It was 2 AM. Heavy rain was turning the streetlights into hazy smears. Noah woke instantly to a sound he recognized: a key sliding into the front door lock. Not fumbling, but a deliberate, smooth insertion.
His heart hammered against his ribs. He lived on the third floor of an old building. The building has a main lock, and his apartment has its own deadbolt. Only he and the landlord had keys.
He froze, listening. The tumbler clicked once. Then the lock was released.
Noah grabbed his phone, ready to call 911, but the door didn't open. The person on the other side was just waiting. He could feel them, pressed against the painted wood, breathing.
He kept his hand over the phone's microphone.
A moment passed. Then, the key was slowly, silently withdrawn from the lock.
Noah let out a shaky breath, adrenaline fading into cold relief. He thought: Wrong apartment. They thought they lived here.
He waited five minutes, then got out of bed, moving slowly, quietly, until he was right up against the door. He peered through the peephole.
The hall outside was empty. The weak light from the stairwell was reflecting off the polished linoleum floor.
He checked the deadbolt. Locked.
He leaned his forehead against the cool wood, telling himself it was just a drunk neighbor. He was about to turn away when his eye caught something on the floor right outside his door.
It was a key, a plain silver one, sitting just beneath the peephole.
It was his key. The spare he kept on his keychain, the one he had definitely hung on the hook when he got home.
He didn't unlock the door. He didn't move.
He stood there, staring at the small, mundane object through the glass lens, knowing that whoever had just used it hadn't left, and was simply standing in the stairwell, waiting for him to reach down and take it back.
stake id : jsabat7
