by Cora Kenborn
Frustration had me at the brink of insanity, and I cut him off. “Hough, no offense, but some shit’s going down here, so just say that in fucking English.”
“Fine. If a crazy bitch gets into someone’s wireless and does some illegal shit, the wireless holder looks like the smoking gun. Your wireless holder is an eighty-nine-year-old named Harold Jonas. I don’t think he’s your stalker. However, Mr. Jonas remembered sharing his wireless password with the ‘nice girl down the street.’”
Jesus fuck, just say that to start with.
“Fucking great. How does Tara Lambert fit in all this?”
“Once we traced the WordStory file that Phoebe emailed us to Harold Jonas, and he identified sharing his wireless code with Tara Lambert, we raided her house. The laptop had been tampered with. Since the MAC information is in the software, any hacker can do it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Who knows where it originated? What’s important is that we can prove that was the hardware that sent the information to Phoebe’s fake website.”
“Oh god.” The bile rose in my throat and threatened to spew all over the tourists in front of me. Confusion was the only emotion hitting me. “I don’t understand. How does Mia fit into all this, and how is this Tara person connected to her?”
“Julian, I think you need to sit down somewhere.”
“No, goddamn it! I can’t get in touch with Phoebe. Tell me right now or I’m taking all of this into my own hands.”
Hough sighed, resigned to the fact this was happening on my terms. “Julian, I did some alias digging.”
“Faith said stalkers are a lot like hackers. They’re loyal to one online name. They couldn’t give a shit about real names, they toss those away without issue…”
“Julian? Are you listening to me?”
“What?” Phoebe’s warning from Faith rang like a siren in my head. “What was that?”
“I said Tara Lambert is an alias. She has two others that we know of that she’s used. One is Tanya Bertram.”
“So?” The dread almost knocked me over.
“Through the aliases we found her birth name, Julian. It’s Angela Lamee.
The world ceased to move around me and spots grew to gaping holes in my peripheral vision. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Angela Lamee.”
“Lamee?” I whispered. The spots swirled into darkness, threatening to drag me into hell.
“Billy Lamee’s sister.”
That wasn’t possible.
“Lam was an only child, Hough.” I knew Lam. Lam didn’t lie. Lam never lied.
“From what the records show, Billy Lamee most likely didn’t know he had a sister. When his mother left, Billy was a small child. She didn’t tell anyone she was pregnant. and never allowed anyone to know or see her daughter. They lived in Seattle most of Angela’s life until she was fifteen. It’s no wonder she’s documented with a high form of antisocial personality disorder and impulse control. The kid changed schools seven times by the time she was fourteen and each time her mother would change her name. Angela Lamee has no idea who she is, Bale.”
Lights turned colors and people rushed by but it all sounded far away in a tunnel.
“Multiple personalities?”
“From the medical records, at least four. I’m not even sure Angela knows what Angela’s been doing.”
Angela Lamee. Ang Lamee. AngLamee.
Angel Me. AngElmie. AngelMia.
“If you want to find a stalker, you need to pay attention to their online name. That’s what they have a hard time changing.”
Without warning, I leaned into a nearby trash can and threw up everything I had in me. Billy’s sister sought me out and took revenge. I was right—someone did blame me.
“Bale? You there?”
Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, I ignored the whispers around me. “I’m here.”
“I’m not sure how to tell you this part.”
“Oh god, Hough, no more…please.”
“The other alias I mentioned, one of the four?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s Tanna LeMyre.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Phoebe
My mind told my body to move but shock kept me rooted.
You’re not as smart as you think you are…Phoebe.
She was communicating. Real time. A blast of cool air hit my skin, and I rubbed at the goose bumps that scattered across my upper arms.
Where was the damn breeze coming from?
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as the curtains over my bedroom window swayed with the wind coming from the street.
Fuck. I knew all the windows were shut and locked earlier.
Didn’t I?
Running to the pane, I wrapped both hands around the frame and slammed it back down, locking the top. I stepped back and stared at it, then on a whim, pulled back on the lock once more, ensuring it was shut tight.
Julian and I had been in here the whole night. Gage had to have opened it before we got there and we didn’t notice. He wasn’t coming back until morning, and I hadn’t left the room.
Except to shower.
Grabbing one of Julian’s abandoned button-up shirts from the bedside chair, I tugged it on and unlocked the bedroom door, slowly peering outside into the darkened room.
