Chapter 2 - THE COUNTDOWN IN THE DARK
The creak of the bedroom door hinge sounded like a rusted saw dragging across metal.
I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing my face deeper into the carpet, forcing my body to remain as still as a corpse. The glass beneath my chest dug into my skin, but I didn't dare shift an inch.
Through the gaps in my eyelashes, I saw the thick, shadowy outline of Trent step out of the bedroom frame. He was wearing only his dark jeans, his bare chest heavy and pale in the flashing red light of the liquor store sign. He smelled of stale beer, dry sweat, and cheap tobacco—a scent that had once made me feel secure, but now made my stomach turn with violent nausea.
He stopped in the doorway, scratching his stomach, his bloodshot eyes squinting into the dim living room.
"Clara?" he grunted. His voice was thick with sleep, deep and gravelly.
I didn't answer. I kept my breathing shallow, holding the air in my lungs for as long as I could bear before letting it out in tiny, imperceptible exhales through my nose.
He took a heavy, barefoot step into the living room. His toe brushed against a piece of shattered glass, sending it skittering across the floor with a loud chink.
"Get up," he muttered, kicking a broken leg of the coffee table out of his path. "Stop playing dead, Clara. It’s annoying. Get up and get me a water."
Silence was my only response.
He let out a heavy, irritated sigh—the breath of a man inconvenience-bound by something he considered minor. He walked toward me, his bare feet making a soft, sticky sound against the carpet. He stopped right above me. I could see his scarred, calloused ankles inches from my face.
"I said, get up," he repeated, his tone dropping an octave, losing its sleepiness, gaining that dangerous, quiet edge that always preceded a blow.
He reached down, grabbing the fabric of my sweater near my neck, and yanked upward.
The movement pulled my broken ribs violently against each other. An involuntary, agonizing scream tore from my throat—a sound like a dying animal. Tears burst from my eyes, blinding me.
"Shut up!" Trent hissed, dropping me back onto the floor with a heavy thud. "Shut the hell up! You want the neighbors calling the cops again?"
I curled into a ball, my arms wrapped tightly around my ribs, weeping silently into the carpet, my chest heaving with unstoppable dry heaves that sent blinding needles of pain straight into my lungs.
Trent stood over me, his hands resting on his hips. He wasn't angry anymore; he was annoyed. "Look at you. You’re a mess. Look what you made me do to this place. We’re gonna lose the deposit on this damn carpet."
He nudged my hip with his foot—not a kick, but a callous, dismissive tap, like testing a bag of trash to see if it was full.
"I'm going to the bathroom," he said, turning toward the hallway. "When I come back out, you better have this glass cleaned up. I mean it, Clara. I’m not stepping on glass in my own house."
He walked down the narrow hallway, his heavy steps retreating toward the bathroom at the back of the apartment.
Click. The bright yellow bathroom light flickered on beneath the door frame. The sound of running water filled the apartment.
I lay on the floor, my heart hammering against my fractured chest like a trapped bird.
I looked at the stove clock visible through the doorway of the tiny kitchen. The red digital numbers read 3:14 AM.
The text message had arrived at 3:08 AM.
Ten minutes.
Six minutes had passed. Four minutes left.
Who was coming?
As the shock began to recede, leaving only raw, cold reality in its wake, the absolute absurdity of what I had done crashed down on me. I had shared my exact location with an unknown number. For all I knew, it was a prankster, a criminal, or a predator far worse than Trent. Chicago was a massive, dangerous city. People didn't race across town at three in the morning to save strangers who texted the wrong number. They ignored it. They blocked it. They went back to sleep.
Nobody is coming, I thought, a tear running down my nose and dropping onto the carpet. You're completely alone.
In the bathroom, the water stopped running.
The door opened, and Trent walked back into the hallway, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He stopped in the narrow hall, looking down at my motionless body.
"You haven't moved an inch," he said, his voice cold, flat, and menacing. "You're really pushing it tonight, Clara."
He stepped over the broken furniture, walking slowly, deliberately toward me. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and flicked a metal lighter. The tiny orange flame illuminated his sharp jaw, his thin lips, and the cold, empty darkness in his eyes.
He took a drag, blowing the blue smoke toward the ceiling.
"You think somebody's gonna save you?" he asked, a bitter, cruel smile spreading across his face. "You think your brother's coming? Ben doesn't give a damn about you. Nobody does. You've got no one, Clara. Just me."
He stepped closer, standing right beside my head. He lowered the glowing, red tip of his cigarette until it was inches from my cheek.
"Now," he whispered, "are you gonna clean up this glass, or do I need to break the other side?"
I squeezed my eyes shut. I felt the radiant heat of the cigarette coal against my skin. I braced myself for the pain, accepting that this was how my life ended—in a dingy apartment on 14th Street, under the boots of a man who claimed to love me.
Then, from the stairwell outside our apartment door, came a sound.
It wasn't a loud noise. It wasn't the thunderous pounding of police boots or the shouting of sirens.
It was a soft, steady, metallic clink. The sound of a heavy key being inserted into the lock of our front door.
Trent froze. The cigarette stopped inches from my face. He turned his head slowly toward the doorway, his brow furrowing in confusion.
"What the hell..." Trent muttered.
Our front door had three locks: a standard handle lock, a deadbolt, and a heavy brass chain.
Click. The handle lock disengaged.
Click. The deadbolt slid back.
Trent took two quick steps back from me, his posture instantly shifting from casual cruelty to aggressive, defensive alert. "Hey! Who's out there?" he shouted toward the door.
No one answered.
Slowly, smoothly, the heavy wooden front door swung open into the dark apartment.
Standing in the hallway frame, illuminated from behind by the dull yellow light of the stairwell, was a figure.
He was tall—at least six-foot-three—wearing a dark, tailored woolen overcoat that reached past his knees, dark trousers, and polished black leather boots. His hands were tucked casually into the pockets of his coat. His face was obscured by the deep shadow of his coat collar, but I could see his eyes.
They were a pale, striking gray—completely unreadable, utterly devoid of fear, and utterly devoid of mercy.
He didn't look like a paramedic. He didn't look like a police officer.
He looked like a shadow that had taken human form.
The stranger stood in the doorway, his pale eyes taking in the scene in less than half a second: the shattered glass, the overturned furniture, the blood on the baseboards, and me, lying half-dead on the floor.
May you like
Then his eyes drifted up to Trent.
The stranger didn't speak. He stepped into the apartment, closing the front door behind him with a soft, gentle click, shutting out the stairwell light and plunging the room into the pulsing red shadows of the liquor store sign.
