The security cameras arrived in a box stamped with cheerful promises of "peace of mind" and "24/7 protection." Mitchelle sat on her living room floor surrounded by instruction manuals, mounting brackets, and four small black devices that felt inadequate against the weight of her unease.
She'd never installed cameras before. The instructions assumed a level of technical confidence she didn't possess, filled with terms like "field of view optimization" and "motion detection sensitivity thresholds." But she worked through it methodically, the same way she approached new recipes—step by step, checking each measurement twice.
The front door camera went up first, angled to capture anyone approaching from the driveway. Then the back door, mounted high enough to avoid tampering. The third camera covered the shared hallway between her unit and the empty apartment next door. The fourth took longer to position—she wanted coverage of the driveway and street, but the angle was tricky.
By the time she finished, it was past seven PM. Her shoulders ached from reaching overhead, and she had a scrape on her palm from the mounting bracket. But when she pulled up the app on her phone, four clear video feeds appeared, time-stamped and recording.
She sat at her kitchen table, watching the screens. The front door showed her welcome mat, slightly crooked. The back door framed her overgrown garden in grainy night vision. The hallway was empty and still. The driveway camera captured her Honda and the street beyond.
Nothing moved. Nothing happened.
Mitchelle opened her evidence log and typed: November 4th, 7:34 PM - Security cameras installed and operational. All feeds recording to cloud storage. Current observations: no activity.
She made herself dinner—pasta with vegetables, eaten while monitoring the camera feeds. The pasta grew cold while she watched four static images, waiting for something to appear, someone to emerge from the darkness.
Nothing.
By nine PM, she forced herself to close the app. This was the problem Dr. Reeves had warned about—hypervigilance creating its own feedback loop. Watch for threats constantly, and eventually everything looks threatening. The mind finds patterns even in randomness, connections where none exist.
Except Mrs. Kowalski's apartment had been staged. That wasn't paranoia; that was a fact. The police might have dismissed it, but Mitchelle had the photos, the evidence. Something had been happening next door, and now it had vanished, leaving only questions and an empty apartment.
She washed her dishes, locked both locks and the chain, checked the windows. Then she checked them again. And once more, because the living room window hadn't felt secure the second time.
At ten PM, she tried to sleep.
At eleven PM, she was still staring at the ceiling, listening to the house settle around her. Every creak was footsteps. Every distant car was someone coming for her. The darkness pressed against the windows like something alive, waiting.
She reached for her phone, pulled up the camera feeds. The images glowed in the darkness of her bedroom—four windows into the empty night around her duplex. She watched until her eyes burned, until the timestamp read 1:47 AM.
That's when she saw it.
The driveway camera showed a sedan pulling up three houses down. Dark color, tinted windows. The same one from her log entries. It parked in the exact same position, facing her duplex.
Mitchelle's heart rate spiked. She sat up, holding the phone close, watching. The sedan's headlights went dark. For thirty seconds, nothing happened. Then the interior light flicked on briefly—someone lighting a cigarette. She could see the glow, the silhouette of at least two figures in the front seats.
They were watching her apartment.
She pulled up her evidence log with shaking hands and began typing:
November 5th, 1:47 AM - Dark sedan returned. Same vehicle from previous observations. Parked three houses down, passenger side facing duplex. Two occupants visible. Cigarette lit at 1:48 AM. Purpose: surveillance.
The sedan remained stationary. Mitchelle watched it through her phone screen, watched the occasional glow of cigarettes, watched the silhouettes shift and settle. They weren't trying to hide. They wanted her to know they were there.
Or maybe they didn't know about the cameras. Maybe they thought they were invisible in the darkness.
She should call the police. That was the rational response. But she remembered the young officer's bored expression, his dismissive tone. What would she tell them? That a car was parked on a public street? That someone was sitting in it?
Instead, she took screenshots, time-stamped and saved to three different locations. Evidence. She needed evidence that couldn't be dismissed.
The sedan stayed until 2:14 AM, then pulled away without urgency. Mitchelle watched it disappear from the camera's field of view, then continued staring at the empty street for another twenty minutes.
