Page 23 of Fractured Allegiance
That’s the point.
When I left the apartment, she was still on the interior feed—the last thing I saw before closing the laptop and heading out.
Now I'm waiting, hoping she'll come out soon. Going in is a last resort I'd rather avoid. And after a few more minutes, the front door opens and she steps out.
No escort. No coat.
The night’s damp, the sidewalk glistening from some weak attempt at city sanitation.
Her heels strike the wet concrete like punctuation, steady and sure, without a single stutter or moment of hesitation.
She’s not hurrying.
She’s not afraid.
She cuts left.
I wait a beat, then step out of the alley and follow from a distance that keeps me irrelevant.
She doesn’t look back.
Not once.
Either she doesn’t clock me, or she clocks me and doesn’t care.
Both answers tell me too much.
I don’t follow her too closely. Just enough to track the pattern; her stride, her posture, how often she checks her periphery.
Two left turns. One straight stretch. Then a final right.
She stops at a nondescript walk-up, two stories, sandwiched between a shuttered floral shop and a massage place that’s probably just a front.
No name on the buzzer. Just numbers.
She uses a key. Disappears inside.
I wait.
Five seconds. Ten. Then a light flicks on in the second window from the right, second floor.
The glow is faint, filtered through gauze-thin curtains. But it’s there.
Her shadow moves behind the glass.
That’s hers.
Now I know where she sleeps.
And that shouldn’t matter.
But it does.
I stand there for another full minute, hidden in shadow like a decision I haven’t made yet.
She’s upstairs, undressing maybe. Washing off the club. Or maybe she’s doing nothing. Maybe she’s already asleep, like tonight didn’t touch her at all.
I turn away.
