Page 7 of The Fall Risk

“Good Lord, it’s only been five minutes—”

“I only needed two.”

I rolled my eyes.

My best friend was a private investigator. Like, actually. And a very good one. I hired her two years ago when all this started. She was also a firearms instructor who taught self-defense classes. She knew mixed martial arts and had a touch of unbridled rage that needed an outlet the way working dogs needed jobs to make them tired.

She always said it should have been her that George got fixated on. She could have handled it. She would have looked forward to it, a reason to kill a man, her favorite thing.

If only stalkers were transferable.

We sat in silence for a moment.

“You know what’s just absolutely wild?” I said. “The second I realized the stairs were gone, it was the safest I’ve felt in a year.”

“Yeah, I could see that,” she said, softer now.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“This is not what I thought today was going to be like,” I said tiredly.

“What did you think it was going to be like?”

“I don’t know. I thought there’d be stairs?”

She scoffed.

“I guess I’m missing Valentine’s Day on Sunday,” I mumbled.

“Eh, it’s stupid anyway.”

“Not stupid to me.”

The only times I felt truly safe going out these days were when I was with Izzy’s friend group. A posse of female ex-military, active police who liked to go to brunch. “I wanted a mimosa,” I moaned.

No. What I wanted was to feel normal again.

I wanted to wander a Target, walk alone on the beach. Go on dates.

The isolation was the worst part. Well, the second worst part. The first was the afraid for my life at all times thing. But I used to be social. I used to work in an office with coworkers, and we’d go out for drinks, and I’d go on vacations and have lunches with people.

Now I didn’t. Now I worked from home. It was safer. Less risk than having a parking garage to walk through to get to an office, a place of business that anyone could go into at any time, a routine that could be tracked and followed.

Now, there were weeks that I didn’t even leave the house. Entire periods of time where it was just me in the four walls of my apartment, alone, because going to a bar or a restaurant or even the nail salon was too much exposure.

I never felt safe.

I never slept well.

This one sick, twisted human had changed every aspect of my life.

Sometimes it felt like he had already killed me. A part of me.

And he made me weird.

He made me the kind of person who carried around bear spray, so when I did meet a cute guy, he’d be like, “Wow, bear spray, huh?” And then I’d bring up my gun.

God.