Page 19 of Tides of Change
I paid the cashier and moved to the pickup counter as Cooper worked. I couldn’t help the tug of disappointment that Garrett wasn’t here. It was probably for the best—how could I explain why I’d turned down his invitation without unraveling into a mess of evasions?
When Cooper placed the plate and latte on the counter, the scents hit me—warm bread, tangy pesto, the earthy sweetness of cinnamon and nutmeg. “Thanks,” I murmured. The simple act of holding the warm cup in my hands brought a flicker of calm.
I carried my lunch to a small table near the window and tucked myself into the corner so that passersby would barely notice me. The sandwich was every bit as satisfying as it looked, and I devoured it with a focus that bordered on ravenous. The latte, sweet and spiced, was like a balm against the nerves still simmering beneath the surface.
After finishing the sandwich, I pulled out my phone to check my author email account, the latte cradled in one hand. Most of the messages were typical fan emails—praise for my books, questions about my writing process. My assistant would handle them later.
But my finger froze over one particular email, from EyeSeeYou. My blood ran so cold no latte could warm it.
You can’t escape me.
The words stared back at me, ominous in their simplicity. My mouth went dry, and my pulse slammed into overdrive. The air in the café seemed to thin, the once comforting scents now cloying and suffocating.
I shot a glance at the street outside, my gaze darting over every figure. A car rolled by, its driver oblivious. A woman pushed a stroller, her pace unhurried. A shopkeeper swept her storefront with lazy strokes.
No one looked at me. Yet my skin prickled as though a thousand unseen eyes were trained on me.
I shot to my feet. The chair scraped across the wood floor and nearly toppled. The sound was loud enough to draw Cooper’s attention.
His brows knit together in concern. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I croaked, my voice tight and unconvincing. “Gotta go.” I quickly cleared my table.
My steps sped up as I left the coffee shop, and I scanned the street with every turn of my head. By the time I reached my car, I was practically jogging.
My errands couldn’t wait, though, no matter how much I wanted to retreat. At the post office, I felt exposed under the fluorescent lights, and my heart raced as I picked up the mail forwarded to my PO box.
A Priority Mail Express envelope sat at the bottom of the stack, having arrived sometime last week. My breath hitched the moment I spotted it.
My name—Ethan Cole—and address in Brooklyn were printed neatly on the label, with the post office’s forwarding address label underneath. The return address on the envelope was from a real estate company in Brooklyn.
My grip tightened around the cardboard envelope as a cold current slid down my spine. I stepped outside, heart thudding, the sounds of gulls and passing cars suddenly distant.
Hands unsteady, I tore the envelope open.
Inside was a glossy flyer from a real estate agency I didn’t recognize. The kind you’d find stacked near the front desk of an apartment building—professional, sleek, harmless-looking. But across the top, scrawled in large, loopy handwriting, was a handwritten message:
We have a customer interested in buying your apartment. Please give me a call.
This had to be another message, disguised as something mundane. Like the gardener’s flyer, left just so. But I didn’t have any real estate agents in my Jake Slate books. There was no fictional breadcrumb this time. Still…I didn’t trust it.
I yanked out my phone and Googled the company’s name.
A website loaded. Clean, modern, real. Full of smiling headshots and staged living rooms. I found the agent’s profile, her phone number, her office address. Everything matched.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
Legitimate. A coincidence. Real estate business as usual.
But as I tucked the flyer back into the envelope, unease still lingered.
I hastened to my next errand. The grocery store was no better than the post office—every aisle felt too open, every fellow shopper a potential threat.
When I finally locked my front door behind me, my knees nearly buckled with relief. The house wrapped around me like a cocoon, but even its walls felt thinner. I leaned against the door, my breaths ragged and uneven.
The email had shattered my fragile sense of security.
The blinking cursor on my screen seemed to flash a warning. I’d been staring at the same unfinished sentence for nearly an hour, my thoughts too tangled to form anything coherent. The story was there, but it was hiding beneath layers of anxiety and the oppressive weight of the previous day’s email from EyeSeeYou.
