Zoey nearly missed him entirely — she was halfway to the mailboxes, thinking about nothing more complicated than whether she had any clean mugs left, when the elevator opened and Marcus stepped out, tailored coat as sharp as ever, phone already halfway to his ear before he registered her presence.
He paused when he saw her. Something in his expression shifted — a quick, assessing flicker, the specific look of a man cataloguing a new piece of information.
"You're the neighbor," he said, not quite a question. "Leo mentioned you. Briefly."
"Zoey," she said, extending a hand he didn't take, opting instead for a brief, dismissive nod that made the gesture feel foolish in retrospect.
"Marcus." He studied her for a beat too long, the kind of scrutiny that made Zoey feel, uncomfortably, like she was being evaluated for something she hadn't agreed to be assessed on. "You two seem close."
"We're friends," Zoey said, which felt, even as she said it, like an understatement she wasn't quite ready to correct in front of a stranger.
"Mm." Marcus's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Well. I hope you're getting the full picture. Leo's very — charming, in the moment. Good at making people feel like they matter." A pause, deliberate, weighted. "Ask him about Nancy sometime. Interesting history there."
He said it lightly, almost as an afterthought, already turning toward the door, phone finally reaching his ear, leaving Zoey standing by the mailboxes with a name she'd never heard before lodged uncomfortably in her chest.
Nancy.
She told herself it meant nothing. People had exes. Leo was thirty-something and reasonably attractive and had presumably dated before she'd moved in across the hall; there was nothing inherently sinister about the existence of a woman named Nancy in his past.
And yet the way Marcus had said it — light, careless, clearly designed to plant exactly the kind of doubt now blooming uncomfortably in her chest — made it impossible to simply let the name go.
She went back up to her apartment and tried, for a solid hour, to work. It didn't take. The cursor blinked at her with the particular judgment of a document that knew perfectly well its author wasn't actually thinking about plot structure. Every few minutes her mind drifted back to the hallway, to Marcus's careful, needling delivery, to the specific weight he'd put on the phrase interesting history, like he'd chosen the words precisely to leave the door open just wide enough for her imagination to climb through.
She told herself, more than once, that this was exactly the kind of manufactured doubt a man like Marcus would enjoy planting — a small, cheap cruelty dressed up as concern, the sort of thing someone said not because they cared about Zoey's wellbeing but because it cost him nothing and might, if she let it, cause a very satisfying amount of damage.
Knowing this didn't stop the name from circling.
By early evening, restless and unable to concentrate, she found herself standing near her cracked window, watching Leo's apartment across the street with an attention that felt, uncomfortably, like the old habit resurfacing under new clothes — not the frantic, thriller-plot paranoia of two months ago, but something quieter and, in its own way, more unsettling: the plain, human fear of a person who has finally let herself want something, discovering there might be a part of it she doesn't yet understand.
She caught fragments through the open window — not eavesdropping, exactly, she told herself, simply present while sound happened to travel — Leo's voice, tight in a way she rarely heard from him, another voice she recognized as Marcus's, cooler, needling.
"—not the same as last time, Marcus, and I'd appreciate if you didn't bring her into this—"
"I'm just saying, history has a way of repeating. Nancy said some very similar things, if I recall, before she—"
The rest was lost to the closing of a door, sharp and final, and Zoey stood at her own window for a long moment afterward, heart beating with a discomfort that had nothing to do with suspicion of danger and everything to do with a sudden, sharp fear of losing something she'd only recently let herself want.
She sat down on the edge of her bed, turning the fragment over in her mind. Not the same as last time. Before she— Before she what? Left him? Hurt him? Said something true about him that he still hadn't fully recovered from?
She thought, unwillingly, of her own history — of Adrian, of the specific, careful way she'd learned to read warning signs into ordinary things, and wondered, with a discomfort she didn't enjoy examining, whether she was doing exactly that now: taking one half-heard sentence from a man she didn't like or trust, and building an entire architecture of doubt around it, the way she'd once built an entire case file around a misheard hand gesture and an ambiguous notebook entry.
You did this before, she reminded herself. You built a whole murder theory out of nothing. Don't do it again just because the doubt feels smaller this time.
It was a fair point. It didn't entirely help.
She busied herself making dinner she didn't really want, half-listening for any sound from across the hall, and it was nearly eight when a knock came at her door — Leo, holding out a book she'd lent him weeks ago and clearly forgotten about, his usual easy warmth dimmed by something he was visibly working hard to keep contained.
"Hey," he said, and even the greeting sounded slightly effortful, like he'd had to reach for the lightness rather than simply having it.
