TRACIE

The ice in my glass had melted long ago, diluting the amber bourbon into something pale and weak, much like my own resolve.

I sat at the mahogany bar of The Obama, my second home at this point.

This place was the only sanctuary that shielded me from the suffocating silence of my failing relationship and the judgmental whispers of a family that saw me as a lost cause.

Here, amidst the thumping bass and the smell of expensive cigarettes, I could disappear.

But tonight, I wasn't disappearing. I was being hunted.

I felt his gaze before I saw him.

He was more like a silhouette carved out of...