Sleep, when it finally came, was thin and fractured. She dreamed of empty apartments and men with no faces, of hands reaching through walls, of running through endless hallways that all led back to the same locked door.
She woke at 4:00 AM to her alarm, exhausted and jittery with adrenaline that had nowhere to go.
The bakery was her sanctuary that morning. Flour and yeast didn't judge. Dough didn't ask questions. She could lose herself in the rhythms of kneading and shaping, let muscle memory guide her hands while her mind spun through possibilities.
The sedan had been surveillance. But for what purpose? If they were connected to whatever had been happening in Mrs. Kowalski's apartment, why watch her now that it was empty? Unless they thought she knew something. Unless the police report had made her a problem.
Mitchelle shaped a boule with more force than necessary, her hands working the dough until it was smooth and elastic. The physical exertion helped bleed off some of the anxiety, but it kept building back up, pressure behind her sternum that made breathing difficult.
"You alright?"
She looked up. Marcus, the bakery owner, stood in the doorway to the front room, concern creasing his weathered face. He was in his sixties, a former accountant who'd bought the bakery on a whim and somehow made it work.
"Fine," Mitchelle said automatically. "Just tired."
"You've been tired a lot lately." He moved closer, studying her face. "Everything okay at home?"
The question hung in the air between them. Mitchelle could tell him—about the staged apartment, the surveillance sedan, the growing list of observations that added up to something wrong. But what would that accomplish? Marcus was kind but not equipped to handle this. No one was.
"Just some weird neighbor stuff," she said finally. "Nothing serious."
He didn't look convinced but nodded. "Well, if you need anything. You know. I'm around."
After he left, Mitchelle realized her hands were shaking. She set down the dough and gripped the edge of the work table, forcing herself to breathe slowly. Four counts in, hold, four counts out. The technique Dr. Reeves had taught her.
You're safe right now, she told herself. This moment, this room, you're safe.
But safety was just the absence of immediate threat. It wasn't the same as security, as knowing you'd still be safe tomorrow.
The morning rush came and went. Mitchelle moved through it mechanically, smiling and nodding at the right moments, making change and boxing pastries. The routine helped, gave her brain something to do besides spiral.
At 10:30 AM, the door chimed. Mitchelle looked up from the register and felt something shift in her chest.
The man from yesterday stood in the doorway—European accent, kind compliments about her kouign-amann. He was tall, brown hair precisely cut, wearing expensive but understated clothing. He smiled when he saw her, the expression reaching his green eyes.
"Hello again," he said, approaching the counter. "I was hoping you'd be here."
"Hi." Mitchelle found herself smiling back without meaning to. "What can I get you?"
"Actually, I wanted to ask about custom orders. I'm hosting a small dinner party this weekend, and I'd love to feature some of your pastries. Would that be possible?"
"Sure, we do custom orders all the time. What were you thinking?"
He leaned against the counter, close enough that she could smell his cologne—something subtle, woody. "Perhaps two dozen of the kouign-amann, since they're exceptional. And maybe some of those almond croissants I saw yesterday? The ones with the dark chocolate?"
Mitchelle pulled out the order form, grateful for the familiar task. "I can do that. When do you need them?"
"Saturday afternoon? Around two?"
She wrote it down, calculating quantities and timing. "That should work. Can I get your name and phone number?"
"Daniel Mercer." He rattled off a number, which she recorded. "And is there a deposit required?"
"Usually fifty percent. That'd be—" she did the math, "—forty-eight dollars."
He pulled out his wallet, handed her three twenties. "Keep the change. Consider it appreciation for accommodating the short notice."
"That's too much—"
"Please." His smile widened. "The quality deserves it."
After he left, Mitchelle stood holding the bills, feeling oddly unsettled. The interaction had been perfectly normal—a customer, a custom order, a generous tip. So why did it feel like something else?
She added the order to the system, filed the form, returned to her prep work. But the unsettled feeling remained, a discordant note that didn't fit the pattern.
