Page 25 of Lights Out

I nearly dropped my phone. No, he didn’t.

Another chime came through. Someone, not him, had responded to my comment.

UM, MA’AM, HE LIKED YOUR COMMENT???

Someone else wrote,OMG, SHE IS THE ONLY PERSON HE FOLLOWS.

I reared back from my phone as the responses started pouring in. Uh-oh. What had I done? And what had he just done by singling me out like this?

My phone started pinging so fast that it sounded like the beginning of an EDM song.

Forgive him, you monster.

What is he like in real life?

Are you dating him???

So this is what jealous rage feels like.

How’s it feel to be the most hated woman on the internet right now?

If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.

I quickly exited the app and muted it through my settings. Nope. Not dealing with this shitshow right now. I still had the second half of my shift to get through, and tonight was already bad enough because we currently had both a rape victim and her attacker in the hospital after he’d gotten caught in the act. The woman’s family found out he was here, and we were having a hell of a time keeping them from killing him.

Not that I could blame them.

It was good that I wasn’t the woman’s nurse because, despite all my training and the ethics agreements I’d signed, I’d be tempted to slip her husband the man’s room number. Only the thought of going to jail might stop me, but I’d learned so muchabout myself in the past twenty-four hours that I wondered if even that would be enough.

Was I more like the Faceless Man than I realized? Between contemplating whether or not to act as an accomplice to homicide and choosing to go the vigilante justice route instead of reporting my newfound stalker to the police, I was heading down a dark path. Maybe it was time to take a few weeks off work and clear my head. I hadn’t taken so much as a sick day in…two years? No, that couldn’t be right.

I frowned, thinking back. Holy shit, it was. The last time I missed a shift was thanks to that bout of food poisoning from a local deli that had since, unsurprisingly, closed down.

Two fucking years of trauma nursing without a vacation. Yikes. Yeah, I needed to fix that. No wonder my head was so messed up lately.

Well, that was also partly thanks to the Faceless Man. Was he watching me even now through the hospital security cameras? Probably not, but just in case he was, I flipped the bird at the one in the corner of the breakroom.

My phone chimed with a text message.

I pulled it up to see an unknown number and a single word:Rude.

I nearly choked. He’d hacked into the hospital cameras. How good did someone have to be to pull that off? How obsessed did someone have to be to go this far?

And why, for the love of god, did that make me feel special instead of freaked out?

I shouldn’t have responded. I really shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t stop myself from typing,Are you watching me right now?

Maaaybe,he said, followed by a wink emoji.

I ground my teeth, trying to ignore the fact that, for a stalker, he seemed more cute than creepy in our exchanges so far.

You are breaking so many laws,I wrote back.

And you don’t even know the half of what I’m up to,he replied.

Listen, you, UGH, I don’t even know what to call you!

How about boo?he wrote back.You know, because of the –this was followed by three little ghost emojis meant to represent his mask.

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