Once safely inside the house, I immediately start tearing open the seams of the box, dumping the contents out into my open hand.
There’s only one thing inside—a flash drive.
It’s generic, black, and otherwise normal looking, but I know whatever’s on it is probably anything but normal.
I rush down the hall to my office, collapsing into the chair in front of my computer. But I hesitate before popping the flash drive into my port. What if it’s a virus that infects my machine and deletes everything I have? It’s not an irrational fear…
But that seems pretty basic for such a specific item left at my door. Whatever’s on it is clearly meant to be viewed by me, I just don’t know if I actually want to view it. No, that’s a lie—I’d rather dip my hands in sulfuric acid right now than find out what’s on this flash drive. But I have to.
Gathering my wits, I plug it into the port and wait for it to register in my file explorer. When it finally does, I steel myself and click on the folder, preparing for whatever hell is about to fill my screen.
But when it does, it’s not a threatening note or a grainy video of one of my loved ones being held for ransom in a basement somewhere. It’s a Word file labeled with my name. I hesitate for a moment while I try to steady my breathing. Once it’s calm, I double-click the file and wait for it to open.
When it does, I have to blink a few times to register what I’m seeing. It’s a threat, plain as day, but not the kind I expect.
My eyes move down the screen to the page count, and then the word count. I stare at the first page for a few seconds before my index finger starts scrolling at lightning speed, rage building with every page my eyes skim. Finally, I stand up, my fists clenched and chest heaving. I whip out my phone and tap the icon for my security cameras, searching the list for the feed pointed at the front door.
But when I tap it, the image is black with the word Disconnected at the bottom. Then I notice my phone is using data rather than Wifi.
With a frustrated growl, I crouch down next to my desk to check the router plugged into the wall. The red light is on instead of the green, so I flip the power off, wait a minute or so, and then turn it back on. It doesn’t connect. I do it another three times with no effect before storming out of my office to the front door.
But, as soon as I grab the knob, I freeze. I don’t know if I want to see what’s on the other side of this door, but I have to know. I have to know what I’m dealing with.
Your hypervigilance is a trauma response. It’s what your brain does to keep you safe.
I let go of the knob and turn around, heading back down the hall to the bedroom. I jerk open the drawer of my birch side table and reach inside, retrieving a black Glock in a black leather holster.
Just like his.
I tuck the holster in the back of my cutoff shorts, clipping it to the soft polyester maternity waistband, and pull my shirt down over it. I’ll have to relocate it by the time the baby is born. But, by then, none of this will matter. I won’t need it anymore.
Now armed, I tug open the front door and step out onto the porch. It’s still an ordinary summer day. The sun is shining, the heat at its peak, and the property is teeming with wildlife, still as active as ever. I’m the only one with a problem, now stalking back down the driveway toward the road. And when I reach it, I find what I’m looking for.
Next to one of the junipers guarding the entrance to my driveway is the pole that connects our electricity and internet to a series of smaller poles leading through the trees up to the house. I stare up at it for a few moments and then let my eyes fall down to the ground, searching until I see the wire laying neatly across the grass.
When I walk over to it to inspect it, I note that it wasn’t pulled loose by a fallen limb, the wire isn’t old and deteriorated, and the rest of the wires connected to the poles along the road are still intact.
This wire is cut clean.
I lift my head and methodically scan the trees before slowly turning and starting back up the driveway to the house. As soon as I reach my 4Runner, I hear a faint bark echo through the woods. Slowing my pace, I pause and then veer off the driveway and around the house to the backyard. I come to a halt at the deck stairs and pause to listen. Eventually, I hear another distant bark.
Our dog followed them into the woods when they left on their hunting trip and hasn’t come back.
This in itself isn’t surprising. It’s what he does all day, every day. He patrols the perimeter, wanders through the woods, does whatever it is dogs do when they have a hundred acres of freedom. I gaze into the trees, remembering that there’s another barn, deeper in the woods, where ranchers used to keep cows a long time ago when they pastured on the other side of the creek.
Maybe he’s there. At least, I hope he is by the time it gets dark and the coyotes start calling. He’s used to them, but I still worry because I know what they can do if they surround a lone animal. Coyotes, in general, used to scare the fuck out of me, but not so much anymore.
I’ve seen worse than coyotes. I’ve been hunted by worse. And I’ve seen real monsters in the woods.
I glance down at my phone, now reliant on data, and then set my jaw and march toward the dense tree line.
Come on, the corner of my mouth curls, destiny’s waiting.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Brett
One Year Ago
“It shouldn’t take long,” I collapse onto the sofa with my laptop and start entering my password, “I can still send it tonight.”
“Because it’s totally finished, right?” Bowen calls from the kitchen as he walks back and forth between the sink and the counter, filling the coffee maker for the next morning.
“Exactly.”
When I attach the entire manuscript to an email and press send, it’ll feel like a weight off my chest. At least one, anyway. Colson will never be normal—whatever that means. To me, it means he won’t ever see me as anything but an obsession, a focal point on which to be eternally fixated until something catastrophic happens.
An unsustainable coping mechanism…
He’ll listen to me all day and he cares about every word I say, except for my insistence that our lives don’t fit together anymore. And that makes this unsustainable.
But you provoke him. You just lead him on, trying to relive the past and take from him the parts you like. You only make it worse.
The irony is unreal. Colson gives me Jada’s information and now she’s my opportunity to get out of that building and break away from him. But it’s for the best. Why should Bowen have to tolerate this kind of abuse? It’s enough that I go to work every day with my stalker who tried to murder me years ago. Why should he have to continue dealing with it—deal with it making me crazy—any longer than necessary? If Colson didn’t act like…himself, maybe he could finally come to terms with the fact that we can never go back to where everything started and we could move on.
But do you even want to go back? He was stalking you since before you met him…
Logic says no, I shouldn’t want to go back there, where everything started. But humans are neither logical nor rational.
