Instead of going to work the following night, Elena sat in her darkened apartment, waiting and watching.

 

At precisely 1:37 a.m., her phone rang. This time, she did not answer.

 

She let it go to voicemail and played it back after the person on the other end had finished their message.

 

Elena listened intently.

 

The speaker's voice was rough but familiar, which was part of what made what was being said so chilling.

 

"You think it changes things not to answer? You think it helps to hide? They will find you. Sarah knows. She's always known. But maybe, just maybe, you still have time to get out of the city. Burn the badge. Toss the phone. Don't come back."

 

"Should you choose to remain, you will be me."

 

She slowly got up and went to her closet. She got her duffel bag, passport, cash, and keys. She was leaving. She didn't know what was going on. She didn't know who that woman who died was, but she looked too much like Elena for her own liking.

 

She was at the bus station by dawn. She didn't know where she was going, but she wanted to be far away from the city.

 

She didn't know who was watching or who the caller was, but the caller sounded a lot like herself. She didn't know how Sarah was involved, and that seemed to make this so much worse. All she knew at that moment was that she believed the voice that sounded so much like her.

 

All she could figure was that if "her" voice had warned her twice, she sure wasn't sticking around for a third call.

 

For two days, Elena traveled west, taking buses to small towns where no one asked too many questions. On the edge of Amarillo, she destroyed her phone, smashing it under her boot and throwing the pieces into separate trash bins. Her last voicemail played in her head on a loop: "Sarah knows. She's always known."

 

She hardly slept. Every time she shut her eyes, she viewed her own shattered form in the ER, breathed in the metallic odor of blood, and listened to the raspy form of her voice murmuring from beyond the grave.

 

In Santa Fe, she rented a small cabin with cash. She secured the cabin using her middle name and a fake last name, which she scribbled on the form. The woman at the front desk didn't look twice.

 

The first three days were spent in silence, walking the dusty trails behind the cabin. Normalcy was awaited with bated breath. The first semblance of routine surfaced only by the end of the week.

 

But time didn't extend the way it once had. Each second seemed to be a ticking clock.