Every Breath You Take Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Oh, man. I didn’t realize we’d been talking so long. Sorry about that.”
    “No, it’s okay, really.”
    He laughed and signaled for the check. “Thank goodness. I want to make sure I stay on your good side.”
    Jason paid and she shivered when his fingertips grazed the small of her back as he guided her out of the restaurant. Natalie cleared her throat and looked down at her shoes.
    “Well, thank you for lunch,” she said. “I had a great time.”
    “Good. I’m glad. And again, sorry for keeping you so late. Just don’t hold it against me.”
    “I think you’re safe.”
    “Good, good. Here . . . let me grab you a cab, and, uh . . . I’d like to see you again.”
    Tingles somersaulted down her spine. “I’d like that.” She started rummaging around in her purse for her silver business card holder, hoping she didn’t look like a bag lady, before finally extracting a card and handing it to him. “My cell phone number’s on there and I don’t have a landline and . . . well, anyway, you can call that number . . . if you want.”
    He grinned. “I want.”
    She looked down, an embarrassed laugh bubbling from her lips. “I’ll look forward to it.”
    He gave her another smile before stepping out in the street to flag down a cab, which screeched to the curb. He opened the door for her and pressed a ten into her palm. She looked down, surprised. “Oh, no, it’s okay. I—”
    Jason smiled and shut the door. “Talk to you soon, Natalie.”
    She turned around as he stepped back onto the sidewalk and put his hands in his pockets, watching the cab as it pulled away.

Chapter 6
HE
    H e wiggled his fingers and rolled his head around, delighting at the series of pops, like little explosions, releasing within the stiff joints of his neck. He gripped the edge of the shopping cart and pulled his baseball cap closer to his eyes, wishing he could wear his sunglasses. That would be too memorable, though. A man walking around inside with sunglasses when it was eighty-five and overcast outside would stick out in the worst way. He could just hear the peppy, thirty-something housewife in her hot-pink yoga pants, water bottle molded from recyclable materials bouncing on her hip, iPhone glued to her ear while she loaded her cart with organic tomato juice and gluten-free cupcakes, being interviewed on the news: “Well, I thought it was strange that he was wearing sunglasses inside when it was cloudy all day. I mean, who does that?”
    He made soft clicks with his tongue as he waited a few seconds to round the corner of the aisle to ensure she wouldn’t see him. She was picking through the vast selections of olive oil, continually examining the labels, seeming to have a hard time selecting one. She finally placed a tall, slender bottle into her basket before strolling down the aisle and making a left toward what he was sure was the frozen food section to load up on her standby low-fat dinners. How she was able to stomach those, he didn’t understand. In solidarity, he’d tried one once—a so-called chicken breast swimming in a slimy sauce that promised to be spicy, but was really more sweet, accompanied by a limp snap pea and a handful of mushy pearl onions. He’d spit out the first bite of the pasty threads of meat, deciding those disgusting dinners would be the first thing to go when the time came.
    He saw her check her phone before she hurried to the front to pay for her items. He hung back a few minutes before slipping into a line a few cashiers over, never taking his eyes off her as she threw a couple of magazines into her basket and kept looking at her phone. She paid for her groceries and told the cashier to have a nice day before picking up her three plastic bags and darting out into the damp, warm afternoon.
    He, too, paid for his food, having picked up just enough items to make it look as though he was shopping and not spying. He jogged outside, searching the trickles of people streaming along the sidewalks,