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I let myself into her apartment at four in the morning with the key I had cut six months ago. I closed the door behind me. I locked it from the inside the way she would. I set the salt back across her threshold, grain for grain. I had done this six times. I had learned the way the apartment breathes at four in the morning. I walked past her wine glass still on the side table. Past her daughter's locked door. I stood at the foot of her bed. She was asleep on her stomach, one arm under the pillow, hair in her face, one knee bent. The duvet had slid down to the curve of her hip. She was beautiful in a way that did not require her to be awake. I set the peonies on her nightstand — the kind she likes, the kind she has been smiling at her door for three months thinking they meant nothing. They mean everything. I crouched at the foot of the bed and moved one strand of hair off her cheek with a single knuckle. I did not breathe. I kissed two fingers. I pressed them to the wood of her headboard above her head, careful not to touch her skin. I have wanted to for nine months. ❤️‍🔥 Someone's been inside my apartment. My secret admirer has been leaving flowers at my door for three months. Romantic, right? Except this morning, while I'm in the shower, he upgrades his game plan to breaking and entering. I step out at six-forty — towel barely hanging on, hair dripping down my back — and stop dead in the bathroom doorway. The flowers are on my bed. Not near my bed. Not beside my bed. On my bed. A dozen white roses wrapped in butcher paper, arranged like a body at a crime scene. Which, given my profession, is either deeply ironic or deeply disturbing. A folded card waits against the stems like a confession. My brain runs the math — window, door, hallway — and every equation comes back wrong. Three months of this. Tulips first, like he was testing the water. Then peonies. Then ranunculus. The card always said the same three words: Thinking of you. Sweet. Harmless. The kind of thing that makes you wonder if it's the shy IT guy from the fourth floor finally finding his courage. But those flowers stayed at the door, where flowers belong. These are on my bed. I reach for the Glock on the dresser before my mouth catches up. Nine years of homicide detective training: hands first, panic later. I clear the room like I'm clearing a scene. Closet. Behind the door. Under the bed. Behind the curtains. Nothing. I crouch and pick up the card with two fingers, evidence-style. The paper is heavy. Expensive. I unfold it. I know what you keep in the bottom drawer. I know what you do with it. Naughty girl. My stomach drops like an elevator with cut cables. The bottom drawer is six feet behind me, and its contents are a problem I've been quietly managing on the nights Ruby stays at my mother's. The number of people who should know what's in that drawer is exactly one — and she's currently standing in a towel with her hand on her service weapon, wondering if she's about to become a cautionary tale. The window is locked from the inside. I check twice. The deadbolt was set last night. I remember the double-thud when I came in, the sound I used to find comforting. Home. Contained. Safe. Funny how fast safety becomes a punchline. Read My Sweet Stalker now 🔥