Chapter 5 The Man in the Stairwell

I stared at the empty camera feed while another knock sounded against my door. My phone was still in my hand, the text asking for Samantha still glowing behind the security notification. Matthew had disappeared through the stairwell less than a minute earlier, and nobody had crossed the camera since. Whoever stood outside my door was standing somewhere the camera couldn’t see.

I backed away without making a sound and opened the police report number on my phone. The dispatcher had already told me an officer would contact me, but there was no reason an officer should arrive without announcing himself. Another knock came, softer this time, followed by silence that stretched until my ears started inventing noises. I pressed call before fear could convince me waiting was smarter.

The dispatcher answered, and I gave my name quietly while keeping my eyes on the door. She confirmed an officer had been assigned to my updated report but hadn’t arrived at my building yet. My stomach tightened hard enough to hurt when she asked whether someone was currently outside my apartment. I told her I didn’t know, which sounded ridiculous considering someone had just knocked.

“Don’t open the door,” she said, and I almost laughed because that had never been an option. She kept me on the line while contacting the responding officer and told me to move somewhere away from the entrance. I stepped backward into the kitchen, putting the island between myself and the hallway. The apartment suddenly felt too open, every room connected by spaces someone could cross faster than I could react.

A voice came through the door.

“Claire.”

Matthew.

Relief arrived first, which annoyed me because I didn’t know him well enough to feel relieved by his voice. I moved closer but stopped before reaching the entrance and checked the camera again. He still wasn’t visible.

“What are you doing?” I called.

“Standing beside your camera because I didn’t want whoever was downstairs seeing me at your door.”

My mouth went dry.

The dispatcher heard him and asked who was speaking. I explained that Matthew was my neighbor, then asked him what the hell he had seen in the stairwell. He didn’t answer immediately. That delay made every muscle in my shoulders tighten.

“Matthew.”

“There was a man on the landing.”

I closed my eyes for one second.

“What man?”

“I don’t know.”

The dispatcher told me not to open the door until police arrived. I relayed that to Matthew, expecting some argument about leaving him in the hallway like an idiot. Instead, he told me good and remained exactly where he was. Something about a man accepting my boundary without making me defend it felt unsettling.

“What did he look like?” I asked through the door. Matthew said white, maybe late thirties or early forties, average height, dark baseball cap, dark jacket, nothing memorable enough to make identifying him easy. The description could’ve matched half the men in the city. My brain still tried forcing Ryan’s face beneath the baseball cap.

“It wasn’t him,” I whispered.

Matthew went quiet.

I hadn’t meant to say that loudly enough for him to hear. The dispatcher asked whether I recognized the description, and I quickly told her no. Matthew didn’t ask who he was.

That mattered too.

He explained that he had noticed someone near the stairwell when he brought the router earlier. At the time, he assumed the man belonged to another apartment because people occasionally used the stairs instead of waiting for the slow elevator. When Matthew came into the hallway the second time, the same man was standing one floor below without moving. The moment Matthew started downstairs, the man ran.

“Did you follow him?”

“One floor.”

“You followed a stranger into a stairwell?”

“I’m realizing how stupid that sounds now.”

Despite everything, irritation pushed through my fear. “You’re a psychologist, not Batman,” Matthew told me. He was painfully aware of that after nearly eating concrete when the stairwell door slammed behind him. I almost laughed again and decided I resented him for being funny at inappropriate times.

The dispatcher told me officers were entering the building. I watched the camera until two uniforms appeared in the hallway, and only then did Matthew step into view with both hands visible. One officer spoke to him while the other knocked and clearly identified herself. I still checked through the peephole before opening the door with the chain attached.

Officer Harris stood outside.

Recognition loosened something in my chest because he was the same officer who had taken my report earlier. He looked considerably less bored this time. Matthew stood several feet away, explaining what happened to the second officer.

I let Harris inside after checking the hallway one more time. He examined the messages on my phone, photographed both numbers, and asked whether Samantha was someone I knew. The question hit harder than it should have because there was no simple answer. Samantha was me, and Samantha was someone I had spent eight years trying not to be.

“It was my name.”

Harris looked up.

“Before I legally changed it.”

His expression changed immediately.

I hated that part.

People heard name change and imagined marriage, divorce, adoption, or someone deciding Jennifer suited them better than Katherine. Then they heard why, and suddenly the room changed. Samantha Reed wasn’t a name I had changed because I disliked it.

“Ryan knew you as Samantha,” Harris said.

“Yes.”

“Does anyone connected to your current life know that name?”

“No.”