“Gage? You home?” I called out.
Fumbling just outside my room for the light switch, I cursed as my hand ran across smooth paint. I pulled the shirt tighter and an involuntary shiver slithered down my spine.
Something isn’t right.
“Come on, Pheebs. You’re acting like a five-year-old,” I muttered out loud in a lame attempt to calm my frayed nerves. I tried hard to convince myself I was being paranoid, but the feeling of being watched surrounded me.
Paranoid or not, I wasn’t stupid. I reached back into my room and grabbed my stun gun. This was why the laws in this state were a crock of shit.
With each footstep, the wood creaked, slicing through the stillness. Two more cautious steps and I came to a dead stop as a shuffling noise broke the silence in front of me. I froze as ragged breaths echoed and the shuffling sound moved closer.
“Gage?” The vibrato of my own voice bounced off the walls as the last hiss of the G carried through the air.
Commanding my body to obey, I twisted toward the kitchen. That was when the murmur floated through the room; a string of sounds linked together in a sinister exhale.
My name.
“Hello, Phoebe.”
I jumped and the stun gun fell out of my hands and rolled across the floor. I held my breath, not allowing the air to leave my lungs. My chest burned as the lights flicked on and illumination filled the room. Feeling and warmth drained out of my body in one gush of disbelief as my eyes shifted from her face to the glint of the steel in her hand.
“Tanna?” There was no way I could fight her off—not pregnant and her with a knife. I wouldn’t take the risk.
Thoughts of Julian ran through my head…visions of the phone call he’d get. He’d be robbed of the right to hold his child and of the right to not bury another person he loved.
Instinctively, I draped a hand protectively across my stomach, as if a shield of bone and flesh would deflect any harm that the precious contents would face. I stared at her cold, emotionless face that was lit by the hum of the muted kitchen light.
Feeling the need to placate her with normalcy, I said the first thing that I could think of. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the studio?”
“Are we really playing this game?” she said, twirling what appeared to be an eight-inch hunting knife in her small hand.
Playing dumb wasn’t an act. I was legitimately confused, and adrenaline made coherent thought impossible. “What game? Tanna, what the fuck is going on? What’s with the knife?”
Rolling her eyes, she scratched her temple with the sharp edge of the knife and seemed oblivious as a small bubble of blood ran down the side
of her face.
“God, I knew you were stupid but come on, Phoebe. Does this look like I’m here for a fucking makeover?” Shoving the fisted knife in front of her, she glared at me, her eyes vacant—as if the Tanna I’d come to somewhat know no longer existed. If she ever did.
“You tell me, Tanna. You’re the one holding a knife,” I said, attempting to back up while keeping her talking.
“Your little website trick was cute,” she offered with a smirk. “You must think I’m some kind of moron to not have known what you were doing, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, don’t give me that!” she screamed, waving the knife in the air. “I knew that page was a setup! I was playing you both. You don’t think I’ve watched everything you’ve done since you barged up that staircase and ruined everything?”
I knew what she was saying. I just didn’t want to believe it.
This will destroy Julian.
Tanna. His friend. His trusted bandmate—was his tormentor.
“I’m a hacker too, bitch!” She continued pounding her fist into her chest. “How the fuck do you think I got so close to him in the first place? I knew everything about him before he signed off the first fucking night!”
She kept spewing words I couldn’t comprehend. What the hell was she talking about, “when he signed off”?
“I waited! I gained his trust so I could take my revenge.” She screamed louder.
Somebody had to have heard her by now.
“Tanna…”
“Do you know how many months I had to practice to learn to play bass guitar like him? My fingers bled every fucking day, bitch! Every fucking day! But I kept on and I learned like a master.”
“What are you saying?” I whispered.
“Jesus Christ!” she swore, charging toward me, her eyes wild with fire, and conscience a distant memory. “Do I have to spell it out for you? I made him famous! It wasn’t until I joined the band that they were handed a recording contract on a silver platter. I made him. He was mine to ruin for murdering my brother!”
“Oh god…” As she ranted, I eyed my cell phone, sitting on the table beside me. I glanced back, and her eyes softened as a blank and confused look overtook her features. She was quiet for a moment, almost like herself. Then she winced and it seemed like I wasn’t even in the room.
