England 2008

It had gone on long enough. Aidan had been patient. She and Elsie and Belinda had gone on with their lives as normal for several weeks. Nothing had happened. Not a sighting, not even a creepy feeling on the back of her neck. The one investigator who had believed them was even beginning to question. She knew it whether he said it or not.

How did this fuckstick know? Why was it that every time the authorities were looking, that he didn't show up? Blake Ross was not just a run of the mill crazy stalker. There was more there. What had Elsie actually stepped in?

Naturally, the blonde thought that it meant everything was fine now. Aidan knew better. Belinda was somewhere in between. Enough time had passed that the big woman wanted to believe, but she was too jaded for hopefulness. 

With her ribs taped beneath her shirt from an unfortunate encounter with the steel stairs in her last match, Aidan ventured out of the flat alone. Elsie was still staying with them, and three people in the two-bedroom space was becoming more than Aidan could take. She and Belinda could sit in quiet for hours and do their own thing. Elsie... not so much.

Though it made her heart beat just a bit faster, she went to the coffee shop. She managed to get a latte and sit and drink it without incident. She chose a corner table that faced the door so that she could keep a constant vigil, but nothing came of it. There were some of the regulars, plenty of random customers. No Blake Ross, or whoever he was.

Even with all the “good” signs, she had lost the ability to feel confident. She wouldn't let her guard down again. A survey of the street outside yielded nothing unusual. She wasn't even sure what she was looking for. He had never just been standing there, waiting. She drew in a deep breath to keep her respiration regulated before heading to the corner.

The light turned before she got there, so she was forced to stand on the curb and wait for the signal to change again. While the two others that had also been waiting stepped right out as soon as it did, she even checked to be sure all the vehicles were stopped before stepping into the street. She passed three lanes uneventfully, but squealing tires brought her up short just before she stepped into the fourth, the final one before she would have reached the other side.

The front end of the run-of-the-mill sedan dipped with the hard braking as it eclipsed the crosswalk entirely. Aidan was about to shoot the driver a dirty look, but froze. “Blake” sneered back at her through the windshield. The engine revved, just daring her to step in front of him to finish crossing. The timer was ticking down as the light readied to change again.

Part of her told her to. Part of her wasn't going to let him make her go out of her way. The rest of her really didn't want to test whether or not she could dodge a car. She turned on her heel and dashed back the way she had come, hopping onto the sidewalk as traffic began to move again.

“Miss Carlisle?”

The investigator caught her arm before she could shove both hands into her hair. She blinked, surprised to see him there. ...He had been following her too, apparently, and she hadn't noticed him. It left her berating herself internally for being unobservant, even when she had been trying.

“That was him!”

Her voice as a little high pitched when she finally got the words out, and she hated the way it sounded.

“I saw the car, but I didn't see the plate, or the driver.”

Her heart dropped, and she almost went along with it. Fortunately, he still had her arm and was holding her up. Of course he hadn't seen anything.

“Come on, I'll walk you home.”

She had made it... twenty-seven minutes out of the flat for the day.

 

 

- - - - -

New York, January 8th, 2016

A feigned casual call to one of her brothers had told Aidan that her little ploy with Regina Winslow had worked. There was a quiet furor oversomething up in Rochester right now, but he didn't know what. She did, but she wasn't going to tell him that. She had played dumb and made jokes about what trivial things it could have been over. Part one of her unfinished multi-part plan was working nicely.

Maybe starting without an end in sight wasn't the best way to do things, but she felt like waiting around to act was a worse choice. Time stopped for no one. The world didn't wait for individuals to make decisions. So she had left Elsie at the condo and headed down to a small bookstore to pick up a translation guide. At least she had a part-two to work on, even if the end game was still hazy.

The book was tucked in the pocket inside her long coat so that she didn't have to carry it. Her collar was turned up, every last button done to shut out the chill. She was wearing gloves, but her hands were stuffed in her pockets anyway. It was a cold day, everyone's breath coming in puffs of steam on the air.

The little white man replaced the orange hand and she started across the street. There was a crowd of five or so young men heading toward her, and no one else walking in her direction, so she edged toward the intersection side of the crosswalk to give them room to get past. They were polite and moved over as well, prompting her to offer a thankful smile.

The sound of tires sliding on ice registered in her brain almost too late. She looked up to see the expensive black car closing in on her with locked-up wheels from the driver overriding the anti-lock brakes in a panic. Instead of freezing, she moved faster, chancing running on ice rather than getting sideswiped.

It wasn't quite enough. The fender clipped her leg as her other foot hit the curb. Pain exploded through her elbow as she landed hard and rolled once. There were a few startled cries from nearby pedestrians, all who froze for a moment in shock before some started toward her.

Aidan pushed herself up into a sitting position, eyes locking on the car. She was about to unleash a string of obscenities at the idiot, but they all caught in her throat as the window rolled down. Handsome features and chipped-toothed smile, all as recognizable as the last time she had seen them more than seven years ago. She could barely breathe.

“...You're dead... I watched you...”

“Must be why you look like you've seen a ghost, love.”

The window rolled up and the car surged through the intersection along with the rest. Several people yelled for him to stop, but of course he didn't. She pushed away all the hands trying to help her as she got to her feet. Her leg hurt, but she could stand.

Aidan shoved through the concerned crowd and ran rather than walked. She was out of breath, lungs aching, arm and leg in pain when the door to the condo slammed shut behind her. She threw her coat onto the couch after ripping her phone out of the pocket.

She hesitated for a moment or two. She shouldn't. She knew. She had already tested burned bridges once in the last few days. But she needed someone that had more skill than she did. Biting the inside of her lip, she let her thumb hit the call button.

But the answer never came. It just rang, and rang, and rang... She collapsed onto the couch and ended the call before voice mail could pick up. There was a knot in her throat, but she refused to panic. She refused to so much as let her eyes burn.