“What do you mean?”

“I mean I heard someone in your apartment. I thought it must have been you, but it’s obviously not,” I said, my voice rising with each syllable. “Jesus, Cat, do you think my stalker followed me to your place?”

“Stay calm,” she commanded. “Did you look through the apartment?”

“Hell no. I’m not trying to get murdered.”

“I just … Audrey, don’t panic. I’m sure it’s nothing. Just—”

I hung up on Cat and dialed 911. It wasn’t nothing. There was someone in that apartment, undoubtedly the same someone who had been in my apartment. Someone was after me.

THE TWO POLICE OFFICERS who responded to my call were both overweight, middle-aged men who obviously thought I was some hysterical girl, afraid of her own shadow. I went over the sounds I had heard once again, struggling to keep my voice calm, trying to force them to take me seriously, even though one of them was blatantly ogling me in my cropped exercise shirt and mesh-paneled leggings.

“I don’t know what to tell you, miss,” the one who was exhibiting a modicum of professionalism said. “There are no signs of a break-in. Nothing appears to be out of order.”

“But I heard something,” I insisted. “Footsteps. Creaking.”

“These old buildings can be funny,” he said kindly. “Maybe you heard the downstairs neighbors. You mentioned you’re staying here because of some problems with your apartment. Maybe you’re more on edge than usual.”

“Of course I’m on edge,” I said, frustrated. “Someone is stalking me. Wait, did I tell you about the pho—”

“There’s no evidence of an intruder,” the other one interrupted, tearing his eyes away from my chest. “The door wasn’t forced open, and we found no open windows. I don’t believe anyone was there.”

“You think I’m making this up?” I demanded.

“No one thinks you purposefully made anything up,” the first officer said gently. “I’m sure you heard something that frightened you. But, miss, there’s no one here. Try to relax, get some sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “Thanks for the help.”

“Just doing our job, ma’am,” he said, giving me a quick nod. “You have a good night.”

As I watched the utterly useless police officers depart down Cat’s front steps, my fingers itched to call Max. He would believe me. He would know that I wasn’t just being jumpy. He would whisk me away to safety, put his comforting arms around me, and help me forget all of this mess.

But what the fuck was he doing with those photos?

I had to know more about them, had to figure out where they had come from. I grabbed my laptop from where it sat open on the coffee table and sank onto Cat’s large couch. Max said he stumbled across them while doing a reverse image search, so I tried to re-create his steps using the profile picture from my Instagram account. I didn’t get any immediately obvious results, so I began trying other combinations: my Twitter profile picture, other images I’d uploaded to my various accounts, plus adding in search terms like my name, “summer,” and “candid.” No matter what I tried, Google only returned the expected results in the form of my own social media, the Glamour piece, some other articles that mentioned me. I was still combing through pages of results, looking for anything that might be close to what Max had described, when my computer’s screen suddenly went dark.