Page 22 of Hunt Me, Daddy

I sat down at my desk slowly, trying to clear my head. I woke the machine fully and opened the Watcher file.

The document had become embarrassing in its size. That was fine. Lots of useful things started out embarrassing. Spreadsheets. Dating profiles. Government cybersecurity policies. The entire concept of crypto taxes.

I added a new section, detailing everything I’d noticed this week and then some. Then I sat back. The radiator hissed. A delivery truck groaned somewhere below. My upstairs neighbor dropped something heavy enough to suggest either furniture or a body, and I made a note to check the hall camera later because I was nosy and also because patterns mattered.

My phone buzzed.

It was Evan, of course.

Coffee later? I miss your face.

I looked at the message and felt an almost scientific level of disinterest.

For one deeply uncharitable second, I considered texting him back just to see whether anyone reacted. A controlled variable. A little social bait. Evan was persistent, predictable, and emotionally noisy enough to draw attention if someone was watching my communications.

Then I hated myself for even thinking it.

Evan was annoying. He did not deserve to be pulled into the orbit of whatever this was just because I wanted something to measure.

I deleted the text thread without answering.

I didn’t block him. I should, but not yet. Blocking was a reaction. Silence was data.

At noon, I left the apartment again because I refused to let four walls become a cage just because some invisible bastard had started rearranging my life.

I took my bag, my phone, and a blade I definitely did not have a permit for. I wore a dark coat and boots that did not squeak on wet tile, because dignity was important.

The front light was still on when I stepped outside.

I walked south first, then east, then doubled back through a street lined with boutiques that sold things no human being needed but everyone with money pretended were essential. Candles that cost seventy dollars. Linen shirts in winter. Hand-thrown ceramic bowls with descriptions longer than some obituaries. Designer purses. You know, the essentials. I rolled my eyes and continued walking.

Every window became a checkpoint. In the dark glass of a closed florist, I saw a man in a navy coat glance down at his phone. In the polished window of a jewelry store, I saw a cyclist nearly hit a pedestrian and call her an idiot despite being fully in the wrong. In the tall, mirrored panel beside an office lobby, I saw a dark coat half a block back.

Tall.

Male.

Then a bus moved between us, and by the time it passed, the coat was gone.

My pulse stayed even.

Mostly.

I did not stop. I did not turn around. I did not do anything as obvious as searching the crowd with my bare face. I kept walking and let the shop windows do the looking for me.

At the next corner, I crossed a bit late.

At the one after that, a bit too early.

I paused outside a bookstore and pretended to study a display of new releases while the glass gave me a view of the sidewalk behind my shoulder.

Nothing.

No dark coat. No gray coat. No one following me at all.

The absence felt like a hand hovering just above my skin.

I went into the bookstore, took the rear stairs to the second floor, crossed the walkway, and came back down the front just to see if anyone adjusted.