Fiction & Suspense Writing Sample

The Art of Being Hunted

Paris was the perfect place to disappear.

Nora had always known this. The anonymity of a foreign city— the way you could slip between languages, between lives.

She had come here to breathe, to shed the dead weight of who she used to be.

And yet, here she was again. Another night, another stranger. The pattern was almost comforting.

She sat at a small outdoor table, the kind meant for delicate, unhurried women who draped themselves in cashmere and read Camus for the aesthetic.

She knew how she looked—the wide-brimmed black hat, the long, thin Vogue cigarette between her fingers, the half-drunk glass of Bordeaux.

She was playing a part. But then, so was everyone else.

When the man in the olive-green vintage BMW stalled in traffic, their eyes met. A moment, nothing more.

She let herself imagine the story. He was handsome in the way men were when they knew they could be dangerous if they wanted to be.

Dark hair, sharp features, the kind of expression that suggested he lived for the thrill of the near-miss.

He didn’t smile. Neither did she.

He drove on.

She smirked, exhaled smoke, let him go.

By the time she had forgotten about him, he was standing in front of her table.

"Puis-je m'asseoir?"

His French was smooth, effortless. He looked at her like he already knew the answer.

She tilted her head, let the silence stretch just long enough to remind them both that this moment, this decision, belonged to her. Then, casually, as if it hadn’t shaken her, she nodded.

"Bien sûr."

He sat, resting his forearms on the table, close but not too close. His eyes flicked to her cigarette, then back to her.

"American?" he asked.

She let a small smirk curl at the edge of her lips. "Not until I speak."

He gave a quiet laugh, smooth and practiced. "And yet, I knew."

"And yet, you sat anyway."

A flicker of something crossed his face. Amusement? Or calculation?

She exhaled a slow stream of smoke, watching the way his gaze tracked it.

She was supposed to be the one assessing him. The foreign woman alone at a bar, the perfect prey. Vulnerable.

Unassuming.

But she wasn’t.

She was the one cataloging his every movement. The tension in his jaw. The way he angled his body. The placement of his hands. She clocked the exits, the weight of the wine bottle in her hand, the blade of the steak knife on the table.

He thought he was hunting. He didn’t know he was already caught.