She kept walking, her gaze fixed on the dim glow of her apartment building’s entrance, four blocks away. But her peripheral vision was a hawk’s. A figure detached itself from the alley’s mouth. Male. Tall. Hood pulled low.
“Excuse me,” he said, his voice a dry rasp. “Do you have the time?”
The silence was wrong. Not the peaceful silence of sleeping families, but a hollow, waiting silence. The kind that held its breath.
Tonight, she had walked home alone. And tomorrow night, she would do it again. Not because she was brave. Not because the streets were safe. But because the darkness did not own the night. She did.
His jaw tightened. For a second, his hand twitched inside the pocket. Leila’s thumb pressed the button on her keychain alarm—the one that emitted a shriek at 130 decibels. She hadn’t used it in two years. Her thumb hovered.
Leila stepped forward, closing the distance to one meter. His eyes widened. Predators don’t expect prey to move toward them.
The man crossed the street.