…”It says ‘Night five. I’ll bring it up myself.'”
Marcus looked as scared as I felt. “Ma’am, I don’t think whoever this is plans to stay downstairs.”
I didn’t sleep that night. In the morning, I went to the police station with screenshots, my receipts from the dispute, and Marcus’s phone number. He’d offered to come in and tell them everything, and he did, on his lunch break, still in his work jacket.
The officer, a tired-looking detective named Ruiz, asked the question I hadn’t wanted to think about. “Who knows you like chicken tenders and a milkshake?”
I laughed, because it sounded so silly. Then I stopped laughing. I’d ordered exactly that, once, the night I moved in, sitting on the floor surrounded by boxes. The only other person in my apartment that night was the building’s maintenance guy, Kevin, who came up to fix the smoke detector. He’d joked about my “dinner of champions.”
Kevin had a master key.
Detective Ruiz got a warrant for the account records. The card on file belonged to Kevin. So did the email. He’d made the account with my phone number, and when I changed it, he’d simply gotten the new one off my lease renewal in the building office.
On night five, Marcus drove the order to my building exactly like always. But this time, Detective Ruiz and another officer were waiting in my apartment, and I was at my sister’s across town. At 9:20, they heard a key turn in my lock.
Kevin was arrested in my doorway, holding a milkshake. There was a second note in his pocket. I’ve never asked what it said, and I never will.
My landlord changed every lock in the building that weekend and fired him the same day. I have a restraining order now, and a new apartment on the sixth floor, with a doorman.
Marcus and I still text sometimes. Last week he sent me a picture of a five-star review from me that he’d framed, the one where I wrote that he was the reason I was safe. Underneath it he wrote, “Best delivery I never made.”
