Chapter 1: The Knock at Midnight
Riley’s thumb hovered over the glowing notification. ‘Your Free Use match is en route. Arrival window: 5-15 mins.’ A flush of heat, part adrenaline and part mortification, crawled up her neck. It had seemed brilliant, stroke-of-rebellion genius, after two glasses of cheap pinot grigio and the soul-crushing discovery of her ex’s post-breakup engagement photos online. A tiny revenge, entirely for herself.
Now, with the lamp casting long shadows on her bare legs and the room smelling too-sweetly of the half-melted vanilla candle on the dresser, it felt monumentally, profoundly real.
“You absolute idiot,” she whispered to the empty room.
Her bedroom, her fortress—a sanctuary in her otherwise generic city apartment—seemed to contract. The dark velvet curtains hanging from her king-sized bed’s canopy were suddenly less a decor choice and more a shroud. The rhythmic hum of the little desk fan in the corner sounded like the rapid pulse of a living thing.
A deliberate plan. Practical but steeped in rebellion. A black, oversized sleeping t-shirt—her favorite. Designed for comfort, concealment, ultimate deniability. She’d looked at the tight things in her closet, the lacy scraps she never wore, but this was a statement, in a way. This is my show.
The silence stretched, filled only by the fan’s whir. She picked up her phone.
Jordan: So, did you do it? You’re not dead, right?
Riley’s thumbs flew. He’s en route.
Three blinking dots appeared instantly.
Jordan: ? “He”? You didn’t specify??
Decided I’d leave one variable to fate. For the story. Shockingly, all three profile pictures seemed doused in the same refined oil mix of gym selfie and haunted frat boy.
Jordan: WHAT IF IT’S A GHOST??? Or an influencer. Worse.
Riley allowed a small, sharp laugh to escape her. Jordan was always good for that. Before she could type a response, a sound ripped through the quiet—the familiar, high-tension metallic creak of a door opening in the hall. The main door to her building, with the busted pneumatic closer. Her stomach bottomed out, a nauseating freefall.
That was impossibly fast. Ridiculously fast. Unless...
Her gaze darted to the thin beam of light beneath her own bedroom door, framing it perfectly for the outside world. He’d walk right by it. He’d have to, to get to her, the last door at the end of the corridor on the south side of the building. The sketchy app’s flimsy anonymity system gave strangers a unique passcode, a single-use key to a listed lockbox. Hers was above the baseboard trim right by her doorframe. A paper-thin veneer of privacy was disappearing with every fictional step she could hear in her mind.Another door. Down the hall. A soft slam and then nothing. Was that it? Her savior? Her upcoming mistake? Or just old Mrs. Pelham with her insomnia, fetching the mail she always forgot?
Riley strained to hear footsteps. She got the faint, teetering echo of what might have been someone shifting weight, the faint, intermittent vibration of someone uncertain in a small space.
Get in or get lost, she thought, her own impatience surprising her.
The principal accomplishment of the ‘Free Use’ platform, beyond its morally debatable premise, was its surgical removal of pretense. Her profile, a facade of cool intent, contained no photos, an emoji-list of her vaguely articulated “access points,” and the location and time. She had selected them—Riley Hayes, not stupid, twenty-four and clinging to her acute if inconvenient survival instinct—to ensure the control here was the framework. The heavy, paradoxical role.
She felt it crumpling now. The intention to be commandant over this strange transaction was vaporizing, replaced by a clammy electricity that turned her knuckles bone-white where she gripped the edge of her phone.
Fifteen minutes hadn’t elapsed since the app updated them with this arrival window precisely. The city moved in intervals defined by late-night deals, pizza pickups, never-express couriers bolting from apartments with clip trotters just after midnight. It was convincing or not. He was just good at reaching for you later.
The ink black sea of the threading adrenaline would never remain entirely noble. But...
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