Page 21 of Hunt Me, Daddy

Or someone had removed him.

I didn’t like that thought.

I liked it even less because it felt right.

I left the café after forty minutes, which was earlier than usual but not enough to look like a reaction. My laptop went into my bag, coffee into the trash, phone into my coat pocket with the camera angled outward because I believed in being prepared and also because men who followed women tended not to expect the women to record them without turning around.

Outside, Boston was bright and cold. People moved around me in streams, all coats and headphones and coffee cups, their faces arranged into the blank forward-facing determination of people trying not to acknowledge they were part of a crowd.

I walked home a different way. I didn’t take any sudden turns nor did I sprint through alleys. I took one additional block, slowed at one window display full of antique lamps, crossed at the next light instead of the first, then stopped at a pharmacy I did not need. In the dark glass of the door, I watched the sidewalk behind me. There wasn’t any obvious tail following me, but still, the back of my neck prickled.

“Fantastic,” I muttered under my breath. “Love that.”

A woman coming out of the pharmacy gave me a quick, worried glance. I smiled politely, which probably made it worse.

By the time I reached my building, I felt even more uneasy because the light above the front entrance was working.

I stopped on the sidewalk, but not for too long. Stopping too long would be obvious to anyone watching. I slowed as if checking my phone, thumb moving across the black screen without unlocking it.

That light had been out for nine months.

I had complained about it twice. Mrs. Alvarez on the second floor had complained four times because she believed in civic processes and also because she liked collecting reasons to yell at our super. The super had nodded, sighed, said he’d get to it, and then proceeded to get to absolutely nothing.

Now the bulb glowed clean and bright in the daylight, useless but functional. It had a new casing too.

My eyes moved without my head following.

The exterior security camera above the door had been adjusted too. The angle, which had been wrong for as long as I had lived here, now covered the shallow recess beside the entrance and most of the top step. The blind spot by the call box had narrowed to almost nothing.

The blind spot I had documented.

The blind spot the building management company had ignored for two years.

My stomach went cold. I moved up the steps, keys already in hand, and let myself inside with the practiced ease of someone who was absolutely not standing on the edge of a quiet little panic attack.

The lobby smelled like lemon-scented cleaner. The tile was cracked near the elevator. Someone had taped a handwritten note above the mailboxes asking whoever kept stealing packages to ‘please stop being a piece of shit,’ which was the most effective community outreach I had seen all year.

I checked my mailbox because routine mattered.

It was empty.

I checked the stairwell mirror because mirrors were useful.

There was no one behind me.

I went up to the fourth floor, slipped into my apartment, and locked the door. Then I checked the lock. Then I told myself not to be ridiculous and checked it again because self-awareness was nice, but deadbolts were better.

My apartment was clear.

I knew that before I finished the sweep, but I did the sweep anyway. Bathroom. Closet. Under the bed. Behind the shower curtain, which was stupid in theory and mandatory in practice. Fire escape window. Kitchen cabinets. The removable panel under the sink. Every camera feed. Every sensor. Every physical tell I had set.

Nothing.

No entry.

No disturbance.

No human presence.