Page 4 of You Were Warned: Part One

“What the fuck are you doing?” I mutter as I cross after him.

I got close enough to him last week to overhear a phone call. Whoever he was talking to was delivering the information he had been waiting for. He lifted one hand to the back of his neck and repeated “I know” twice and “it’s not that simple” once. Then he listened for a long time without saying a word. After the call, he went back inside the coffee shop, bought another coffee, and walked home. I remember thinking he looked angry, but now I’m not so sure.

Jensen turns down a street I haven’t seen him take before, then another. I keep enough distance between us so he shouldn’t notice me. But he doesn’t look back, not even once, which is worse.

His apartment was easy to find, which initially made me question whether he was really hiding from people or was as good as I was led to believe. It’s on the seventh floor, with windows facing the street and the alley. But Jensen has modified the place with secondary resistance behind the door handle, to make forced entry loud and slow, and additional latches on the windows that aren’t part of the original frames, recently installed.

The man knows someone is after him, yet right now he is wandering around as if he doesn’t give a shit who finds him.

I should take him in now; a little torture would be fun and get me the information I need. It was something I wanted to do straight away, but there was something about him that made me hold off and do this the old-fashioned way—stalking. Yet I could do it now and be done with all this by morning. Nineteen days is eighteen days longer than I usually like staring at another man, especially one with better freckles than me. His file photo did not adequately represent the freckles. They cover his nose and cheekbones, and when he sits in the window at the coffee shop, the morning sun makes them stand out.

Not that I have been looking . . . much.

I’m simply observant.

Jensen turns into a parking structure, and I stop.

Well, that’s new.

I wait before following him inside the multi-story structure, which is mostly empty from what I can see. There are concrete walls and cameras at the entrance. I dart forward when I hear the stairwell door close. There are very few reasons for someone without a car to walk into a parking structure, and none of the ones coming to mind are particularly good. I take the elevator, since there is only one place he could be going, and the doors open to the top level. Once I step out, I shift behind the stairwell, hearing Jensen’s footsteps just before the door opens, and he walks onto the roof. I remain completely still, but he doesn’t look around, and something cold settles in my stomach as Jensen strides toward the edge.

“No,” I whisper.

He reaches the barrier and stops. What is going on with him? I have witnessed the paranoia of being watched, but the way he behaves, he is a man who wants to survive, or at least he did.

He puts both his hands on the concrete barrier and looks down.

This is convenient; my client wants him eliminated. If Jensen throws himself over, my hands stay clean, and no one even looks at me. All I’d have to do is find the drive afterward. It’s perfect, really. Except something makes my gut twist, which in all my years of doing this, has only ever bubbled with excitement.

His head drops and his shoulders shake.

Fuck, I hate this. The fact that I know what coffee he drinks, that he rubs the back of his neck when he is stressed, and how he checks his phone every morning before he gets out of bed. Then there’s the fact that three days ago he stopped closing his curtains, and he sat at his kitchen table for almost four hours and barely moved. But above all, I hate that I fucking noticed any of it because targets are easier when they stay anonymous. And Jensen has done a terrible job of that.

His phone rings, and the sound cuts across the roof. He pulls it out, looks at the screen, and silences it. For a second, I think he might answer it, but he doesn’t; he simply pushes it back into his pocket, then moves closer to the barrier.

Every part of me stills—I could stop him.

Why would you? runs through my head.

Because I need the drive, I remind myself. That should be enough. It isn’t. Because he is my target and I have been hired to kill him. That almost makes me laugh.

Jensen grips the barrier. “I’m so fucking tired,” he says quietly.

Something in my chest tightens, and I don’t particularly want to know why. This is none of my business. This would make a more compelling argument if I hadn’t spent over two weeks making everything about him my business. Yet he doesn’t climb over like I was expecting; instead, his arms give out and he sinks down until he is sitting on the concrete, his back to the barrier. He covers his face with both hands.

Well, this is inconvenient.

I stay where I am, watching as he doesn’t move for almost ten minutes. I could walk out there and take him now, while he is distracted, exhausted, and clearly not paying attention to anything around him. Yet I don’t.

Eventually his hands drop, and he looks out across the roof, then down at the ground beside him. “I can’t even fucking do this right,” he mutters.

I frown. That isn’t relief in his voice; it’s disappointment. Suddenly all the pieces click together: the lights, the curtains, the clothes, the untouched food, all of it. He isn’t worried about being followed anymore, changing his routine, or being watched. He’s stopped caring.

“Fuck,” I whisper as Jensen gets to his feet.

For one horrible second, I think he’s going to turn around and try again. Instead, he walks toward the stairwell, and I move deeper into the shadows. The door opens, and he passes close enough that I can reach out and touch him, so close I can see the dark circles under his eyes and the red surrounding them.

My hand flexes at my side.