Damon thought it was done.
Restraining order signed, served, and filed.
So far he done everything right.
Documented. Reported. Let the system do its job.
He went back to his routine early mornings, long days and then quiet evenings at home.
He told himself that chapter was closed.
He should’ve known better.
It was Marcus who noticed first.
“Aye,” Marcus said one afternoon, squinting his eyes looking down the street from Damon’s driveway.
“That black Hyundai Sonata been sitting down there since before I pulled up.”
Damon looked. A black Hyundai Sonata, parked just far enough past the streetlight.
The windows were tinted and he couldn’t see inside.
Too far away to make out a plate from where he stood.
“Different car,” Damon said quietly.
Marcus looked at him. “She switched vehicles?”
Damon didn’t answer.
She wasn’t parking across from his house anymore.
She was down the street, outside the cone of the nearest light, angled just enough to have clear view at his driveway without being obvious about it.
Calculated. Patient.
Those two words together, attached to someone watching his house, made Damon’s jaw tighten.
He photographed the black Hyundai Sonata.
Sent the image to Detective Ansley before he went inside.
A week later, something new.
He came home late from a working at a big property on the north side with a three-man crew, that didn’t get wrapped until after nine.
He pulled into his driveway and noticed a shadow moving near the side of his garage.
Not a person. Just a shape, a shadow like somebody was standing out of sight.
He grabbed his flashlight from the truck.
Walked the perimeter.
Nobody there.
He stood still and watched the shadow.
It moved again — subtle, like a figure swaying slightly. His eyes tracked up to a tree branch overhead.
Nothing blocking the light from that angle.
He looked up and sees the shadow go through the garage wall.
The shadow had the rough shape of a person walking, but there was no source.
He thought about it for three days before he figured it out.
Projector. Small one.
Pointed from distance, casting a silhouette designed to make him think someone was there, keep him on edge, wear down his nerves without her ever having to set foot on his property.
The restraining order kept her body at a distance. So she use her gadgets instead.
He called Ansley again. Brought the photographs, brought his documentation binder that was now sixteen pages deep.
Ansley looked at the shadow photo for a long moment. “She’s moving towards psychological components while staying technically compliant with the order,” she said. “It’s sophisticated harassment. Hard to prosecute without catching her in the act with the equipment.”
“Shit so what do I do?”
“Keep living,” Ansley said. “And keep documenting. She wants you rattled. She wants you to change your behavior, isolate, stop trusting your own eyes. Don’t give her that.”
He tried.
But the heating element. Another component that he didn’t see coming.
He’ had started noticing it on small things first.
Coffee mug he left on the porch rail, warm to the touch when he came back outside after twenty minutes.
His truck’s passenger door handle, inexplicably hot on a sixty-degree evening.
He didn’t think nothing of it.
Then came the night at the Courtyard Airport.
Damon lady friend, Simone had planned it a nice evening away from both their apartments, dinner downtown, a room with a walk in shower and a blackout curtain.
Damon had been looking forward to it all week.
He needed it.
Needed something normal.
He was comfortable enough to connected his phone to the Bluetooth speaker in the room.
He didn’t think twice about it.
They were deep into it.
It was dark and the door locked, security latch on curtains drawn, when something hit him like a wave.
Not pain.
Just a sudden total absence. Like a circuit tripping off.
It was disorienting in a way that had no good explanation, and his body simply
stopped cooperating during that moment.
He kept his face neutral.
Controlled the reaction as best he could.
Simone looked at him soft concern in her eyes. “You okay, baby?”
“Yeah.” He exhaled slow. “Just tired. Long week.”
She didn’t think nothing of it and moved closer, laid her head on his chest, and she was good like that.
She never made a man feel small for being human.
But Damon was not tired.
He was thinking. Hard and fast and cold.
The Bluetooth. The phone. And the heat a warmth that had no business being where it was.
She was in this building. Or in the parking lot or close enough.
He stared at the ceiling while heard a vibrating noise coming from Simone side of the bed.
His mind was running the whole payback scenes from the last two months.
The cars, the shadow projection, the heated objects.
This wasn’t a young woman with a crush that got out of hand.
This was a Coordinated. Resourced.
Whoever she was, where did she get that equipment from, she had access and she had intent.
The intent was the part.
Not embarrassment.
Not disruption.
She wanted him to feel like nothing in his life was private.
She wanted to live in the walls of his existence without ever having to knock.
He reached for his phone in the dark.
Turned off the Bluetooth. Powered it all the way down.
Then he lay there in the quiet, watching the ceiling, while the woman beside him slept and the woman somewhere outside watched.
And Damon Reese — quiet man, careful man, a man who had never asked for any of this — made a decision.
He was done being a subject.
It was time to become an investigator.
To be continued — Part 3 coming soon.