Chapter 4 Someone Knew

I replayed Monica’s voicemail three times before calling her back. The first time, I heard only that the letter hadn’t come from victim services; the second time, I caught the part about information that wasn’t public. By the third, I had memorized every pause between her words like the silence might explain what the fuck was happening. My kitchen suddenly felt colder even though the thermostat hadn’t changed.

Monica answered before the second ring and immediately asked whether I was alone. I looked toward the front door, checked the deadbolt from where I stood, then hated that my body needed visual proof before answering. “Yes,” I said, though alone didn’t feel like the same thing as safe anymore. She told me to sit down.

I didn’t.

“What information?” I asked, gripping the edge of the counter instead. Monica explained that the letter included Ryan’s current eligibility status, preliminary hearing window, victim case number, and an internal reference code that usually didn’t appear on public offender searches. Someone could’ve copied the format of an official letter, but copying information normally available only through the victim-notification system was different. That was the part she couldn’t explain.

“Could Ryan have gotten it?” I asked. The question tasted wrong because Ryan was still behind walls, and I needed those walls to mean something. Monica reminded me that incarcerated people could communicate with family, attorneys, friends, and other approved contacts, though she had no evidence Ryan had accessed anything related to me. She made sure I heard the difference between possible and proven.

I hated possible.

Possible was where my brain had lived for eight years. Possible was the dark car across the street, the stranger who looked too long, the footsteps behind me, and the blocked number that called twice before disappearing forever. Most of those things had been nothing. Ryan had taught my body that nothing deserved investigation.

Monica asked whether I still had the original envelope untouched. I told her I had handled it with kitchen tongs before eventually touching the paper while reading it, which earned a short silence I couldn’t interpret. She said the police might still want it if the situation escalated, even if usable fingerprints were unlikely now. I promised not to throw anything away.

“Claire, I also want you to understand something,” she said. I waited, my stomach tightening, because nobody ever prefaced good news like that. “There’s currently nothing showing that Ryan knows where you live.” I closed my eyes and tried to let those words matter.

“But someone does,” I said.

“Yes.”

That single word hit harder than a speech. Someone had stood outside my apartment carrying information tied to the man who nearly killed me, and I had no idea whether they were trying to warn me, scare me, or prepare me. I looked toward the hallway leading to my bedroom and suddenly hated every shadow my lamp didn’t reach.

Monica arranged for the police report to be updated and asked whether I had somewhere else to stay for the night. I almost said no automatically because admitting I had nowhere to go sounded pathetic in a way I wasn’t prepared to examine. There were hotels, but hotel registrations created records, and unfamiliar rooms meant unfamiliar locks, unfamiliar exits, and unfamiliar noises. My apartment terrified me, but at least I knew how it sounded when nobody was inside.

“I’m staying here,” I said.

She didn’t argue. Monica only told me to keep my phone charged, contact police if anyone returned, and avoid opening the door even if someone claimed to be connected to corrections or victim services. Apparently, official people weren’t supposed to appear at midnight with paperwork under doors. Good to know eight years too late.

After we disconnected, I carried the letter into the bedroom and placed it inside a plastic document sleeve. I photographed the front, back, envelope, seal, reference number, and every line that looked even remotely important. Then I emailed the pictures to myself and saved them to a cloud folder nobody knew existed. Documentation had become the closest thing fear had to a hobby.

I was checking the file names when someone knocked.

My phone almost fell from my hand.

Three knocks.

Not hard.

Not slow.

Just normal.

I stood frozen beside the bed while every muscle tightened. Nothing happened for several seconds, and then another knock followed, only two this time. Whoever stood outside wasn’t pounding or demanding attention; somehow, that made it worse.

I opened the security app.

Matthew stood outside my door holding a small cardboard box.

I stared at the screen longer than necessary because seeing someone I recognized didn’t automatically make opening a door reasonable. Matthew looked down the hallway once, adjusted the box under his arm, then knocked a final time. After that, he stepped backward instead of closer.

“What?” I called through the door.

“It’s Grant.”

“I know.”

A pause followed. “That’s somehow more hostile.”

Despite everything, a laugh almost escaped me. I pressed my lips together because laughing at a man outside my locked door felt like letting down a guardrail. Matthew stayed several feet away, without reaching for the handle.

