My stomach plummets. The rigid structure of my life wavers. Danger doesn’t look like chaotic thugs with spray paint. Danger looks like a man in a gold watch with military posture.
"The building is empty," I say, my voice dropping its sassy lilt. The defensive bite is gone. This is a fact-finding mission now. "It's been empty for two years."
"Nothing is ever completely empty."
He takes half a step forward.
The three-foot buffer disappears. His scent intensifies, drowning out the exhaust and the damp concrete. He is too close. He is too large.
My spine stiffens. "If you take another step, I'm pressing the panic button on this fob. It's connected to an alarm inside the clinic that will wake up half the neighborhood."
It’s a bluff. The fob only honks my horn a block away.
He knows it’s a bluff.
A dangerous amusement flickers deep in his eyes. It is there and gone in a flash, swallowed by the cold assessment.
"You shouldn't bluff a man who knows exactly how your security system is wired."
The statement drops between us like an anvil.
My mouth parts. The sharp comeback dies on my tongue.
He knows my security system. He knows my schedule. He came to watch the gutted ruin next door, and instead, he has been mapping my life.
"Who are you?" The question is a demand. The fear tries to choke it, but my anger pushes it out. I refuse to be collateral damage again. I refuse to be a pawn for the men who burn down buildings in the night.
He looks at me. Really looks at me.
The assessment is gone. The evaluation is over. The look he gives me now strips the paint off the walls. It is ruin. The shift is so sudden, so absolute that my knees almost buckle.
He was doing a job. He was watching a target.
Then I stepped out onto the sidewalk and didn't run.
The job is gone. The target is irrelevant. The focus of a man built for war, honed over decades, has snapped onto me.
"Nico."
The name is a low rumble in his chest.
"Nico what?" I demand, my grip on the keys turning white-hot with tension.
The watch gleams as he slides his hands into the pockets of his jacket.
"Just Nico for now. And you need to go home, Priya."
My name on his lips is a violation. It is an intimacy I did not grant.
"How do you know my name?"
"I know a lot of things." He steps back. The loss of his proximity is a physical shock. The cold Chicago wind rushes back in to fill the space he leaves behind. "Lock your car doors. Take the Stevenson Expressway. Don’t take the surface streets tonight."
He is giving me orders.
My sassy indignation flares right back up. "I take the route I want to take. You don't get to lurk in a doorway, stalk my clinic, and then play traffic cop."
Nico stops. He turns back.
