Page 8 of Drawn to Death
Back at the drawing table, I put the blank sheet of paper dead center, lining it up with the edges, corners sharp. I lie the charcoal pencil across the top, a neat horizontal, slicing the white space in half. It’s perfect. Deliberate. There’s no way to miss it.
I picture him coming back, seeing it right away. Will he get it? Will he panic? Or will he do what I want most of all: pick up the pencil and draw?
I put the new camera in the bedroom, nudging it to cover the blind spot. Check the bug under the coffee table. Walk through the apartment one last time, making sure there’s nothing left behind except my gift.
I mean to leave, but I linger at the table, staring at the blank paper. Something tugs at me, a stupid urge to leave more. A note. A sign. Something real. Something that points to me.
Professional distance, gone just like that. I pick up the pencil and make a mark in the lower corner. Not a letter. Not even a shape. Just a little dent. Barely there. A starting point. An invitation.
Then I’m out, slipping through the window and down the fire escape, gone before my shadow can catch up.
In my car, I open my laptop and pull up the feeds from Quell’s apartment. All I can do now is wait. Watch.
He comes back at exactly 12:07 PM, right on time. I watch him come in, careful, eyes darting around, shoulders tight. He checks the lock, the windows, every corner. He started doing that after he noticed me. Then he sees it.
The paper.
The pencil.
He stops, hand still on the doorknob, just standing there. Doesn’t move, doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. Then, after a few seconds, he edges closer to the drawing table, circling itlike it might bite him. His fingers hover above the paper, not touching, just feeling the air.
I lean in closer to my screen. My chest feels tight. Will he call the cops? Run for it? Shred the whole thing and pretend it never happened?
Nope. None of that. Quell just pulls out the chair and sits. He picks up the pencil. Turns it in his fingers, testing it, feeling the balance. Then, suddenly, he draws.
The camera angle sucks. I can’t see what he’s putting down. All I get is his face, his hands, the way his shoulders move as he works. He looks… locked in. Not scared anymore. The pencil moves fast, sure, almost cocky, then slows for the finer parts. His breathing gets quieter. His shoulders drop. He actually looks relaxed.
I switch to the overhead camera, the one pointed straight at the table. The drawing is coming together, with a pair of eyes staring right out of the paper. My eyes. So accurate it gives me goosebumps. He’s drawing exactly what I want. He’s drawing me.
But it isn’t how I look in photographs, or in the mirror. It’s how I look in his head, through whatever weird link ties us together. The angle is wrong, tilted, like he’s looking up at me from below, from the place where someone waits for mercy. My eyes in the sketch are cold. I know that coldness, but I’ve never seen it staring back at me.
He keeps going, dragging the pencil along my jaw, shaping my mouth, darkening the spot where my collar hits my neck. Little details no one else should know. Things I’d never let anyone see.
I touch the screen, following the lines of the portrait as it builds itself. Something tight and new unfolds in my chest. I should feel raw, maybe even invaded. But I don’t. I feel… seen. Like really seen. Maybe for the first time ever.
“Quell,” I say. Just his name, soft. Not the target. Not the artist. Not anything else I’ve called him. Just Quell.
He can’t hear me. But when I say it, his hand stops above the paper. He lifts his head, listening. Then he smiles, a small, crooked thing, not afraid or tired or giving up. Just knowing.
He keeps drawing, adding shadows, highlights, making the portrait breathe, one careful stroke at a time. When he finishes, he leans back, looking at what he’s done with a kind of cold focus. Then, he does something I don’t expect. He turns the sketch toward the camera above his desk, the one he shouldn’t know is there, and holds it up, like he’s showing me. Just me.
My own face stares back. Perfect. Unnervingly perfect. But that isn’t why I stop breathing. It’s the words at the bottom, written in tiny, sharp letters:
I know you’re watching.
I shut the laptop. Disconnect. My hands don’t shake, but something else does. This isn’t about collecting intel anymore. It isn’t about the job. It’s something I don’t have a word for.
“I should have killed him already,” but even as I say it, I know I won’t. Can’t. Not until I figure out what this is. Not until I understand how he sees through me.
Not until I figure out why part of me wants him to.
Chapter six
Quell
Iwake up certain someone has been in my apartment again. Not the faint echo of a dream, not a trick of sleep, but something more. The air shifts, different somehow, and it crawls over my skin. My eyes open to the same old ceiling, dawn light slanting through the blinds, but it isn’t the same. My body knows before my mind: someone has touched my things, breathed in here, stood exactly where I am lying now. And weirdly, under the pulse of being invaded, I feel this strange, empty calm. I’ve never been this paranoid before, but while I can understand losing pieces of paper, I can’t explain them magically appearing on my notebook while I’m out.
Unless I put it there myself without realizing.
