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W hat the hell am I doing?

The door thunks closed behind me, muffling the music inside. Within seconds, I’ve vanished into the darkness, a cigarette between my lips, inhaling the nicotine-infused smoke like it’s the first breath I’ve taken in days. “ Fuck …” I mutter on the exhale. “I almost did that.”

With my eyes fixed on the exit, I wait for that mane of wild curls to emerge. Any minute now, she’ll confront me. Ask a thousand questions that demand answers. Wear me down until I tell her all the things I don’t want to admit.

Someone else should do this job.

It shouldn’t be me.

It’s got to be me.

Pressure builds in my chest until it’s hard to breathe. The reasons I have for coming don’t include talking to her. I could easily stay at arms-length, where she’d never know. But watching her dance like that—embracing that intoxicating sex appeal, owning her body—is getting to me. So much, that in a moment of weakness, I dropped a cool six hundred for a private room and an hour of her time.

Then reality sank in, and I ghosted.

I’d rather not analyze that.

By the time my cigarette is down to a burnt stub, she still hasn’t appeared.

My hands shake like I’ve gone a year without a fix.

Yeah. I’m fucked.

Every time she’s been close, I’ve locked up, so the real question is whether I’m even capable of talking to her the way she’ll expect. Am I reliant on walls to carry on an intimate conversation with another human being?

Maybe.

The thought of opening myself up without that barrier between us makes me nauseous. It didn’t end well then, so why should it be any different now, when I’m not even sure I’m capable of that kind of connection?

Tanner thinks the past year has gotten into my head—made me lose it a little. But that’s a side effect of cutting myself off from society to follow a psychopath into the depths of the underworld.

There’s a labyrinth traveling under the world, where monsters thrive just beneath society’s nose. And when hunting, you go where your quarry lives. You blend into it. Maybe if I were a stronger man, one more acquainted with the light, I could use it as camouflage and strip it off like a costume the next day. But I was born of the shadows, and when they saw me coming home, they opened their arms and welcomed me back.

It’s gotten even harder to remember how to coexist among the general public. I was never good at it, but now, I don’t even know where to begin. How to make polite conversation.

What am I supposed to do, walk up and introduce myself?

She might think that’s what she wants, but I’m not sure she’d like what she found.

I pull another cigarette from the pack, headed down a spiral full of self-loathing and regret when something vibrates against my thigh. A tickle. An annoyance. My goddamn phone.

I don’t have to guess the caller—only one person has this number.

Fishing the phone out of my front pocket, I bring it to my ear, never taking my eyes off the chipped black paint of the back door. “What.”

“Stop complaining. You’d miss me if I didn’t call.”

My shoulders loosen. “I said one word. How is that a complaint?”

“It’s all in the tone, Porter. You sound like an angry teenager.”

I drop the cigarette butt on the ground and smash it under my heel. “Piss off, I’m working,” my voice pitches cheerfully.

“Ah, to have a job where stalking an ex-model can be called work.”

“I’m not stalking her.”

“Tell that to the restraining order she’s going to slap you with if you don’t explain yourself soon.”

“I’m better than that.” I don’t tell him how close I came tonight. How my resolve is disintegrating every time I’m close to her. “She doesn’t know I’m here.”

Yeah, I’m full of shit.

“Let me talk to her. Tell her the truth. The woman’s been crawling up my ass because I can’t give her answers when she knows damn well something’s up. She’s not an idiot.”

“Of course she’s not an idiot,” I snap. My life would be a lot easier if she were. But then she wouldn’t be Everly, and I’d be indifferent to her. “I don’t need you to talk to her.”

“Easy, killer. It’s her right to know she could be in danger. Besides, it would allow us to move her to a safe place. Get some protection on her.”

“ I’m her protection.”

“Yes, except you’re also the reason she’s in danger.” He says it in that gentle tone he uses when he has something to say that I won’t like. But I already know. I’ve been playing with fire. Unleashing hell on my enemy. Thinking I had nothing left to lose.

I was wrong: the girl behind the wall had become something more than I intended, and he knew it. Everly was nothing more than a product to Vincent—until I went fucking around with his empire.

Now, she’s a way to get back at me.

I knew it the second that picture landed in Tanner’s inbox.

Dammit.

As I run through every possible scenario, deciding on the next best move, the side door cracks open. My breath stills when the bouncer walks out and glances around. He nods over his shoulder, and Everly appears, waist-length hair twining around her body with the breeze.

