Safe House, Cold Night

The rain didn’t stop. I drove through the darkest streets of the city, avoiding the main roads and the bright streetlights. My hands gripped the steering wheel tightly.

I glanced at the rearview mirror. Mark was sitting in the back seat. He was slouched forward, staring blankly at his trembling hands.

“We were supposed to meet for dinner tonight,” he whispered suddenly. His voice broke. “When he didn’t show up… I just thought he was busy at the office. I went home.”

Mark raised his head. His eyes were red.

“I didn’t even try to find him, Kate. And he… in his last minutes, he was only thinking about sending me that message. About saving me.”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He buried his face in his hands. I didn’t need to read his mind to understand what was happening. I could hear the pure agony in his voice. He hated himself for being alive while his best friend was dead.

“It’s not your fault, Mark,” I said quietly. “If you had gone looking for him, you might have been killed too. Maybe Steve knew he was in danger. Maybe that’s why he sent you that message.” 

Mark didn’t answer. He just sat in the dark, lost in his grief.

Twenty minutes later, I parked the car behind an old, brick apartment building on the edge of the city. It belonged to my grandmother. After she died, the apartment stayed empty. The bills were still in her maiden name. For the city’s digital system, this place didn’t exist.

“We’re here,” I whispered. “Move fast and keep your head down.”

I grabbed my purse from the passenger seat, and we ran through the rain toward the building. The stairs creaked under our wet shoes. I unlocked the door to apartment 4B and pushed it open.

The air inside was cold and smelled like dust and old paper. I locked the deadbolt behind us.

“Don’t turn on the overhead lights,” I said. “Someone might see them from the street.”

I found a small desk lamp in the living room and turned it on. The weak, yellow light cast long shadows on the walls. Mark was standing in the middle of the room. He was shivering.

That was when I saw the blood.

“Your arm,” I said, pointing to his right forearm. The sleeve of his coat was torn and dark red. 

Mark looked down as if he hadn’t noticed it before. “I must have cut it on the hatch when I forced it open.”

“Sit down,” I ordered. “I’ll find the first-aid kit.”

I brought a small box from the bathroom and sat on the old sofa next to him. I carefully rolled up his sleeve. The cut wasn’t deep, but it looked painful. I cleaned it with alcohol and wrapped a bandage around his forearm.  

He winced but didn’t pull away.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

“It’s just a scratch. You’ll survive.”

“No,” he said, looking right into my eyes. “Thank you for everything. You gave up your job, your safety… your whole life. And you did it for a stranger.”

I tied the bandage and looked at him. In the dim light, the distance between us felt very small. We were two strangers, but right now, we were the only people in the world who understood each other.

“I didn’t have much of a life to give up, Mark,” I confessed, my voice dropping to a whisper. “I sit in a dark room every night and listen to other people’s emergencies. I go home to an empty apartment. Maybe I helped you because I was tired of just listening.”

Mark looked down at the bandage around his arm.

“I know something about empty apartments,” he said after a moment. “Most of my life is work. The firm, clients, deadlines. Steve used to joke that I designed homes for other people because I never figured out what to do with my own.”

A faint smile crossed his face, then disappeared.

“He was the closest thing I had to family.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke. The rain hit the window softly.

Then Mark reached into his pocket and placed the silver flash drive on the dusty coffee table.

“This is what Steve died for,” he said. “We need to see what’s on it. We need to find the names and give them to the federal authorities. It’s the only way to clear our names.”

“Can we open it on my laptop?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Steve used military-grade encryption. He didn’t send me the password. But he always used dates or mathematical proportions from our architectural projects as his keys. If I can get a computer, I might be able to guess it.”

I nodded. “I have an old laptop in the bedroom. I’ll go get it.”

I stood up, but before I could take a step, a sound from the street made me freeze. A car door slammed.

Mark looked at me. I crossed the room quietly and pulled the curtain aside just enough to look outside. A dark car was parked across the street. Two men had already gotten out. They weren’t looking around or checking addresses. They were walking straight toward our building.

My stomach dropped.

“Kate?” Mark whispered.

I let the curtain fall and turned back toward the room. That was when I saw our phones lying on the coffee table. Still on.

For a second, I just stared at them. Then everything clicked.

“Our phones,” I said.

Mark followed my eyes.

“You called me when you were running. I called you back. We never turned them off.”

His face changed.

“They traced us.”

I grabbed my phone and shut it down. “Turn yours off. Now.”

Mark snatched up his phone. “Do you think we’re too late?”

Before I could answer, the desk lamp flickered twice and went out. The hum of the refrigerator stopped, and the apartment fell completely silent.

They had cut the power.

We froze. I stopped breathing.

Down on the street, I heard the faint, heavy thud of a car door closing.

Then, the main door of the apartment building creaked open.

Heavy, slow footsteps started walking up the stairs.

Step. Step. Step.

They reached our floor. They stopped right outside our door.

Mark reached out in the dark and grabbed my hand. His fingers were ice cold.

A second later, we heard the sharp, metallic scrape of a lockpick sliding into the deadbolt.

The door handle began to turn.

You can read Episode 1 of this B1-B2 English Story here.