Ad copy

I have a track record. Eleven years married. One daughter. One ex-husband who turned out to be a child killer they brought to my own precinct for interrogation. One badge. One closure rate above the precinct average. Zero men allowed in my kitchen since the spring I walked out of booth three. Nine years of homicide work has taught me to read men by the way they sit in chairs. Two years of celibacy has taught me to read myself by the contents of the locked drawer next to my bed — the one nobody on earth has access to. Just me. Until this morning. This morning a stranger left a dozen white roses on my duvet. The card named every item in the drawer. He's been at my door with flowers for three months, signing Thinking of you. He's been inside my apartment for at least six. He doesn't want to hurt me. He's been fixing things — the washing machine I'd given up on, the fridge seal I'd been mopping. He stocks my daughter's cereal. He leaves notes that say you skipped breakfast. I have spent twenty years cataloging the creative ways men hurt women. He's about to teach me a new one. He cares. 🖤 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 🔥