Prologue: All Alone She Was Living
He doesn't know when she went from 'the target' to 'Lisa Reisert'. But if he had to guess, it was somewhere around the fourth week. It had been easy enough to install cameras in that small, fashionable apartment of hers. One in the corner of the hallway on her floor. One in the bookshelf she favors in the living room. One in the kitchen, in clear view of the stove. One in the bathroom, carefully waterproofed and placed in the showerhead. (He had rolled his eyes when his tech guy, Cero, had wiggled his eyebrows suggestively while installing it.)
One in the bedroom, where she never took anyone.
Week one she's just an ordinary, if boring, woman. She goes to work, plasters on a false costumer service smile, and handles any complaints with an expertly unstrained patience. She goes home, turns on old noir movies-he scoffs when he sees her choice is Casablanca-and curls up with a steaming cup of tea.
Week two is more of the same, though with a different choice in movie: Key Largo. He grudgingly approves, and continues assessing her to complete her psychological profile. Her taste in Humphrey Boggart probably wouldn't be a key factor in breaking her, when the time came. However, if she proved to be as big of a loner as he suspected-that he could work with.
Week three he watches her sleep, yawning widely, and making plans to go to bed himself. He moves to push himself out of his chair when she wakes up screaming. He turns back to the screen, watching as she almost tumbles out of bed. She collapses against the sink in the bathroom, and he can hear her trying to stifle her sobs. He can see the reflection of his blue eyes over her shaking form. He settles back in the chair, and watches as she makes scrambled eggs with a trembling body, David Bowie's Let's Dance playing in the background.
She sways gently, hips rocking to the beat, and he subconsciously shifts forward in his seat.
"If you say run, I'll run with you," she sings along softly. "If you say hide, we'll hide." He watches her as sashays over to the cabinet, pulling out a plate and a glass. She sets them on functional, if terribly unstylish, kitchen table she owns. She tilts her head forward, long hair covering her face, and she swishes her hair back and forth. She looks strangely vulnerable, ethereal even, dancing sadly by herself in her kitchen.
"Because my love for you, would break my heart in two," he mutters along, catching himself.
Week four he follows her, and finally gets to see what she does when she has a few days to herself. She likes to swim, and he follows her to the pool. He lounges in swim trunks, shades and a ridiculously large straw hat, acting as if he is working on his tan, as she swims lap after lap. She's wearing a red swimsuit, one of the full body ones, and he admires the way the color brings out the auburn of her hair. She rarely goes out, so he's stuck watching her through a black and white security feed most days. Seeing her in living color takes his breath away for a reason he's too uncomfortable to analyze.
She pushes herself up out of the pool and, as soon as she's on her feet some frat boy begins to hit on her with all of the usual lines. He furrows his brow, annoyed that the other man can't see how uncomfortable she is or how she shies away from him. He stands, pretending she's moving closer to him. The frat boy pulls out his phone to snap a picture of her and something in him snaps. He doesn't know why he does what he does, but he stands and walks toward them. He "trips", knocking the frat boy and his phone into the pool. He comes up, sputtering and cursing.
"Sorry, bro," he says in an affected Californian accent.
Lisa smiles shyly at him and that's when the daydreams-more accurate to call them fantasies-begin.
They start simple at first-he imagines himself with her as she goes throughout her day. He makes passing comments in his head when he watches her deal with irate patrons of the Lux, offers silent flattery at the outfits she picks to wear. When she makes eggs at 3 in the morning, he imagines cooking with her, washing the dishes and dancing to Bowie in the kitchen. He applauds her movie choices when she chooses gritty noir mysteries and rolls his eyes with a secret smile when she picks the romances. When she goes to the café at the corner of her block for cocktails-Sea Breezes, every time-he imagines sliding up to her and charming her with his wit, with his smile, with his affected normalcy.
What she's making him feel isn't normal.
Week five, he breaks down and watches her shower. He's shifting nervously in his seat the entire time, unable to convince himself that total surveillance is key to creating the perfect psychological profile. He doubts her toiletries would provide any sort of decent leverage.
But he doesn't stop himself leaning forward in his seat as she steps into the shower. She turns it on, her eyes closing in bliss, and she leans her forehead against the tile as if offering him an unhindered view of her back. He watches water stream down the curve of her back, over her hips and ass to drip down her legs. She lathers up, and he subconsciously licks his lips at the sight of her hands running soap across her body. Jesus, what he would give to be those soap suds. He imagines stepping in behind her, pressing his lips to the side of her neck and covering her hands with his as she washes herself. His brow furrows when he sees something below her shoulder, covered by soap suds and her hair. He leans forward to see it more clearly but his phone rings, and he turns away to answer it.
Week six she makes scrambled eggs at three in the morning with increasing frequency, and his brow furrows as he watches her for maybe the 13th time since he started watching her, and the fourth time that week. She's so achingly lonely, sitting at her ugly kitchen table with scrambled eggs topped with cheese and a steaming mug of tea. He watches her watch the sun come up, with the rising sunlight illuminating a sort of sad smile on her lips, probably one of the few real ones he's seen her have and he thinks absurdly this moment, and all the moments before or since, are mine.
Week 7 she takes a sick day, though she looks perfectly healthy. He has to hide a smile as he watches her sleep in late (she deserves it; she works too hard on too little rest). She wanders around her apartment sweats two sizes too large for her, drinking tea and watching an old mystery marathon on television. He's perfectly content to watch her spend another lonely night in when her phone rings. His brow furrows as she gets up to answer it. He goes through the admittedly short list of acquaintances she has, and doesn't think any one of them would call. It couldn't be her boss with Lisa's impeccable track record, this fake sick day non withstanding, and certainly not the new trainee Cynthia. He'd watched the ditsy woman try to get close to Lisa, only to fall short of scaling the nigh insurmountable walls she'd built around herself.
The phone call is her father and, unsurprisingly, he invites Lisa out to dinner. More surprising is Lisa's acceptance. He watches her change from sweats to a casual summer dress (the blue of it brings out the green of your eyes, he imagines saying) and follows her to a small, family owned Italian place. Her father is already waiting for her at an outside table, and she leans over to hug him. He takes his seat a few tables down, listening to their conversation. His eyes never stray from Lisa.
He pretends to be sitting with the two of them, another of his dangerous idle fantasies. Lisa would introduce him and he would give his careless smile. Oh, her father would be wary of him at first, as a good father should be, but her would charm the elder Reisert eventually. Lisa turns her head to the side, smiling, and he smiles in return, savoring the nonexistent attention. Her hand lays on the tablecloth, and he imagines covering it with his own.
He listens to the warm conversation she has with her father and thinks: this is the leverage he can use to break Lisa Reisert. The thought doesn't give him near as much pleasure as it should, if only from the fact he's never liked breaking what was already broken.
Later that week, he looks down at the wallet his associate procured for him, stitched with the initials 'J.R'. Joe Reisert. He smiles. Jackson Rippner, he thinks, snickering slightly at the pun. He wonders how she'll react to his alias, if she'll find it clever or disturbing.
Week eight, her grandmother dies and she takes the first plane out to Texas. He follows her as he's meant to do, uncomfortably addicted to being her shadow, and feels that this is the beginning of the end. He ends up watching as all of his company's careful planning fall apart around him as a result of a woman who was not as broken as he first anticipated.
He finds himself proud of her, once the blinding rage fades, and missing her terribly once he's shut amongst iron bars. He supposes that's why he picks up his pen.