and dismantling their schemes.
Yet here I am, becoming the monster I vowed to hunt.
My heart races, each beat drumming a different narrative in my head: Lila's laughter at the bar, her tentative smile when she thought no one was watching.
The way her green eyes shimmered with something unspoken when she caught me staring.
All those moments stack up like dominoes, each one pushing me closer to this reckless decision.
“What the hell am I doing?” I mutter into the night air. The wind whips around me, carrying my doubts away but leaving an undercurrent of excitement thrumming in my veins.
I lean back on my hands, feet still dangling over the edge of the rooftop. The city hums below—voices blend into a murmur that almost soothes my chaotic thoughts. I picture Lila tucked away in her apartment, maybe studying or writing something for class, her freckled face furrowed in concentration.
But then there’s that other image: her cowering against that frat boy’s grip—the fear etched across her features. Something inside me snaps at the thought.
“You’re not saving her,” I whisper harshly to myself. “You’re stalking her.” But deep down, I know it feels more like protecting and a twisted sense of justice sparks inside me.
I stand up abruptly and pace along the rooftop's edge again, hands running through my hair as frustration mounts. This isn’t who I am. It can’t be! But with every calculated risk I've taken tonight, every justification I've crafted for this madness, it becomes harder to convince myself otherwise.
I take a deep breath and pull out my phone again. The order confirmation glows on the screen, evidence of what I'm becoming. My gut twists with shame as exhilaration courses through me once more.
Stuffing my phone back in my pocket, adrenaline races through my veins like liquid fire. There's a line in the sand, and I've just sprinted across it with middle fingers raised.
I could cancel the order. Call this whole thing off. Walk back from this ledge—figurately and literally. Go back to being the good guy with a dark past instead of the creep with surveillance equipment and a hard-on for a bartender who wants nothing to do with me.
But who the fuck am I kidding?
"What's the point?" I whisper into the wind, the words carried away like ashes. "This is no simple infatuation. I'm… I'm really obsessed with Lila Marks."
The admission lands like a punch to the gut, but there's relief in it too. The kind that comes when you finally stop fighting gravity and just fucking fall.
People like to pretend we're civilized creatures, evolved beyond our animal instincts. But that's the great cosmic joke. We're all just predators with credit cards and smartphones, hunting different prey.
Mine has auburn hair and green eyes that hold secrets I need to unravel like they're the goddamn meaning of life itself.
I laugh, a hollow sound that echoes across the rooftop. Yep, I've become exactly what I hunt. The irony isn't lost on me.
The wind whips around me, cold against my face, but I barely feel it. My thumb hovers over my phone screen for a second before I give in to the inevitable. The weight of my decision settles in my gut like lead, but I push through it anyway.
I pull up Milo's contact and type quickly, fingers moving with precision despite the chill:
Dane: Find out all you can about Lila Marks. Possible NYU student. Bartender at The Old Haunt.
I stare at the message for a moment, watching the little dots appear as Milo reads it instantly. Of course he's awake at this ungodly hour. Guy probably mainlines caffeine instead of blood.
There's a twisted comfort in committing to this path. No more wrestling with my conscience, no more pretending I'm better than I am. The line between protector and stalker blurs so easily when you've been trained to hunt.