Damn, she’s something. Even dressed in street clothes and makeup-free, she’s easily the most stunning woman in this place. My knuckles go white thinking about how many assholes have jerked off thinking about her. How many she’s rubbed up against.

Fuck. I have a problem.

Tanner’s continued chatter interrupts the trance I’ve slipped into. “Since I don’t have a bat signal, and you don’t bother with email, you’ll have to humor me. I figured you’d want to know that the bane of your existence is aware of your location. I’ve got security footage of one of his spies watching you…while you’re watching her .”

I’m off my game. I should have noticed someone following me already. “He knew I’d come here; that was the whole point.”

“He hoped you would. He threw the bait to find out, and you went for it.”

“What a hero I am.”

Everly chats with the bouncer for several minutes, huddling in her light jacket as a fine mist drizzles from the cloud cover. It’s obvious from the way he’s gesturing between the cloud cover and her phone that he’s trying to talk her into ordering a ride. She doesn’t care that she has no business being alone in the dark, unaware that I’ve turned her into a target.

She just wants to walk in the rain.

That’s why I shoved pepper spray into her purse when the dressing room was empty.

Still, she’s treating her freedom carelessly, like her experience has made her immune to tragedy. It makes me want to snatch her off the street and put her over my knee until she learns a lesson.

The mere thought makes my dick half hard, which isn’t fucking helpful at all.

How many times have I imagined having her under me, playing out that scene I described to her in filthy detail when we had no hope of making it come true? She’s single now, too—and watching her dance topless for a bunch of assholes, just out of reach, has been turning my balls fifty shades of blue.

But there are still too many things in the way. Too many reasons I really need to shut my mouth and keep my distance. Besides not being sure I can even carry a face-to-face relationship like that, I still have moments where I’m just fucking…bitter. As idiotic as it is, I still hear her husband’s name echo in my dreams.

I gave her my trust, and she chose another man.

A man who’d already turned his back on her.

Sometimes I can’t decide whether I want to fuck her or make her suffer.

Both could work.

Tanner rudely interrupts my inner conflict. “There’s another thing bothering me. Why hasn’t he just taken you out if he’s got a lock on you? There’s got to be something else he wants.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Worth pondering, though.”

“Indeed.” I inch closer to Everly and the bouncer, pressing the phone closer to my mouth. “And I take it there’ve been no more leads since Amsterdam.”

A text pings through in the background. “No,” Tanner says. “But I just sent a picture of the guy who’s been following you.”

Amsterdam was what finally shook me. Convinced me to change my strategy. But it won’t be over until I’ve wiped him off the face of the earth, and now, he’s decided to play.

It was in Europe that my prey stopped running and began to bite back, playing his little mind games. More innocents. Casualties left in his wake.

Then it became personal.

I found the bodies in Bucharest, Berlin, and Amsterdam—victims who closely resembled Everly, Sara, and finally, me. After the last one—a humble mechanic and father of four, who’d done nothing wrong but leave his house looking like the wrong person—I came back to the States, afraid of what would happen if I pushed him further.

This time, I went underground. I needed to put a stop to all the senseless death.

But I’d made an error in judgment: there’s nothing Vincent loves more than games, and he wasn’t willing to stop playing. A month later, a photograph of Everly showed up in Tanner’s email, the Golden Gate Bridge an unmistakable backdrop behind her. There was no questioning who’d sent it, but just in case I was confused, the subject line was an hourglass emoji.

Subtle.

So now I’m here, far too close to crossing a line I won’t be able to un cross. I could watch out for her quietly, of course. Invisibly. But I can’t think straight being this close to her. I can’t?—

“Did that picture come through?”

“Hang on.” I glance away from the woman consuming my attention long enough to glance at the photo in Tanner’s text. It’s a nondescript guy in a baseball cap. Not helpful. Movement in my periphery catches my attention, and I look up just as the bouncer disappears from the doorway. Everly sets off in the direction of her apartment, striding confidently with her chin held high. “Dammit.”

I want to go over there and shake her. Tell her bad shit can happen within a three-block radius, just as easily as it could within three miles.

“Talk to me, Porter. What’s going on? You know the guy?”

“No, that’s not—” Then I freeze.

A figure staggers out from beneath a streetlamp near the front entrance as Everly passes, his slurred words carrying as he approaches her.

“Hey gorgeous, you looking for some extra tips?”

“Who the hell is this?” My hand slowly drops to my side as I watch Everly’s reaction. Chin up and shoulders back, she shakes her head, dodging around him to continue down the block. The knuckles of my free hand crack with the force of my clenched fist.

