He’d left a trail across three countries.

Six men. Four dead by hand, two by fire. One buried alive. Not a single name given freely—not before the pain, not even after. They all thought they could hold out. They all thought John Clark was just a man who lost something. They were wrong.

He was the thing you lost.

And then came the seventh.

He’d lasted longer. Ex-CIA, teeth like marble, hands still calloused from trigger pulls. He’d held up under the first hour. Not the second. By the third, he was praying to a God John no longer believed in. And just before the light left his eyes—just before the choke of blood stopped his voice—he gave him something. Not a code. Not a mission file.

A name.

Yours.

A woman. A civilian, by record. No criminal record. No black ops. Not even an alias.

You shouldn’t exist.

And yet—here you are.

A white house, blue shutters, trimmed hedges. Two kids. No husband. You live at the end of a cul-de-sac where neighbors wave and jog in the mornings. You pay your taxes. You garden on weekends. On paper, you’re no more threatening than a PTA secretary.

He watched you for the first time from the roof across the street, scope steady. A single trigger pull would’ve ended it. But his finger never tightened.

Something itched in him. It wasn’t hesitation. It was doubt. Something he hadn’t felt since his wife bled out in his arms.

You moved like someone who hadn’t killed.

But looks lied.

He watched for three days.

You kissed your kids on the forehead each morning—one boy, one girl. Made breakfast. You burned toast twice. You walked them to the corner bus stop. You checked your phone while you waited, sometimes smiling at whatever was on it. You waved at your neighbor, a woman named Maria with two golden retrievers.

You weren’t armed. You didn’t scan your mirrors. You didn’t twitch at sounds behind you.

You were either clean…

…or so deep you knew exactly how to play it.

He didn’t know which scared him more.

On the fifth night, he broke into your garage. Left no prints. Studied the interior door—alarmed. But weak. Not military-grade. Not custom-rigged. He found nothing but boxes of holiday decorations and a pink tricycle with one flat tire.

You weren’t preparing for a fight.

But maybe you weren’t expecting one.

He’d spent a decade making monsters disappear. Turning names into ashes. What he wasn’t used to was waiting. He’d never watched a mark brush their daughter’s hair. He’d never watched a target kiss a scraped knee.

But you did. And not once did it look like an act.

So he stayed longer.

He started running your past—quietly. Background check. Bank records. Facial recognition. Voiceprint. Cross-referenced the name with black-budget files. Nothing concrete. Nothing provable. Just smoke.

But the man who gave him your name?

He choked to death on it.

So now John Clark stands at the edge of your street again, parked in a borrowed truck, hands wrapped around the steering wheel like it’s a trigger.

You let your kids out of the car. You unlock the front door. You enter without looking back.

If you know he’s watching, you don’t show it.

He’s watched killers before. They twitch. Their tells are always in their hands, their eyes, their posture. But yours?

Still. Perfect. Almost… peaceful.

You fumble with your keys, one paper bag balanced awkwardly on your hip, the other gripped tight in your arm. Something about the way the air sits outside makes your skin itch. The cul-de-sac is quiet, just as it always is. Too quiet. Even the wind feels like it’s watching.

You shake it off.

The door unlocks with a click. Familiar. You toe it open and step inside.

Cool air. Silence. Light spilling in from the kitchen window, where the curtain flutters slightly—odd, since you don’t remember leaving it cracked. You set the bags down slowly, letting the fridge hum fill the quiet.

Then you feel it.

Not sound. Not movement.

Presence.

You turn.

A man in the living room.

Sitting on your couch.