Then another came through.

Leo snapped the SIM card in half, let the pieces flutter into the black water of the drain, and dropped the last ten feet to the ground. He didn't look back. He just walked, fast and quiet, toward the flickering neon sign of the Suds & Duds on Kent Street.

He typed back:

He looked down at the alley below. A white panel van with no windows was idling, its headlights off. A man in a grey coverall was lighting a cigarette by the building’s side door.

Leo lived on the fourth floor of a walk-up in a part of the city where the sirens never really stopped. His fire escape was a rusted metal shelf where he kept a dead succulent and a single, flickering string of Christmas lights he’d never taken down. He shuffled to the window, pulled the sash up with a groan, and stepped out into the biting night air.

Ss. Could mean screenshot . Alternative. Maybe a different route, a second option. Nippy. Fast. Cold. A warning.

He swapped it into his phone. A new message thread opened. Only one text existed.