Page 21 of Only for Him

My eyes scan the room and find it empty. Keeping the pistol tight to my chest and my finger on the trigger, I slide along the wall to the door.

First, the closet. I swing it open fast and sharp, barrel leading, eyes tracing the line from floor to ceiling. Clear. Bathroom, living room, kitchen: all clear. I test the deadbolt on the front door.

Still locked.

Nothing is out of place. Yet everything is wrong.

I should feel stupid but safe. Instead, the hairs on my arms are standing straight up, and the sense of violation, like something is here with me, is so thick I choke on it.

No, I tell myself.Not something.

Someone.

Making my way to the bathroom, I lay my pistol by the sink and wash my face while avoiding my reflection in the mirror. Because every time I look at myself in the mirror, I still see myself as a memory: younger, happier, less coiled and venomous. I see my hair in the braids that Serena loved giving me, treating me like her little doll.

A sigh of relief tumbles from my lips when I see that the earrings are right where they’re supposed to be. I take the left one first, roll it between my thumb and forefinger until I find the chip in the stone.

Serena was always losing one of anything that came in pairs. That there are two earrings for me to wear should be the closest thing to a miracle.

If I still believed in miracles.

I’m about to put them on when someone pounds on the door, three blows so violent they vibrate the glass in the medicine cabinet.

All the nerves in my body spark at once. My hand reaches for the gun and the earrings make a small, sweetclinkas they drop back into the dish.

The gun is steady in my grip, even though the rest of me is pulled as taut as a bowstring. I flatten my back against the wall, reach up with my left hand, and gently thumb open the deadbolt, and ease the door open half an inch.

There’s no sound outside. Just the low hum of someone’s television down the hall and the lingering echo of the knock. Heart pounding, I peer through the gap.

There’s a plain, unlabeled cardboard box sitting right in the center of my welcome mat.

Otherwise, the hallway is empty.

I sweep the hall with the muzzle of the gun and step into the open. My skin crawls. Every nerve ending shrieks at me to close the door. To run. To do anything but stand here exposed.

The box isn’t taped shut. There’s no writing, no return address, no sign that it’s a package from anyone but the void. Careful to keep the gun up and ready, I crouch down and nudge the lid aside with a toe.

And see a pair of severed hands.

I fight the urge to vomit. Years of training and desensitization be damned.

Because even from here, I recognize the tattoos.

These are Ivan Tupolev’s hands.

One is holding a cell phone, the cheap burner kind you buy at gas stations. The screen is black. I shouldn’t touch it. This is evidence. It’s a man’shands,for chrissake.

But I already know there won’t be any prints. My stalker isn’t that sloppy. And if this is evidence, it’s evidence of something he won’t want anyone else to investigate other than me.

That’s why I kick the box inside my apartment when I hear the main entrance door bang shut, audible even from five floors up. For once, I’m glad the landlord never fixes anything around here.

My stalker must still be close by.

I rush down the stairs and don’t stop moving until I burst out the door onto the street.

The sidewalk is empty except for yesterday’s trash and one dead pigeon doing its best impression of me: sprawled, eyes open, no answers. No movement in the parked cars. No twitch at the blackout windows of the apartment building across.

But I know better.