"Hey." Zoey took the book, studying him carefully. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Leo said, too quickly, the smile he offered not quite reaching his eyes. "Just work stuff. Marcus being Marcus."
"He came by again today," Zoey said, watching his face for a reaction. "In the lobby. Said something about — Nancy?"
Something flickered across Leo's expression — not anger, exactly, more like a door being carefully, deliberately closed. "He talks too much," he said, with a short, humorless laugh that didn't match the tension still visible in his shoulders. "It's not — it's old stuff. Not really worth getting into tonight."
"Okay," Zoey said, though the word came out smaller than she meant it to, and she heard, in her own voice, an echo of every time Leo had gently pressed a door and waited for her to open it on her own timeline rather than forcing it — and felt, uncomfortably, the shoe now on the other foot.
He lingered a moment at her door like he wanted to say something more, then seemed to think better of it. "I'll let you get back to writing," he said instead, and left before she could push further.
Zoey stood in her doorway holding a book she barely remembered lending, turning the name Nancy over and over in her mind, feeling, for the first time since the notebook and the closet and the entire absurd beginning of all this, that there might genuinely be something Leo was keeping from her — not a body in a locked room, not some elaborate criminal enterprise, but something quieter, older, and somehow more frightening precisely because it was real, because it belonged to an actual, lived history rather than a plot she'd invented in her own head.
She thought about knocking on his door again, asking outright, the way she'd once torn through his apartment looking for evidence with far less right to know anything about him at all. It felt strange, now, to have earned the actual right to ask a real question, and to find herself too careful, too aware of the fragility of what they'd built, to use it.
She didn't write anything in her notebook that night. She sat with it closed on her desk for a long time instead, thinking about how strange it was that the thing frightening her now wasn't some imagined danger at all, but the very ordinary, very human possibility that the person she'd let herself fall for carried an old wound she hadn't yet been trusted with — and the quieter, harder question underneath that: whether she had done anything, yet, to actually earn that trust.
She lay awake a long while, wondering what history could make a man like Leo go so carefully, deliberately quiet, and terrified, in a way she hadn't expected to feel again so soon, of what she might find if she finally asked — not because she thought the answer would reveal a monster, but because some part of her, still healing from an old wound of her own, understood exactly how much it could hurt to watch someone you loved flinch away from a door you badly wanted them to open.
You've reached the end of this chapter
Zoey nearly missed him entirely — she was halfway to the mailboxes, thinking about nothing more complicated than whether she had any clean mugs left, when the elevator opened and Marcus stepped out, tailored coat as sharp as ever, phone already halfway to his ear before he registered her presence.
He paused when he saw her. Something in his expression shifted — a quick, assessing flicker, the specific look of a man cataloguing a new piece of information.
"You're the neighbor," he said, not quite a question. "Leo mentioned you. Briefly."
"Zoey," she said, extending a hand he didn't take, opting instead for a brief, dismissive nod that made the gesture feel foolish in retrospect.
"Marcus." He studied her for a beat too long, the kind of scrutiny that made Zoey feel, uncomfortably, like she was being evaluated for something she hadn't agreed to be assessed on. "You two seem close."
"We're friends," Zoey said, which felt, even as she said it, like an understatement she wasn't quite ready to correct in front of a stranger.
"Mm." Marcus's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Well. I hope you're getting the full picture. Leo's very — charming, in the moment. Good at making people feel like they matter." A pause, deliberate, weighted. "Ask him about Nancy sometime. Interesting history there."
He said it lightly, almost as an afterthought, already turning toward the door, phone finally reaching his ear, leaving Zoey standing by the mailboxes with a name she'd never heard before lodged uncomfortably in her chest.
Nancy.
She told herself it meant nothing. People had exes. Leo was thirty-something and reasonably attractive and had presumably dated before she'd moved in across the hall; there was nothing inherently sinister about the existence of a woman named Nancy in his past.
And yet the way Marcus had said it — light, careless, clearly designed to plant exactly the kind of doubt now blooming uncomfortably in her chest — made it impossible to simply let the name go.
She went back up to her apartment and tried, for a solid hour, to work. It didn't take. The cursor blinked at her with the particular judgment of a document that knew perfectly well its author wasn't actually thinking about plot structure. Every few minutes her mind drifted back to the hallway, to Marcus's careful, needling delivery, to the specific weight he'd put on the phrase interesting history, like he'd chosen the words precisely to leave the door open just wide enough for her imagination to climb through.
She told herself, more than once, that this was exactly the kind of manufactured doubt a man like Marcus would enjoy planting — a small, cheap cruelty dressed up as concern, the sort of thing someone said not because they cared about Zoey's wellbeing but because it cost him nothing and might, if she let it, cause a very satisfying amount of damage.