When Mitchelle returned home at 3:15 PM, her phone buzzed with a motion alert from the cameras. She pulled up the app while still sitting in her car, heart rate accelerating.
The front door camera showed a man in a utility uniform examining her mailbox. He opened it, looked inside, closed it, then walked to Mrs. Kowalski's side and did the same. After a moment, he returned to a white van parked in the driveway—not the same van from before, but similar—and drove away.
Mitchelle rewound the footage, watched it again. The man's movements were casual, unhurried. He could have been checking for mail delivery issues, verifying addresses. Completely innocent.
Or he could have been confirming which side of the duplex was occupied.
She saved the clip, added a timestamp to her evidence log, then got out of the car. The mailbox contained the usual bills and junk mail, plus a flyer for gutter cleaning. Nothing unusual.
Inside, she pulled up all the camera footage from while she'd been gone. Nothing. No visitors, no vehicles except the utility van. The empty apartment next door remained empty, undisturbed.
But the sedan would probably return tonight. The pattern suggested surveillance at night, when most people were asleep.
Mitchelle made coffee instead of tea—she needed alertness, not calm—and settled at her kitchen table with her laptop. She opened her evidence log and read through it from the beginning, looking for connections she might have missed.
Fourteen incidents before Mrs. Kowalski disappeared. Then the staged apartment, the police report, the surveillance sedan. Now the utility van.
The intervals were getting shorter. Whatever was happening was accelerating.
She pulled up a map of the area, marked her duplex with a pin, then began searching for similar incidents. Missing persons reports, unsolved disappearances, anything that might indicate a pattern. The county database was public record, searchable if you knew where to look.
Three hours later, she'd found seven disappearances in the surrounding rural areas over the past two years. All young women, ages nineteen to twenty-eight. None found, none solved. The local news had covered them briefly before moving on to other stories.
Mitchelle created a new document, began compiling details. Names, dates, last known locations. She plotted them on the map—they formed a rough circle around her duplex, radius of about thirty miles.
Her hands were shaking again. She saved the document, backed it up, sent it to herself.
Then she went to her bedroom closet and retrieved the box from before. The one with police reports and restraining orders that hadn't protected her. She dug past those to the bottom, where she'd hidden something else after moving to the duplex.
The gun was a small revolver, purchased legally after her ex had finally been arrested. She'd taken lessons, learned to shoot, kept it unloaded and locked away. Dr. Reeves had been concerned about it—worried she might hurt herself during a panic attack or nightmare. But Mitchelle had insisted. The world contained threats. Being prepared wasn't paranoia; it was practical.
She checked the revolver, loaded it with steady hands despite the fear coursing through her, and placed it in her nightstand drawer. Then she returned to her kitchen table and continued her research.
By evening, she'd found two more disappearances. Nine total. Nine women who'd vanished from rural areas, from quiet neighborhoods where people minded their own business.
From places exactly like Ashwood Lane.
The pattern was there if you looked for it, if you refused to believe in coincidence. Someone was taking women from isolated locations. Someone had been using the apartment next door as part of that operation. And now that operation had shifted, leaving behind an empty stage and a witness who'd noticed too much.
Mitchelle pulled up the camera feeds on her phone, set the motion alerts to maximum sensitivity, and waited for darkness to fall.
The sedan returned at 11:47 PM, parking in the same location as the night before. This time Mitchelle was ready. She recorded the footage, zoomed in as much as the camera allowed, tried to capture the license plate.
The angle was wrong. She could see that it was a plate, could confirm the vehicle was the same dark sedan, but the numbers were too small, too obscured by distance and darkness.
She watched the silhouettes in the front seats. Two figures, same as before. One lit a cigarette at 11:51 PM. They appeared to be watching her apartment, though without being able to see their faces, she couldn't confirm their line of sight.
At 12:03 AM, something changed.
The passenger door opened. A man got out—large build, heavy jacket, something in his right hand. He stood by the sedan for a moment, looking directly at her duplex, then began walking toward it.
Mitchelle's breath caught. She gripped her phone so hard it hurt, watching the camera feed as the man approached. He was big, maybe six-four, moving with purpose. When he passed under a streetlight, she caught a glimpse of his face—hard features, cold eyes, expression that suggested he'd done this before.
