Page 24 of Stalk

She rolls her eyes and leads me into the kitchen so we can set our stuff down. “It’s been less than a month.”

“Seriously?” I ask, because it’s felt like a lifetime.

“Yes, Ren. Remember? It was when I was freaking out about my chemistry final and you came over and helped me study all night.”

“Oh, you’re right. I think I blocked that night from my memory. Your flash cards made my head hurt.”

“Color coding helps me retain information!”

“Pink highlighters arenoteasy on the eyes,” I grumble. “Especially afterfive hours.”

We chat in the kitchen for a while and catch up while we dish out our plates of takeout. Cleo stopped by our favorite Chinese restaurant and got all of our go-to dishes—egg rolls, crab rangoon, a shit ton of chicken fried rice, and Chinese donuts.

Once our plates are loaded, we make our way outside onto my small back patio. When the weather is nice, it’s our favorite spot to sit, eat, and catch up. Though it’s humid and warm today, it’s not too bad for early June. Once July rolls around, I’m sure it’ll be unbearable.

We chat while we eat. I don’t want to unload all of my personal shit onto her right off the bat. Even though I know she’s expecting it from me, and I know she wouldn’t care, I still feel like it’s the decent thing to do. So, we eat and she fills me in onhow she and her partner, Liam, are doing. It warms my heart to hear that they’re doing well, seeing as they went through a rough patch a little while ago. Then, she tells me she passed all of her finals with flying colors. She just finished up her junior year at Georgetown, and she’s on track to start applying to medical schools this next year. I’m happy for her, but despite that, I can’t help but feel a little jealous, too. I’d give anything to be in college. If my life hadn’t been stolen by Catherine, I would have just graduated myself. I push those ugly feelings down and congratulate her.

Our food is consumed in record time, and we sip on a couple of sodas while we lounge.

“So, are you going to start talking about what’s going on now, or are we going to keep dancing around the subject?”

I chew on my bottom lip and stare at the few trees that are scattered throughout my small backyard. The thing about Cleo is that she’s the only one who knows what I actuallydofor a living. Not that I have any other friends or family around, but still. When Catherine flipped my life upside down and backwards, she made it clear that Cleo was allowed to know, so long as she was briefed by Catherine about the secrecy of it all. Catherine isn’t dumb enough to think I’d keep all this from the one person in my life that I hold dear. After that, Cleo had to sign a shit ton of paperwork and agree to the rules. For instance, we’re notsupposedto talk about my job. Especially not over the phone or text, etcetera. And if we absolutely have to talk about it, I have to use certain language to cover our asses, because you simply never know who’s listening. Even though we’re safe at home, there’s always a possibility that my house is bugged. With Catherine, I’m pretty certain that there are bugs in my home, but I haven’t checked. There’s nothing I can do about those. On top of that, you never know if I’ve been found out by someone—Mattia,for instance—so I have to be careful.

I sigh, and decide I may as well get into it. “I ran into a complication at the office last night.”

“Okay.” Cleo leans back in her chair, crosses her legs, and looks at me with a concerned expression.

“I went out for a field assignment, and ran into a guy who was supposedly assigned the same…project.”

Cleo’s face twists up into confusion. “That’s new. Do things like that happen?”

I shake my head. “No. They don’t.”

“How did that go down?”

Mattia flashes in my mind. His aggravatingly good looks make me swallow roughly. His overall annoyance and nonchalance about taking lives, though, spikes my anxiety. I spend a while giving Cleo the play by play while leaving her with as little detail as possible. I don’t tell heranythingabout the assignment or Helena. But I do tell her about how Mattia took me by surprise, how we completed the assignment together—a lie—but again, I have to cover my ass if Catherine is listening, and the aftermath. I want to tell her about what happened once we left the scene of our crime, so I run inside and grab a pen and a piece of paper. Once I’m back outside, I write down how Mattia forced me to take him to a public place to “talk,” how we exchanged names, and how he gave me the ominous business card.

When Cleo is done reading, she passes the note back to me. I spill whatever is left of my soda onto the piece of paper until you can’t read the ink, then rip it up and toss it onto my plate.

“So what happened when you told her?”

I don’t need clarification on who she’s insinuating. “It was weird.”

“Weird?”

I nod. “I don’t know how to explain it.” I drop my voice to a whisper so I don’t have to write out another note. Our camerasand mics are good, but they aren’t that good at picking up small sounds. I lean into Cleo. “She was her usual self. Mad and frustrated and annoyed, but at one point, her face lookedwrong. Like… like she was shocked to see me.”

Cleo shrugs. “Maybe she was just in shock generally. Like you said, this is a rare occurrence,” she whispers back.

Maybe so. For some reason, my gut tells me otherwise. “I think I need to use the business card.”

“What?” she whisper-screams. “Why? She told you not to?—”

“I know. I know. But maybe he’s gotten some information from his company about it. Now that I’m left in the dark and my work has been paused, I need clarity.”

Cleo nods slowly, mulling over my words. “If you think that’s best, then do it. Just, please, for the love of fuck, becareful.”

“I will. I promise.”

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