Page 89 of Fate, Interrupted

Lights dim in the back first, then along the aisles, the glow softening from business-bright to the warmer light of evening. The register balances cleanly. Receipts stack, square, disappear into their place.

The familiarity of the routine may be reassuring, but the monotony of it is soul-crushing. It’s been sneaking up on me the past year, but for over a month, it’s come on strong. A restless energy balled up in dissatisfaction, keeping me on edge. I don’t spend too much time trying to make the correlation between my ennui and Silas Coulter arriving in my life.

By the time I grab my bag, the light outside has gone the dusky purple that arrives just before full dark. It’s a kinder light for the city, smoothing over the rough edges.

I turn the sign to Closed, step out onto the sidewalk, and double-check the lock.

The air has changed since this morning. Warmer now, but not heavy, a breeze moving through the street, carrying with it the layered rhythm of a city easing toward night. A car passes somewhere out of sight. Music drifts from the bar two blocks over and disappears. Laughter rises from somewhere ahead of me and fades as quickly, absorbed back into the general noise.

The kind of evening that usually makes me glad to be out in it.

I stand there a second longer than I need to, letting the breeze lift the hair off the back of my neck, and then I turn toward the alley.

The alley changes the evening immediately.

The light narrows. The sounds soften. The air cools slightly where the buildings close in on either side, and I brace for the smell that usually greets me here—stale, faintly sour, the smell of a city space that doesn’t get enough sun.

Tonight, clove cigarette smoke fills the air. I wrinkle my nose. It doesn’t sit well on an empty stomach.

I keep walking.

My car sits where it always does, angled enough that I can see the driver’s side clearly from where I am. I would have walked straight to it without breaking stride if the space felt right at this hour: predictable, mine for the ten seconds it takes to cross to it.

It doesn’t feel that way.

Two guys stand behind my car.

Close enough to the mouth of the alley to catch the last of the streetlight. One leans against the trunk with his arms crossed, broad through the chest and shoulders, filling the alley. Close-cropped hair, a heaviness to his jaw, the kind of face that doesn’t give much away. The other stands slightly apart, hands loose at his sides, watching the street behind me. Taller. Leaner. The one with the cigarette in his hand.

They aren’t talking to each other.

They’re watching me.

I don’t stop right away. I ease my pace instead, giving myself time to take them in without making it obvious. Late teens, early twenties—but nothing about them is harmless. They’ve positioned themselves deliberately. How they’ve placed themselves. The gap between them is precisely wide enough to require me to pass between them to reach my car, and that gap did not happen by accident.

The broad one pushes off the trunk as I get closer, narrowing the path enough that walking past without acknowledging them would be a choice I’d have to make deliberately.

I stop ten feet away.

“Evening,” I say.

The broad one tips his chin toward the street behind me. “You work over there?”

“I do.”

“We’ve seen you.”

Information they’ve already decided is relevant and want me to know they have it.

“It’s a small neighborhood,” I say, adjusting my bag on my shoulder.

“Smaller than people think,” the tall one says.

His voice is quieter than the first one’s, but it carries more weight. I look at him more closely. There’s a scar along his jawline, thin and old. He brings the clove cigarette to his mouth and takes a lazy drag. His other hand stays still at his side.

That stillness is the more frightening thing.

“You’ve been spending time with someone,” he says.