“Don’t mean no harm. Just a lonely guy, looking for some company.” He follows her, rubbing his palm over his crotch.

This guy is about to fuck around and find out.

Without taking my eyes off the douchebag, I lift the phone enough to growl into the speaker. “Talk to you later. I’ve got to go kill someone.” Then I shove the phone into my pocket and work my way closer, slow and quiet, sticking close to the building.

“Come on, baby,” he calls after her, “I could give you the ride of your life. You don’t know what you’re missin’.”

Unfortunately for him, he’s about to be missing half his teeth, and possibly his dick, assuming he has one.

The second Everly turns the corner, I’m in front of him, my fist planted in his face before he has time to see it coming.

Stumbling backward into the side of the club, he takes a minute to wipe his face with the back of his arm and recover. Then, with eyes full of venom and blood trickling from his nose, he fixes his glare on me. “Who the fuck are you?”

Is it me, or did this shithead sober instantly?

“You were looking for company.” I grab him by the throat and lift him off the ground. “ I’m company .”

After steering him to a particularly dark corner of the used car lot next door, I throw him on the ground. He stays where I put him, coughing and sputtering, while I tower above. “Convince me we don’t have a mutual friend who sent you to tail my ass.”

“You high or something? I don’t want your ass.” He nods in the direction Everly disappeared, grinning like an idiot with a death wish. “I want hers .”

And that’s it.

I unleash every last bit of rage I’ve been holding on to until he’s unconscious.

If I go any further, he might not recover.

Shaking with the effort it takes to stop, I pull out my phone, open the picture, and hold it next to his face.

Dammit, I was hoping to kill two birds with one stone.

Aside from the fact that this asshole now looks like he’s been through a meat grinder, I don’t think it’s the same guy. Truthfully, it’s hard to tell, but there’s enough doubt that I probably shouldn’t finish him off, even though I really fucking want to.

Leaving him bleeding in the parking lot, I hurry down the block. Now I’ve got to catch up to Everly. Fuck, I hate this new job of hers. Why couldn’t she sit in a lab somewhere and study bugs? If I start beating the shit out of every douchebag who looks at her wrong, it’s going to get out of hand fast.

Strippers pretty much make their living off men looking at them wrong.

I catch up to her just as she’s unlocking the door to her apartment building, unaware that I nearly killed a drunken asshole on her behalf. Lucky for him, she’s in one piece.

Soon, I’ll retreat to my motel around the corner, but while I catch my breath, I head to the spot where I’ve been spending more time than she’d probably want to know about. Facing her window, there’s a line of trees that’s good enough to keep me hidden, the grass matted from the time I’ve spent keeping watch.

If she came out here, she’d see the spot littered with cigarette butts.

The blinds in her apartment window close, leaving the tiniest leak of golden light around the edges. She wasn’t so diligent at first. I wonder if her instincts are tingling, telling her someone is watching.

Does she suspect who it might be? My eyes linger a few beats longer than necessary.

Mrrooww.

A black cat sits outside the main door, protesting the rain. Looks offended to have been left on this side of the door. I’ve noticed him running in and out of the complex on the heels of other residents, so I guess he belongs to someone.

The drizzle grows steadier, turning to weighty drops. Looks like the rainy season is coming in early this year.

Mrrooww.

The animal looks at me so pointedly, I can almost hear his thoughts: Why are you just standing there, dumbass? Can’t you see I’m getting wet?

The lone light over the door lends a sort of iridescence to his rain-slicked fur as I walk over and look down. Slowly stretching one front paw, he unfurls his claws and digs them into my jeans.

“Fine, I can take a hint.” I fish down into the bottom of my jacket pocket, pull out a key, unlock the door, and hold it open a foot until he slinks inside.

The thought of following him in, going upstairs, and knocking on her door gives me pause. What would she do? What’s the worst thing that could happen if I walked up and introduced myself?

I let out a mirthless laugh.

Maybe she thinks that after a few unraveled confessions in the shadow of death, she knows who I am. But purging a few dark secrets through a wall doesn’t change the truth.

Could I ever be good for a woman like her?

No.

I watch the rivulets of water slide down to the metal handle, collecting in droplets that quiver and fall into a puddle on the concrete. At the entryway, lined with mailboxes. At the cat, bounding up the stairs.

Then I take a long, slow breath in through my nose and release my grip on the handle.

Slowly, it closes, locking Everly safely inside.

And I turn away.