The answer came automatically, but then I thought about paperwork. Human resources had my legal history because background checks required previous names; my bank had records; the courts had records; and government agencies certainly had records. Claire Bennett wasn’t invisible. I had only built my life around pretending she could be.

Harris asked whether Matthew knew. I looked through the open doorway and found Matthew speaking with the other officer while deliberately not looking inside my apartment. “No,” I said. Something about that answer made me feel strangely protective of the distance between Claire and Samantha.

The officers searched the stairwell and checked the first floor before speaking with Mr. Alvarez. Nobody suspicious remained inside the building, and the exterior cameras showed several people passing along the sidewalk around the same time. One camera caught a man exiting through the side entrance, but the angle showed only his back—dark jacket, baseball cap, completely ordinary.

Ordinary scared me more than monsters ever had.

Ryan had always looked ordinary.

That was probably the first thing I had loved about him.

The memory came so gently that I didn’t realize I was slipping into it until Samantha was sitting across from Ryan inside a small Italian restaurant eight years earlier. He wore a navy sweater instead of the dress shirt I expected, and he laughed when I admitted I had searched him online before agreeing to dinner. He said he would’ve been worried if I hadn’t.

“You could be a serial killer,” I had joked.

Ryan smiled over his wine.

“Then you did a terrible background check.”

I laughed so loudly that the woman at the next table looked over.

Ryan didn’t tell me to lower my voice.

Not then.

He reached across the table and told me he liked my laugh because it sounded like I didn’t care who heard it. I remember feeling embarrassed before realizing he meant it as a compliment. Samantha had spent most of her life being told she was too loud, too dramatic, too much, and Ryan made too much sound like exactly what he wanted.

That was how he got me.

Not flowers.

Not money.

Not some ridiculous declaration that I was different from every woman he had ever met.

He noticed the parts of me other people treated like flaws and called them beautiful.

The memory shifted to later that night when he walked me to my apartment. I expected him to ask to come inside because that was what dates had taught me men eventually did. Ryan kissed me once, stepped back, and told me goodnight. I remember standing beneath the porch light thinking restraint meant safety.

I had called Tessa immediately.

“I think I found a normal one.”

She laughed for almost a full minute.

Then she told me normal men were fictional.

I insisted Ryan was different.

Standing inside Claire Bennett’s apartment eight years later, I wanted to reach backward through time and shake Samantha until her teeth hurt. Not because she should’ve known. Nothing Ryan had done that night deserved fear.

That was the problem.

The beginning wasn’t frightening.

If it had been, I would’ve left.

Harris’s voice brought me back to the present. He told me they couldn’t connect the man in the stairwell to the texts or the letter, but they'd add all three incidents to the same report. I nodded because documentation apparently remained the theme of my week. He also recommended asking the phone company whether the numbers could be preserved for investigation if the messages continued.

Matthew waited outside until the officers finished. When Harris left, Matthew turned toward his apartment without asking what the police had said. I watched him take three steps before something inside me made the decision first. “Matthew.”

He stopped.

“Thank you.”

He turned around but didn’t come closer. “For following a stranger down a stairwell despite having absolutely no relevant training?” I told him that part was stupid, and he agreed immediately. The corner of his mouth lifted.

“For noticing,” I said.

The smile disappeared.

“Yeah.”

I wanted to close the door.

Instead, I heard myself ask, “What do you do?”

Matthew looked confused.

“For work.”

“Psychologist.”

Every instinct inside me pulled backward.

He noticed that too.

Of course he fucking did.

“At a trauma clinic,” he added carefully. “And before you panic, I don’t analyze neighbors for recreational purposes.”

“I’m not panicking.”

“You’re holding the door like you’re considering using it as a weapon.”

I looked down.

My fingers were wrapped around the edge hard enough to whiten my knuckles.

“Goodnight, Matthew.”

“Goodnight, Claire.”

I closed the door and locked it.

Then I checked it once.

Twice.

Three times.

By seven, my chest hurt because every part of me wanted fifty.

I made it to ten before forcing myself away.

That night, I lay awake thinking about Samantha laughing too loudly in an Italian restaurant while Ryan watched her like she was the most interesting person in the room. I remembered telling Tessa I had found a normal one and believing normal meant safe. Somewhere between that first date and the night I ran barefoot through the dark, Ryan taught me how wrong I had been.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand.

I grabbed it immediately.

No number appeared.

The message came from an email address made of random letters and numbers, and it contained no words. There was only a photograph.

Samantha Reed stood outside that Italian restaurant eight years ago, smiling at someone behind the camera.

Ryan had never shown me that picture.

And I had never known anyone had taken it.