Knowing this didn't stop the name from circling.
By early evening, restless and unable to concentrate, she found herself standing near her cracked window, watching Leo's apartment across the street with an attention that felt, uncomfortably, like the old habit resurfacing under new clothes — not the frantic, thriller-plot paranoia of two months ago, but something quieter and, in its own way, more unsettling: the plain, human fear of a person who has finally let herself want something, discovering there might be a part of it she doesn't yet understand.
She caught fragments through the open window — not eavesdropping, exactly, she told herself, simply present while sound happened to travel — Leo's voice, tight in a way she rarely heard from him, another voice she recognized as Marcus's, cooler, needling.
"—not the same as last time, Marcus, and I'd appreciate if you didn't bring her into this—"
"I'm just saying, history has a way of repeating. Nancy said some very similar things, if I recall, before she—"
The rest was lost to the closing of a door, sharp and final, and Zoey stood at her own window for a long moment afterward, heart beating with a discomfort that had nothing to do with suspicion of danger and everything to do with a sudden, sharp fear of losing something she'd only recently let herself want.
She sat down on the edge of her bed, turning the fragment over in her mind. Not the same as last time. Before she— Before she what? Left him? Hurt him? Said something true about him that he still hadn't fully recovered from?
She thought, unwillingly, of her own history — of Adrian, of the specific, careful way she'd learned to read warning signs into ordinary things, and wondered, with a discomfort she didn't enjoy examining, whether she was doing exactly that now: taking one half-heard sentence from a man she didn't like or trust, and building an entire architecture of doubt around it, the way she'd once built an entire case file around a misheard hand gesture and an ambiguous notebook entry.
You did this before, she reminded herself. You built a whole murder theory out of nothing. Don't do it again just because the doubt feels smaller this time.
It was a fair point. It didn't entirely help.
She busied herself making dinner she didn't really want, half-listening for any sound from across the hall, and it was nearly eight when a knock came at her door — Leo, holding out a book she'd lent him weeks ago and clearly forgotten about, his usual easy warmth dimmed by something he was visibly working hard to keep contained.
"Hey," he said, and even the greeting sounded slightly effortful, like he'd had to reach for the lightness rather than simply having it.
"Hey." Zoey took the book, studying him carefully. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Leo said, too quickly, the smile he offered not quite reaching his eyes. "Just work stuff. Marcus being Marcus."
"He came by again today," Zoey said, watching his face for a reaction. "In the lobby. Said something about — Nancy?"
Something flickered across Leo's expression — not anger, exactly, more like a door being carefully, deliberately closed. "He talks too much," he said, with a short, humorless laugh that didn't match the tension still visible in his shoulders. "It's not — it's old stuff. Not really worth getting into tonight."
"Okay," Zoey said, though the word came out smaller than she meant it to, and she heard, in her own voice, an echo of every time Leo had gently pressed a door and waited for her to open it on her own timeline rather than forcing it — and felt, uncomfortably, the shoe now on the other foot.
He lingered a moment at her door like he wanted to say something more, then seemed to think better of it. "I'll let you get back to writing," he said instead, and left before she could push further.
Zoey stood in her doorway holding a book she barely remembered lending, turning the name Nancy over and over in her mind, feeling, for the first time since the notebook and the closet and the entire absurd beginning of all this, that there might genuinely be something Leo was keeping from her — not a body in a locked room, not some elaborate criminal enterprise, but something quieter, older, and somehow more frightening precisely because it was real, because it belonged to an actual, lived history rather than a plot she'd invented in her own head.
She thought about knocking on his door again, asking outright, the way she'd once torn through his apartment looking for evidence with far less right to know anything about him at all. It felt strange, now, to have earned the actual right to ask a real question, and to find herself too careful, too aware of the fragility of what they'd built, to use it.
She didn't write anything in her notebook that night. She sat with it closed on her desk for a long time instead, thinking about how strange it was that the thing frightening her now wasn't some imagined danger at all, but the very ordinary, very human possibility that the person she'd let herself fall for carried an old wound she hadn't yet been trusted with — and the quieter, harder question underneath that: whether she had done anything, yet, to actually earn that trust.
She lay awake a long while, wondering what history could make a man like Leo go so carefully, deliberately quiet, and terrified, in a way she hadn't expected to feel again so soon, of what she might find if she finally asked — not because she thought the answer would reveal a monster, but because some part of her, still healing from an old wound of her own, understood exactly how much it could hurt to watch someone you loved flinch away from a door you badly wanted them to open.
You've reached the end of this chapter