He stopped at the edge of her property line, studying the duplex. Looking at her windows, at her car, at the new cameras she'd installed.
Then he pulled out his phone, made a call. Mitchelle couldn't hear through the camera, could only watch as he spoke briefly, gestured at the duplex, then ended the call.
He stood there for another thirty seconds, memorizing details. Then he walked back to the sedan, got in, and the vehicle drove away.
The entire interaction had lasted four minutes.
Mitchelle sat in her darkened bedroom, phone clutched in both hands, and tried to control her breathing. That had been reconnaissance. Assessment. The man had been gathering information, confirming something.
Confirming that she lived alone. That the duplex was isolated. That she'd be easy to take.
She pulled up her evidence log with shaking hands and typed everything she could remember. Height, build, clothing, approximate age. The way he'd moved, the confidence in his posture. The phone call that suggested he was reporting to someone.
Then she called 911.
The dispatcher was calm, professional. "What's your emergency?"
"There's a man outside my house. He was watching it, taking pictures or something. I think—" Mitchelle's voice cracked. "I think someone's planning to break in."
"Is the man still there?"
"No, he left. But he was looking at my apartment, making phone calls. I have it on my security cameras."
"And you didn't recognize him?"
"No. I've never seen him before."
"Okay. I'm sending an officer to your location. Stay inside with the doors locked. Do you feel you're in immediate danger?"
Mitchelle looked at her bedroom window, at the darkness pressing against the glass. "I don't know."
"The officer should be there within twenty minutes. Stay on the line with me until they arrive."
So Mitchelle sat in her bedroom, phone pressed to her ear, listening to the dispatcher's calm questions while her eyes scanned the camera feeds. The street remained empty. The duplex was silent. But the fear had crystallized into something sharp and cold in her chest.
Someone was coming for her. The pattern was clear now. The surveillance, the reconnaissance, the systematic observation—these were the prelude to something worse.
And she had no idea how to stop it.
The responding officer was the same young cop from before. He arrived at 12:37 AM, spent fifteen minutes reviewing her camera footage, taking notes, asking questions.
"Do you recognize the vehicle?" he asked, replaying the sedan clip.
"No. But it's been here before. Multiple times." Mitchelle showed him her evidence log, the dated entries, the pattern of surveillance.
He read through it with the same expression as before—polite but skeptical. "Ms. Carter, I understand you're concerned, but a vehicle parking on a public street isn't a crime. And this man—" he pointed at the frozen image of the large figure on her camera, "—he's standing on public property. He didn't approach your door, didn't try to enter."
"He was looking at my apartment. Calling someone about it."
"That's not illegal either." The officer closed his notebook. "Look, if they come back and actually do something—try to break in, threaten you directly—call immediately. But right now, all I can do is note that you've filed a report."
After he left, Mitchelle sat at her kitchen table and cried. Not loud, dramatic sobs, but quiet tears of frustration and fear. She was doing everything right—documenting, recording, reporting—and it didn't matter. No one would act until something actually happened, until the threat became reality.
By then it might be too late.
She wiped her face, drank water, forced herself to think. The police couldn't help. But there were other options. Private security, maybe. Or she could move, find a new apartment, disappear before whoever was watching decided to act.
But moving took time. And money. And what if they followed? What if changing locations just meant starting this nightmare somewhere else?
Mitchelle opened her laptop and began researching. Self-defense classes, personal security systems, legal options for restraining orders against unknown individuals. She compiled a list, made a plan, tried to build something that felt like control.
At 3:00 AM, she finally allowed herself to lie down. The loaded revolver was in her nightstand drawer. Her phone was on her pillow, camera feeds displayed, volume turned up for motion alerts.
She didn't expect to sleep. But exhaustion eventually dragged her under, into dreams of men with cold eyes and empty apartments that echoed with footsteps she couldn't escape.
When her alarm went off at 4:00 AM, she woke feeling like she'd fought a war during the night.
And in a way, she had.