Just the ghost of something I couldn’t name, humming low in my body.
6:52 AM.
If I ran, I might make it. The studio was only three blocks away.
I grabbed my water bottle, phone, and keys, mentally calculating the fastest route. Down the elevator, cut through the alley behind the building, across Massachusetts Avenue, and I'd be there with maybe a minute to spare.
The elevator seemed slower than usual this morning, the ancient machinery groaning as it made its way up to my floor. I tapped my foot impatiently, checking my phone again.
6:55 AM.
Come on, come on.
The doors finally opened with a cheerful ding that felt like mockery. I stepped inside, pressing the lobby button repeatedly as if that would make the elevator move faster.
As the doors began to close, a hand shot out, stopping them. A man stepped in—tall, wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his face, a maintenance uniform that looked vaguely familiar.
I moved to the corner, the way women instinctively do when alone in elevators with strange men. He nodded politely but didn't speak, keeping his eyes on the floor numbers as we began our descent.
Something about him made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Something familiar yet wrong, like a word on the tip of your tongue that you can't quite grasp.
I glanced at him from the corner of my eye, trying to place him. Had I seen him in the building before? Was he new maintenance staff?
Before I could decide, I felt it—a sharp sting against my neck, like an insect bite but more precise. My hand flew up automatically, fingers brushing against something small and metallic protruding from my skin.
"What—" I began, but my tongue suddenly felt too large for my mouth, the word slurring as it left my lips.
The man turned to me then, and in the moment before my vision began to blur, I saw his face clearly for the first time.
Rafe.
Recognition hit me like a physical blow, followed immediately by fear—cold and sharp and clarifying. I tried to reach for my phone, to scream, to fight, but my limbs wouldn't cooperate. My knees buckled, my body suddenly impossibly heavy.
He caught me before I hit the floor, one arm around my waist, holding me upright as if I weighed nothing. Through the rapidly descending fog, I felt him lean close, his breath warm against my ear.
"Shh," he whispered, the sound distant and distorted. "Don't fight it, Grace. It's easier if you don't fight it."
I wanted to tell him to go to hell. Wanted to scream for help. Wanted to claw at his face until he let me go.
But darkness was closing in from all sides, my vision tunneling until all I could see was his face—those dark eyes watching me with an intensity that burned even through the haze of whatever drug was coursing through my system.
The last thing I remember is the gentle way he brushed a strand of hair from my face, the tenderness of the gesture at odds with the violence of what he was doing.
Then nothing.
I woke to softness.
That was my first conscious thought—that I was lying on something impossibly soft, like clouds or cotton candy or those expensive sheets my mother used to import from Italy.
My second thought was that my mouth tasted like I'd been sucking on pennies.
My third thought was pure, undiluted panic.
I forced my eyes open, blinking against the dim light. The ceiling above me was unfamiliar dark wood beams crossing white plaster. Not my apartment. Not any place I recognized.
I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it as the room spun violently around me. Nausea rose in my throat, and I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to vomit. Whatever drug he'd used was still in my system, making my movements sluggish, my thoughts fragmented.
Him. Rafe. The elevator.
