Elena looked around the café. Nobody had noticed the gun.
The weight of it, being at the wrong end of something like that, feeling her own life sitting in another person's hand, settled over her cold and unpleasant.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, keeping her voice level.
The stalker's jaw was tight.
"You were supposed to be perfect. The untouchable kind. The girl everyone envies, brilliant student, future pride of your family, everything going right.
Not this. Not wandering around on vacation, wasting your time, letting some man you've known for two days follow you around like you're a normal person with no standards."
His eyes had the particular shine of someone whose reality has been organized around a single idea for a very long time.
"You weren't supposed to be like this. It's all wrong. Everything is wrong."
