Julian Harrow | FemPOV Stalker

“Detective Jenkins! You’re trapped. Drop the gun!”

“Johnny-boy, you cocky bastard. You can’t outrun the long arm of the law.”

Jenkins tossed his service Glock aside, the metal clattering like a bad omen, and spread his arms wide—his unprotected chest a bullseye for the bullet’s inevitable arc. Johnny thumbed the hammer back, and in the dusty silence of the abandoned barn, it clicked like a judge’s gavel.

“Already gone,” the man smirked, his grin crooked as a busted fence.

“Not so fast, kiddo.” The staccato tap of heels cut through, sharp as a guillotine, followed by the snap of a cocked pistol. A figure slunk from the half-light—red dress clinging to curves like blood on a blade. The cold muzzle kissed Johnny’s temple. “Drop the toy, sugar. You’ll hurt yourself.” Her smile was all teeth, predatory as a wolf’s.

Trash. Cheap, pulpy garbage.

The kind of dialogue you’d find in a dime-store paperback, the cover torn half off, stuffed in a gas station bargain bin. Julian Harrow, the great Julian Harrow, reduced to this—clichés so stale they smelled like week-old bread. He’d built an empire on Jenkins, that smooth-talking bastard with a grin like a switchblade and a bedpost notched with lovers. Now? Now he was scraping the bottom of the barrel, and the barrel was laughing at him.

He slammed the book shut, hard enough to make the desk shudder. The fancy waxed cover—$39.95 a pop at Barnes & Noble—groaned like it might split. “This is it?” he growled, voice rough from too much whiskey and not enough sleep. “This is my peak?” He glared at the blank draft page of his new thriller, the one that was supposed to reinvent him, drag him out of the romance-mystery gutter and into the big leagues. Ink splotches bled across it, a souvenir from his little show at the café earlier—twirling that overpriced fountain pen, winking at the waitress with the tight blouse. Look at me, I’m a writer. What a joke. Now the page was a mess, black smears like bruises on a corpse.

The muse wasn’t just gone; it’d packed up and moved to Florida.

He grabbed the whiskey bottle—good stuff, single malt, the kind you’re supposed to sip, not guzzle—and tipped it back. The burn hit his throat, but his head was already swimming, a Tilt-a-Whirl gone off the rails. The letters on the page danced, mocking him. “Okay, prologue,” he mumbled, slurring like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. “It was dark. Rain pounded the windows, wind screamin’ like a banshee...” He squinted at what he’d scratched out. “Drk. Rain scremd at wndw.” Beautiful. A goddamn Pulitzer waiting to happen.

The pen went flying, a missile of frustration. It hit the wall with a crack, shattering into jagged bits of metal and plastic. A gift from some fan at a signing, probably cost more than his first car. Worthless now.

His feet swung toward the floor, hunting for those fuzzy slippers—the ones with the worn-out heels that hugged his toes just right. Nothing. Bare wood stared back at him. “Oh, come on,” he snapped. “Marta, you klepto hag, what’d you do with my slippers? Gonna hawk ’em on eBay? Authentic Julian Harrow footwear, slightly used, ten grand!” He snorted, a bitter laugh that turned into a cough. Marta, the housekeeper, probably hadn’t even been here today. Or had she? The days were blurring together lately.

He reached for the bottle again, sloshing whiskey over the desk. Amber rivers soaked the draft pages, turning his shitty prologue into a Rorschach test of failure. He didn’t care. He hiccupped, staring at the chaos, then lifted the bottle to his lips. No glass, no pretense—just him and the booze, like old lovers too tired to fight. The room tilted, his head buzzing like a swarm of wasps trapped in a jar.

Screw it. Screw the book, screw the slippers, screw everything.

---

Hangovers don’t just hurt; they punish. Julian woke up feeling like someone had parked a semi on his skull. His mouth tasted like a landfill—sour, gritty, with a hint of regret. The air stank too, a mix of sweat and something sour he couldn’t place. Even this mansion—his pride, his fortress, paid for with Jenkins’ blood money—felt like it was rotting around him. He groaned, rolling over, hands fumbling to cradle his head before it split open.

Clink.

His eyes snapped open—or tried to. The room was dim, shadows thick as tar. Something cold bit into his wrists. He tugged, and the sound came again—metal on metal, a rusty screech that clawed up his spine. “What the hell...” he rasped, voice a gravel pit. Another tug. Chains. He was chained.

Fear hit like a bucket of ice water, washing the hangover right out of him. His heart kicked into gear, pounding so hard he felt it in his teeth. He yanked again, harder, the bedframe rattling but holding firm.

“Okay, okay, calm down,” he muttered, though his breath was coming fast, ragged. He squinted into the gloom. Bare walls, maybe concrete. A single bulb flickered overhead, weak as a dying firefly. This wasn’t his bedroom. This wasn’t his house.

“Hey!” he shouted, or tried to—his throat was sandpaper, the word crumbling into a croak. “Anybody out there? This isn’t funny!” Silence answered, heavy and wrong, like the quiet before a storm tears the roof off. He twisted, testing the chains. They were old, pitted with rust, but solid. His wrists were already raw, skin chafing with every move.

“Wanted a thriller, huh?” he whispered, a shaky laugh bubbling up. “Well, congrats, asshole, you’re in one.” He could almost see the jacket copy: Bestselling author Julian Harrow vanishes—his greatest mystery yet! Probably some obsessed fan, right? Some nutjob who’d read The Velvet Clue one too many times, decided Jenkins was real and Julian owed them a sequel. Had to be. The alternative—something darker, something real—was too much to think about.

Then he heard it. A shuffle. Soft, deliberate, like footsteps on damp earth. His head jerked toward the sound, eyes straining. The shadows in the corner thickened, clotting into a shape that peeled free—a woman, stepping into the faint glow of the bulb. His gut twisted. He knew her.

The more he stared, the colder it got—not the room, but inside him, a slow freeze creeping up his spine. That café in Portland, the one where he’d played the big-shot writer, twirling his pen for the waitress—hadn’t there been a woman at the corner table? Same hair, hanging like a curtain, hiding her face while she scribbled in a notebook. And outside the publisher’s office in Bangor, weeks back—he’d brushed past someone, caught a flash of scuffed black boots, the same ones she wore now, tapping softly against the concrete.

His breath hitched. The eyes—those eyes. He’d seen them before, hadn’t he? The courier who’d dropped off galleys last month, standing too long in his doorway, staring while he signed the clipboard. “Thanks, doll,” he’d said, flashing that Jenkins grin. She hadn’t smiled back.

Panic slammed into him, a steel band cinching around his chest, squeezing the air out. His wrists jerked against the chains—rust flaking, metal screeching—but they held fast. “You,” he croaked, voice a dry rasp. “I know you.”