The footsteps behind me slow too.
That’s when it stops being nothing.
My breath catches, just for a second, and I turn, my movements careful, controlled, like I’m not sure what I’m going to see but I’m hoping it’s something easy to explain.
The street behind me looks empty again. Streetlight. Parked cars. Shadows stretching longer than they should. No one.
My brow furrows. That doesn’t make sense. I know what I heard. I stand there for a second longer than I should, my chest rising and falling a little faster now, my mind trying to make it fit into something logical. Maybe they turned a corner. Maybe they crossed the street.
Maybe I–
“Hey.” The voice comes from too close.
I barely have time to register it before something grabs my arm. My body reacts before my brain catches up, instinct snapping into place too late to stop anything. “Wait—” The word doesn’t even fully form.
Another shape moves in from the side.
Hands.
Too many hands.
“Don’t—”
There’s a sharp sting at my neck. Not like a cut. Not like anything I can place. Just sudden. Wrong.
My body jerks, my hand flying up instinctively, but it’s already happening, already spreading, something cold and heavy moving through me too fast to fight. “What—” My voice slurs. My knees give. The world tilts.I try to focus, to grab onto something, anything, but my thoughts slip, sliding out from under me like I can’t hold onto them.
“Get her.” A man’s voice.Close. Urgent.
My vision blurs, the streetlight above me stretching into something too bright, too far away. I try to breathe. My lungs don’t listen. My arms feel heavy. My fingers don’t close right.
This isn’t right.
I try to pull away, to move, to do anything, but my body doesn’t respond the way it should. It’s like I’m a step behind myself, like everything I tell it to do comes too late.
The last thing I see before everything goes dark is the shape of a van door sliding open.
Then…
Nothing.
The street stays quiet. Too quiet. Not empty. Not dead.
Just…waiting.
I stand near the curb with my helmet in one hand, the other loose at my side, my body angled like I’ve got nowhere specific to be. The van sits half a block down, engine still running, door cracked just enough to matter. It hasn’t moved since I circled. That’s the problem.
Men don’t sit that still unless they’re waiting.
I don’t look at it directly. I don’t need to.
The reflection in the dark storefront glass across the street gives me everything I need. The shape. The position. The slight shift in the passenger seat every few seconds like he’s fighting the urge to move too much. Wrong place. Wrong stillness. Doesn’t sit right.
I roll my shoulders once, letting the tension settle into something useful instead of letting it sit too high. My breathing stays even. My stance stays loose. Everything about me reads like I’m just another guy stopped on a street with nowhere urgent to go.
I’m not.
The night stretches. Seconds pass. Then…movement. Not from the van. From the sidewalk.
