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I know what we must look like, walking down the street together. Compared to my six-foot-five frame, she may as well be a child at my side. Mid-twenties, I’d say, casual but well-dressed.
Silence settles over us for a minute, and the energy between us changes. “You’re sure you’re not luring me there to rob me?” I joke to lighten the suddenly tense mood. Is she having second thoughts? She should.
She blurts out a disbelieving laugh. “Are there people stupid enough to think they could overpower you?” That’s the right answer. If she acted all surprised and offended, I would know something was off. But that was a genuine reaction. It eases the rest of my apprehension, and I follow her into the lobby of an upscale apartment building. There’s no doorman and no security at the front desk. I keep that in mind as we cross the marble-floored space before getting on the elevator.
“So what’s the story?” I ask, sipping my coffee but watching her closely.
“There’s not much to tell.” She looks at the floor, biting her lip. A nice, full lip I would love to suck on before sucking on other parts of her. “For the past few weeks, I’ve been sure somebody’s following me. Or at least watching me.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I can show you when we get inside.” Is she for real or merely paranoid? No matter what, she believes it’s real, and that’s all that matters right now.
“Do you have roommates?”
“I live alone,” she answers quickly. Another mistake on her part. She shouldn’t let a stranger know how easy of a target she is.
“What do you do for a living?”
“I run a blog,” she explains with a smile. I’m not exactly sure what work that entails, but the twinkle in her eyes when she talks about it tells me she loves her job.
“Any angry exes running around?” That’s usually the case. Angry exes do stupid things, and jealousy can make a guy extremely dangerous.
She shakes her head. “Seriously, I’ve never dealt with anything like this before. I know I must sound completely nuts, but I know something’s wrong.”
“So no crazy exes?”
“No exes at all,” she confirms shyly. Another interesting fact I store away for later.
We step off the elevator a few floors from the top, and she unlocks the door before swinging it open to reveal an enormous apartment with huge windows that allow tons of sunlight into the wide open space. I don’t know what I was expecting. Mismatched IKEA furniture, maybe, or something she thrifted. But this place is a showroom.
“And you said you run a blog for a living?” I ask, noting the art on the walls and the expensive, shining appliances in the open kitchen with its marble countertops.
“Yeah, entertainment, fashion, stuff like that.”
I turn to her, prepared to ask more, but she seems to have already anticipated the question. “My dad gave me this place for my eighteenth birthday,” she explains with a shrug as she drops her bag onto an oversized chair. “I didn’t pay for any of it. It’s all taken care of.”
My first thought was spot-on. Trust fund baby. “Wow. That’s pretty nice.”
She frowns down at her drink. “He just wanted me gone,” she murmurs.
And to think, I came along with her almost as a joke, thinking it might be a way to get my dick wet. Now I’m feeling sorry for her, wishing I could say something to make her feel better. “It could be a lot worse,” I offer, doing a cursory examination of the locks on the windows. “A lot of people have families who don’t spend time with them, and there’s no enormous apartment involved.”
“I know I’m lucky,” she quickly replies. “And generally, I like living alone. No roommate to deal with, no rules from anybody. But at times like this…” She looks around like she is trying to come up with a new subject. She clearly doesn’t want to talk about this anymore.
So I throw her a lifeline. “Did you say you wanted to show me something when we got here?”
“Right. This way.” She leads me down a wide hall, open doors revealing a dining room that looks like it never gets used and a library full of books, along with a desk and a laptop where I suppose she does her work.
At the end of the hall is the bedroom, complete with a view of the city I bet would be spectacular at night. “So you see, the fire escape is over here, accessible by my office.” She goes to the window and points to the right, where that room sits. From here, I see the railing. Then she points at one of the windowpanes closest to the frame, and I see exactly what she’s talking about: a handprint on the glass.
“Somebody could leave it if they were on the fire escape and leaning over to look into this room,” she murmurs, her voice tight. “It hasn’t rained or anything since I found the print there. It’s a constant reminder of somebody trying to get in.”
Either that or Spider-Man paid her a visit. There’s no other explanation for a handprint on the outside of the glass when we’re this far up. “No window washer?” I ask, hopeful.
“Nope, not until spring. They only come twice a year.”
I nod slowly, glancing around the room. From where the guy was watching—and it’s certainly a man from the size of the print—they had a clear view of her bed. “I can see why you’d be concerned.”