“What do you want?”

“Mr. Alvarez asked me to bring this up.” He raised the box toward the peephole even though I was watching through the camera. “Replacement router for the third-floor camera system.”

My stomach twisted.

“Why you?”

“He caught me downstairs and apparently decided owning a screwdriver qualifies me for unpaid building maintenance.” Matthew looked directly toward my camera. “I can leave it outside.”

“Do that.”

“Okay.”

No complaint. No wounded pride. No joking demand that I stop being paranoid and open the door for thirty seconds.

Matthew placed the box against the wall beside my apartment and walked away.

I waited until his door closed before opening mine. The hallway was empty, and the box sat exactly where he had left it. I pulled it inside quickly, locked the door, and restarted my sequence because opening it had destroyed everything I had checked earlier. Fifty began again.

By seventeen, my thumb hurt.

By thirty-one, I knew the deadbolt was locked.

By forty-three, I was angry.

By fifty, I wanted to rip the fucking thing out of the door.

I pressed my forehead against the wood and closed my eyes. The urge to start again remained because opening the door had been stupid, even though I had watched Matthew leave and nobody could’ve crossed the hallway without appearing on camera. My brain whispered that someone could’ve hidden near the stairwell. My hand reached toward the deadbolt again.

I stopped it.

For ten seconds, nothing happened.

Then twenty.

My heart raced like I had left the door wide open instead of refusing one unnecessary check. I forced myself to step away and hated every inch between me and the lock.

That was when I remembered Ryan standing inside my old apartment with my purse in his hand.

The memory arrived bright and stupidly ordinary. Samantha had been late for work, one shoe on, coffee cooling beside the sink, while Ryan leaned against the kitchen counter, smiling at my panic. He had shown up without warning because he wanted breakfast before my shift. At the time, I thought it was sweet.

“You didn’t have to come all the way over,” I had told him.

“I wanted to see you.”

“I’m going to be late.”

“Then be late.”

He had smiled when he said it, and I had laughed because missing twenty minutes of work seemed harmless beside being wanted that badly. Ryan drove me that morning so I wouldn’t lose more time, and afterward he started showing up before work more often. Eventually, he knew my schedule better than I did.

The memory ended before it became anything worse.

Good.

I wasn’t ready for worse tonight.

I carried the router box into the kitchen and found a printed instruction sheet taped across the top. Mr. Alvarez had written my apartment number in thick black marker and circled a technical support phone number. Nothing suspicious hid inside, though I checked anyway because apparently my standards for normal packages had dropped considerably. I left the installation for tomorrow.

My phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number.

I stopped breathing.

The message contained only five words.

Wrong number, sorry about that.

I stared at the screen and remembered the two calls from earlier. It was probably nothing, and the person had likely realized their mistake after listening to my voicemail greeting. I blocked the number anyway.

Ten minutes later, another number texted.

Is this Samantha?

The room disappeared.

My phone slipped from my fingers and hit the kitchen floor. I stared down at it while my heartbeat slammed violently against my ribs. Nobody in this city called me Samantha.

Nobody.

The screen lit again.

Sorry. I think I have the wrong person.

I couldn’t move.

My legal name had been Claire Bennett for years. My current phone number had never belonged to Samantha Reed, and I had changed it twice since moving here. No innocent reason existed for a stranger to connect this number to that name.

I picked up the phone with shaking hands and took screenshots before blocking the second number. Then I opened my police report information and called the nonemergency line. For once, I didn’t spend ten minutes convincing myself I was overreacting. Someone knew.

The dispatcher told me an officer would contact me and advised me not to respond. I promised I wouldn’t, then sat at the kitchen table staring at the victim letter while waiting for the call. My apartment remained completely silent around me. Nothing moved.

My security app sent a motion notification.

I opened it immediately.

Matthew was standing in the hallway again.

This time he wasn’t carrying anything.

He was staring toward the stairwell.

I watched him remain perfectly still for several seconds before walking toward it. The camera caught him opening the heavy stairwell door and looking down the steps. Then he disappeared through it.

A minute later, someone knocked on my door.

I looked at the camera.

The hallway was empty.