Chapter 1 #2
He was already standing closer than you’d expect for strangers.
Faded green jacket, black lettering over one pocket.
Mechanic’s gear, but clean enough to suggest he didn’t actually work on engines anymore.
The jeans were stained at the knees and thighs, but not the hands.
His shoes were loafers—out of place, but he wore them like they’d been forced on him, maybe as part of some dress code he didn’t believe in.
I shifted a fraction to the side, enough to mark a boundary without inviting conversation.
He didn’t care about boundaries. His shoulder brushed mine, casual and deliberate all at once, and I felt his eyes sweep down my arm to where my hand hung loose at my side. He wore cologne strong enough to cover up whatever the jacket couldn’t. I could taste it when I inhaled.
The elevator started its descent. The floor indicator blinked six, five, four.
I felt him shift, the heat of his body moving closer.
His hand dropped to his hip, thumb hooked into the belt loop, then it crept out and hovered at the seam of my jeans.
Not touching, but close enough to make his intention clear.
My skin went cold, and then everything inside me went very still. Not fear. Not surprise. More like the sensation of seeing a spider crawl up the wall in a room you’ve already swept twice.
I said nothing.
He edged in closer, using the movement of the elevator as an excuse. His breath hit the side of my face, thick and slow. “You’re pretty tall for a chick,” he said, voice slurred just a hair. “You play basketball or something?”
I didn’t bother answering. The doors weren’t going to open in time.
His hand drifted, the back of his knuckles grazing the outer edge of my thigh. I let my body go limp for a second, enough to throw him off, then used my elbow to pin his wrist to the wall. I rotated my body, stepped into his space, and felt him brace in surprise.
His lips split in a dumb smile. “Whoa, hey—”
That’s when I snapped his pinky back at the first joint. Not a lot—just a warning, the kind of move that tells you I know exactly how much force to use and what happens if I decide to keep going.
He gasped, the noise guttural and high. “Jesus—what the fuck?”
I stared at him, dead on. “Don’t touch people you don’t know.” I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to.
He yanked his hand back, cradling it against his chest, eyes wet. The smell of his aftershave turned sharper, like citrus left too long in the sun.
The elevator hit three, then two. I could feel the adrenaline moving through me in a clean, clinical line. He pressed himself as far into the corner as the cab would allow, mumbling apologies that barely made it past his lips.
When the doors opened, he bolted out, practically stumbling over his own feet. I waited a beat, let the doors close again, then hit the L for lobby one more time.
I watched the numbers drop, the silence finally settling in.
When I stepped out into the lobby, the woman behind the glass was on the phone. She glanced up, saw me, and I watched her clock every detail: the cut above my eyebrow from an old fight, the set of my mouth, the way I carried my jacket draped like a flag over my shoulder.
She said nothing.
I left the building, the taste of metal and citrus still in my mouth.
Las Vegas hit me like a punch the second I cleared the double doors.
Heat radiated off the concrete so hard it made the air ripple, and the whole street outside was a composite assault—sunlight white enough to blind, engines and bass in counterpoint, the stutter of a pedestrian signal somewhere I couldn’t see.
Two blocks over, the Strip’s pulse shook the buildings, low-frequency and endless.
I paused at the steps, jacket swinging from my hand, and let it all crash in.
I’d been sitting in silence for an hour, and now every atom out here seemed to want a piece of me.
A delivery van took a corner too tight, and its horn bled into the sound of some kid’s Bluetooth speaker, the rhythm cutting through the din for two beats before getting swallowed up again.
I blinked hard, my vision trying to recalibrate.
A woman in a pantsuit and blocky heels slipped past, eyes front, cell phone leveled like a shield.
A man in a hotel uniform trailed her, walking fast but looking at his feet.
No one made eye contact, not with me, not with anyone.
I zipped my jacket to the collar, the teeth of the zipper catching once on the old scar at my jaw, and felt the weight of it lock into place over my sternum.
The familiar pressure steadied my hands.
I watched my own shadow stretch and contract on the sidewalk.
The tattoos on my arms poked out from my sleeves, the ink gone slate-gray in this kind of sun.
Every line on my body felt like it was drawn by a different person, someone who needed to claim space before they could even think about defending it.
I started walking, matching my stride to the city’s pace, deliberate but not fast. The sidewalk here was battered, gum-scabbed, and hemmed in by metal bollards, forcing pedestrians into a stream that moved with all the grace of a cattle chute.
I adjusted, kept my elbows in, and tracked the flow.
Every half-second, I scanned for danger—just a reflex, but today it was dialed up to eleven.
A convertible with the top down rolled past, music blasting. The guy driving had his seat too far back and one arm crooked over the steering wheel, his mouth moving to the lyrics. The woman riding shotgun had her eyes closed, head tilted to the sun like she was trying to burn something out of her.
Two construction workers in orange vests wolf-whistled at the next girl in line.
She ignored them and kept moving, but I watched her shoulders bunch up as she did, like she expected the next comment to be worse.
I watched the workers, too, the way their heads turned in tandem, predatory.
I memorized their faces even though I knew I wouldn’t see them again.
That was my habit now, post-session. Build a list of threats, track them, and grade the danger. The therapist would have said something about my “hypervigilance.” I thought of it as insurance.
After a block, the air shifted. The stink of fry grease from a chain restaurant’s vent mixed with exhaust and whatever cheap perfume someone upwind was wearing.
A couple passed me, arms locked, her laughter slicing through traffic noise.
I caught a snatch of their conversation—an argument about who owed what to whom, but with a practiced kind of affection that said it wasn’t going anywhere.
I kept walking.
I knew before I even got to the curb that I’d have to do something tonight.
There was a pull inside my chest, a hollow that had filled with tears in the therapist’s office and now filled with something sharper, harder.
The kind of focus that burned off the edges and left nothing but the target.
I could almost see the outline of the city flatten into sectors, each one with its own pulse, its own set of rules and predators.
I stopped at a crosswalk, the signal red, and looked up.
The glass facades above caught the afternoon sun and threw it back in jagged beams, dazzling and ugly.
I watched a tourist in cargo shorts fumble with a city map, his wife already a dozen steps ahead.
I wondered how many times a day they got separated, how long it would take him to notice she was gone for real.
The light changed, and I followed the crowd across. There was a click in my knee—old injury, never fixed—but I didn’t let it show. The club didn’t respect weakness, and I didn’t, either.
At the end of the block, I caught my reflection in a storefront.
The glass was warped, so my face came back to me in slivers: jawline, the notch of scar, eyes that were darker than they used to be.
I didn’t look like someone who cried in therapy, or someone who would ever let anyone see it.
I looked like a bouncer at the gates of hell.
I smiled at the thought, then lost the smile just as quick.
Tonight, I would find someone. Someone who had it coming. Someone who thought the world would never see them for what they were. That was the work I had left, the only thing that made the rest of it make sense. Someone had to die.