The alert comes through as I am reviewing a contract I have already read five times without absorbing a single line of it. A soft ping from my desktop dashboard, followed by a red notification that flashes across the corner of the screen.
Suspicious individual detected near monitored residence.
Location: Elena Hart.
My pulse jumps before my mind even processes the rest. I click the alert, and the screen fills with the grainy surveillance clip from earlier. The figure stands across the street from Elena’s building, motionless, half hidden by the shadow of a lamppost. Hood up. Shoulders stiff. Body angled directly toward her apartment window.
I zoom in. The pixels distort. The image breaks apart into digital blur.
The outline remains the same.
A watcher.
The more I zoom, the more the
