....3....
....THIRD PERSON'S POV....
Sapphire Savvron; What do you do when you witness a crime? Forget everything but the perpetrator's face.
His impossibly good looking face.
Everything that had happened still felt like a dream to Sapphire. She sat on the curb outside the diner, wrapped in a damp towel one of the paramedics had draped over her shoulders. Her whole body trembled, not just from the cold, but from everything that had happened.
The police swarmed the scene, their voices overlapping, questions, notes and flashlights that were almost blinding. Her co-workers were talking to them, faces pale, but she stayed quiet, shrinking further into herself. She couldn't risk saying something she wasn't supposed to.
But the fear, that sick, bone-deep, fear gnawed at her. He could be anywhere. Watching, listening and waiting for her.
Her fingers clutched the towel tighter, knuckles white. Every shadow seemed to twitch in the corner of her eye. Her breath stuttered in and out, shallow, fast. Her chest felt as if the air had turned to cement, heavy and hard.
The first responders moved around her, but her mind was spiraling, the panic climbing too fast. She barely noticed the transition, one moment she was on the curb, and the next she was staring at the fluorescent light and sterile white walls.
The hospital.
The tang of antiseptic filled her lungs. She was in a bed. Alone.
The emptiness settled in, waking up alone in an hospital bed with nobody to care for her. She had no one, she'd always known that.
Minutes later, the door opened. A nurse entered with soft steps, followed by a police officer, the same one who had crouched beside her at the diner.
"How are you feeling?" the nurse asked gently.
Sapphire couldn't answer. Words stuck in her throat. Her fear wasn't logical anymore. If she spoke, if she said the wrong thing, he would know.
The memory of him, the calm in his voice, the warmth of his smile, the way he had said her name, He had been close enough to touch. He had touched her, brushed her shoulder as if he owned the air around her. That fleeting ghost of contact still burned on her skin, a violation she couldn't shake.
She had to be quiet, the man she had met was a dangerous lunatic.
"Can you tell us what happened?" the officer asked.
She gave a small, vague nod. Detached and careful.
When he asked who had discovered the body, she repeated the line Ezra had drilled into her head, word for word.
The officer's pen paused. He studied her face, his gaze searching for cracks in the story she was barely holding together. Finally, he stepped back.
She reached out and grabbed his sleeve.
Her fingers trembled. The desperation in her grip made him pause, his eyes softening for a heartbeat. She glanced around the room, as if expecting someone to materialize out of the shadows.
"The nurse said I can leave," she whispered. Her voice was barely there. "But I…I don't have anyone to take me home."
The officer hesitated, something flickering behind his eyes. He noticed. She hadn't asked a single question about the scene, the murder, her boss. Most people would be frantic for answers.
But she already knew.
Sapphire forced herself to blink, to mimic shock belatedly. "What… what happened?"
"Your boss was murdered," he said, quiet and solemn.
Her eyes fluttered closed. She felt the tears before she could stop them.
She had already known. She had been there. But hearing it out loud dragged her back into the kitchen, to the wet slap of her shoes, the smell of iron, the blood clinging to her hands no matter how hard she rubbed them against the hospital blanket.
"Please…" she whispered. "…don't leave." The officer's jaw flexed, and after a moment, he nodded. He sat on the edge of the bed. There was a little assurance in his presence.
She felt like him leaving would leave her feeling naked and empty.
She wasn't sure if it was because he suspected something or if he simply understood her fear.
When they reached the hospital's parking lot, she froze, a chill running down her spine
That feeling again.
Eyes, watching.
Her throat went dry. She tried to rationalize it. It was just the anxiety, the trauma, the paranoia, but deep down, she knew better.
The feelings never faded.
Every turn, every sound, everything made her jump as if there was a meaning in every sound. When the officer left the car for just a moment to grab paperwork, her stomach turned.
What if he had planted something in here? A recorder? A tracker? What if Ezra had told him to?
The spiral tightened, sharp and suffocating.
When they finally reached her rundown apartment building, she hesitated at the door. She wanted to ask the officer to come inside, to stay, just for a moment, just until she could breathe again.
But that would be suspicious, suspicion meant questions, questions meant danger.
So she swallowed her fear and went inside alone.
The silence was thick. Her footsteps echoed too loud.
Her breathing quickened as the walls seemed to close in. Every creak of the old building felt amplified, every shadow seemed to twitch. She searched under the bed, behind the door, the closet.
Nothing, but the feeling didn't leave.
Then,
"Sapphire," a voice drawled.
The world tilted and her blood went cold, she turned slowly, her heart beat louder than the world.
There he was.
Ezra Thorns.
Leaning casually against her bedroom wall like he belonged there, like he'd been waiting.
That same disarming smile curved his lips, warm enough to make her stomach knot with something terrifyingly close to fascination.
"Miss me?" he murmured.