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Me:So sorry I’m running late! Heading to you now. I hope Chloe isn’t too upset.
This is the third night this week I’ve had to ask someone to babysit my daughter so I can stay late to work on the class-action suit. When I joined Steinburg, I promised myself and Chloe that this wouldn’t happen, but it looks like I was lying to both of us.
“Come on!” I hit the elevator button rapidly, trying to summon it faster. Finally it dings and the doors glide open. I take it down to the parking garage, which is silent—just the sound of a steady drip somewhere far off in the distance echoing around me. I hate being down here alone. Then again, the fact that I even have a car in New York City is such a privilege, I remind myself to stop complaining and pick up my pace.
The clicking of my heels bounces off the cement floor and walls as I walk to my car, holding my keys out to hit the unlock button just as I hear something in the distance. I spin around, looking over my shoulder to the right and then the left, but there’s nothing.
“Get it together, Jules.” I shake my head, realizing I’d be that cliché woman who gets killed in the first scene of the horror movie because she stops to ask,Is anyone there?
I reach for the handle on the car door and yank it open just as the sound of one of the steel stairwell doors opens and closes. I hold my breath, just listening, when I hear the sound of footsteps. I dive into my driver’s side, shutting the door and locking it as my heart feels like it’s about to beat out of my chest.
“It’s just your imagination,” I whisper to myself as I close my eyes and grip my steering wheel tightly. This would be an overreaction if it weren’t for the weird and downright terrifying experiences I’ve had lately: the feeling that someone has been following me, the slashed tire from a week ago, and the mysterious package on my doorstep that was just an empty box neatly tied with a red ribbon.
When I open my eyes again, that’s when I see it. A note beneath my windshield wiper. I tilt my head to the side to read it, the letters written in bold marker facing toward the window like the person knew I wouldn’t see it until I was sitting inside my car.
You’ve been warned.
I don’t get out to grab the note. Instead, I start the car, throwing it in reverse and peeling out of the garage toward Blaire’s house. If there’s anywhere I know I’ll be safe, it’s at my best friend’s house. She’s married to a former Special Forces agent turned private security. Her husband, Jameson, and his three best friends founded the Four Forces Security Agency after they all met in the Special Forces years back.
“I’m so sorry I’m late . . . again,” I say to Blaire as she ushers me inside.
“Oh, stop apologizing. You know we don’t mind. Chloe is currently explaining the entireHarry Potterseries to Jimmy. Poor man is so confused,” she laughs. “You’d think being Special Forces, he’d keep up no problem, but he keeps asking her to repeat stuff and forgetting names, and I think it’s driving her crazy.”
We walk down the hallway, stopping in the doorway out of Chloe and Jimmy’s sight as we listen to her try to help him make sense of what she’s telling him.
“No, Lucius is the dad of Draco, the bad kid. Professor Snape is the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, who is also the head of Slytherin, which is the house Draco is in, but Snape is also secretly kind of in this private group with Lucius, where they’re Lord Voldemort’s minions.”
“Okay,” Jimmy nods his head slowly, his eye looking like it’s almost twitching in confusion, “I think I got it.”
Blaire and I can’t stop ourselves from bursting into laughter, causing them both to turn around and see us.
“Mom!” Chloe jumps up and runs over to me, wrapping her arms around my waist, “I was just explainingHarry Potterto Uncle Jimmy. He said he’d watch the movies with me sometime.”
“Did he?” I look over at him in surprise. “You really sure about that, Jameson? We’re talking eight long movies of wizards and witches.” I grin and he shrugs helplessly.
“I think I can manage, especially if I have Chloe to help me keep everyone straight.” He reaches his hand out to high five her.
“You know it,” she says, slapping his hand.
It warms my heart to see her engage with a man I know won’t break her heart like her father did, but that isn’t an obligation Jameson should be saddled with. When Caleb, Chloe’s father, didn’t even fight me on sole custody—let alone even file a response to the divorce or custody papers—I wasn’t surprised. He’d already vanished from our lives in the two years leading up to the separation and then divorce.
When I met Caleb, he seemed like my knight in shining armor, something naive 18-year-old me believed was a real thing. Growing up with an alcoholic, absent father and no mom, I was desperate for normalcy, for security. So the second Caleb showed a little more than interest in me, I was head over heels in love. At first it really was puppy dogs and rainbows. He showered me with love and attention, which slowly morphed into control that I confused for concern. Then the drinking and partying started our sophomore year of college. Then the accusations of infidelity. At the time, I remember feeling like overnight he turned into someone else, but looking back, the red flags were popping up along the way.
By the time I found out I was pregnant at 19, I was ready to settle down and be a family, but he was just getting started in his going-out phase. But to my surprise, once Chloe arrived, he straightened up and became the man I thought he was. He was a doting father to our baby girl, helping me stay on track with finishing college and preparing for law school. I worked my ass off in undergrad, pulling all-nighters to keep my GPA up and prepare for the LSATs. All my sacrificing paid off, though, when I received my acceptance letter to Harvard Law. It felt like everything was finally falling into place. Caleb didn’t even think twice about moving cross-country to Boston for me . . . but once again, it was all pretty short-lived.
After Caleb graduated and got his first big job in finance, he started going to happy hours and taking clients out, all while I was left to basically be a single mom and put myself through law school. By the time Chloe was five, I moved us out of the apartment we shared, and by the time she was six, I filed for divorce. He popped in and out of our lives two or three times a year for the next two years until I’d had enough. I told him to either commit or move on; he couldn’t keep disappointing Chloe like this. I couldn’t bear to watch her heart break time and time again when he wouldn’t show up after promising he would. And that was it; we haven’t heard from him since.
“Hey, any chance I can talk to you for a few?” I ask Jameson. My expression must show my concern.
“Everything okay?” Blaire gives me a questioning look after checking to make sure Chloe is back to being distracted with something and out of earshot.
“Honestly, I’m not sure, but I don’t want to scare her unnecessarily.”
“Well, you’re scaring me,” Blaire says, reaching out to touch my arm. “What’s going on?”
“Ever since I took the job at Steinburg and started working the Delmore case, I feel like I’m being watched . . . or followed maybe?”
“You feel, or know?” Jameson takes a step closer to me, his brows furrowing.
