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I have run from many things that spooked me over the last three years, but I had never once just not turned up. So, with a sigh, knowing I would have to face it, I went out into the living room to find my phone, because that’s where I had left it. Face down on the arm of the couch with the charger stretched across from the outlet by the door.

I picked it up and groaned out loud at the lit screen,

2 missed calls. 1 voicemail.

Both of them Halloran. One at seven twenty, one at seven fifty. A man who had not once picked up a phone for me about anything. Not a schedule, not a result, not in the entire time I had worked for him, had he called me twice in half an hour and left a message.

I stood there in an apartment whose address a murderer had recited to me the previous day like a man reading out a grocery list, and I did the math on how much trouble a person can be in before nine in the morning.

And then it rang in my hand.

Which made sense. Of course it made sense. I hadn’t shown up for work, and I hadn’t called in to explain why. Dr. Halloran was the man whose job it was to notice that, even if noticing things was not exactly his strong suit. I had a whole line ready before answering, like some well-rehearsed script ingrained in people who really didn’t want to work that day.

“Dr. Halloran, I’m so sorry, I was just about to call…” I never got any further than that.

“Try again.” A voice said that most definitely didn’t belong to the doctor and everything in me went cold and still. A voice that only moments ago had featured in my dreams.

“How… how are you calling me… the number, it’s…” I stammered and I could almost hear the grin from the other end.

“The good doctor was generous enough to give me his phone,” he said calmly, as if we were about to discuss the weather.

“Is he…?” I didn’t want to say the word but we both felt the weight of it hanging there silently between us.

“He is busy at the moment,” he stated flatly, and I bit my lip before forcing myself to ask,

“Did… did you… you kill him?” Again, I couldn’t seem to make my words come out sounding steady.

And he laughed at that, as if genuinely amused, and I heard it go all the way through the phone and down my spine. Because I have never in my life heard anybody sound so untroubled by such a dark and chilling question.

“Not if he continues to be helpful, no.”

I didn’t say anything to that, because frankly, there wasn’t much to say.

“You didn’t come to work, little nurse,” he said, and the undertone of annoyance was easy to hear.

“I’m sick,” I said, trying the excuse I had already planned for Halloran, one that came out sounding as hollow as it felt.

“You are not,” he stated firmly, yet despite this, I tried again,

“I have a stomach…”

“Anna.” he said my name softly, cutting me off, as if he was done with the lie before it had even really been given a chance to take form.

“Don’t do that. Not with me. You have never once been any good at it, and I find I do not enjoy hearing you try,” he told me, and I closed my eyes because of it.

Because he was right, I had never been very good at lying to him, as he saw right through it… right through me.

“Now, I want you to go to your window,” he said, and I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me. Then I uttered a quiet,

“No.”

“That was not a request, little bird. Now go to the window. The one at the front, that looks down onto the street.”

I don’t know why I did it. Well, that’s not strictly true, I knew why. I would have just liked to label it as self-preservation, but I knew in reality it was the order in his voice that I couldn’t deny. That and I think some part of me needed to see it. Needed to have it be real instead of something a man said down a phone line. So, I walked across my own living room in my sleep wrinkled clothes with the phone at my ear and I put two fingers in the blind and looked down.

There was a white van at the end of the street.

Parked on the wrong side, up past the mailboxes where the road bends and you can see both ways. There were no markings on it. Nobody visible through the windshield, but I knew, standing there, that somebody was looking back at me.