If I didn’t make it out of this apartment alive, there needed to be evidence as to what happened. As she began to rant again, I enabled the voice recorder app on my smartphone and moved slightly to the right to block it from her view.
“It would’ve been perfect. Julian’s car has slotted wheels, easy access to douse the front brake pads with a quart of oil. He didn’t even get in the car for hours, which would’ve given the oil time to soak in. It would’ve been perfect,” she repeated, looking forlorn. “He’d go for a drive and the first time he hit the brakes, they’d fail. He’d never know what hit him. The pedal would still have the same pressure, but he’d just spin around with only the rear brakes to save him. The way he drives, it’d never be enough. He’d spin out of control and either fall into a ravine or get slammed by another car. Either way, he’d die.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” I breathed.
“Am I? Then why didn’t I go through with it back then?” She stomped her foot and pulled on her purple hair with force. “Because at the last minute, I couldn’t fucking do it.”
I didn’t ask. I knew she’d tell me anyway.
“You wanna know why? Because that asshole made me fall in love with him, that’s why! Months of hacking, months of teaching myself to play the guitar, months of writing fucking letters that he looked at like he wanted to spit on were worthless because he made me love him!”
“And I…”
“And you…you had to walk up there with your slutty dress and stupid”—she grabbed her head as if in pain—“ignorant accent and fuck everything up. You took what was mine!”
“You killed Vivian.”
“That’s right, and don’t act like you give a rat’s ass either, because we both know that bitch got what she deserved. Biggest mistake I ever made was bringing her into this.”
“What?” Her wave of confession had my head spinning.
Tanna had the nerve to look smug. “Who the fuck do you think was feeding all the shit to Blogosphere Daily and Access Live? All it took was me promising to be a bug in Julian’s ear in her favor and she folded. I think the gut stabs were a brilliant touch, don’t you?”
“But why…”
“Why would she do it? Oh, Phoebe…really? She hated you almost as much as I do. She probably would’ve done it for a pack of Trojans and a blunt.” She was almost in front of me. I stood rooted, determined to hide the voice recorder. “I’ll have to admit, hacking into your past, I didn’t expect to find such a juicy tale of incest, Miss Dalton. My, my, what skeletons you’ve been hiding. You may be more fucked up than any of us.”
The mention of my father lit a fuse in me that provoked an all-consuming rage. “He never touched me.” I spoke through clenched teeth, every muscle taut.
“Is that what gets you through the nightmares, Phoebe? Telling yourself it didn’t happen? That Daddy didn’t pluck that daisy early?”
“Fuck you, Tanna! You don’t know shit about me.” I was a live wire, sparking on each end. She’d pushed my one trigger. “You’re just a fucking nut job who’s about to spend the rest of her life behind bars.”
“You think?” she said with a sadistic smile. “How do you figure? You haven’t left this apartment. All I have to do is make it look like you OD’d again. Poor little daddy’s girl, couldn’t handle the truth coming out in the press so she offed herself.”
“No one would believe that,” I said, my voice betraying me with a slight shake.
“No? You’ve already OD’d once. It wouldn’t be a stretch for people to think you did it again. All I have to do is delete the WordStory file. It’s child’s play. But I think I’ll leave your fake website up. I’ll look at it later for shits and giggles.” She smiled and looked at me blankly.
My brain furiously attempted to remember the part of my FEDS training that taught how to diffuse aggressive behaviors. However, trying to diffuse the situation had passed, and Tanna’s emotional state was batshit. The way she cocked her head side to side, as if seeing me for the first time, warned me she was about to implode.
“Calm down, Tanna. You don’t have to do this.” It sounded weak, but it was all I had.
“My name is Angela, and this is calm, princess.” She spoke in a high-pitched, child-like voice.
Her hateful use of Julian’s nickname for me told me I had limited time to make my move.
“You’re right, Tan—Angela. I messed things up for you, and you have every right to be angry, but you don’t have to mess things up for you. This will hurt him. If you love him, you don’t want to hurt him, do you?”
“Don’t explain Julian to me,” she spat out. “You’re just a blip on his radar. He’ll forget about you just like he did all the others.”
Reasoning with her was pointless. She lived in an alternate reality where the rules she followed had no place in common law or human decency. She’d lost her fucking mind.
“What do you want me to do to fix this, Angela?” The words made me sick.
Her eyes glazed, and she tightened her hold on the knife. “I want you to go in that little pink bag of yours and take a handful of those green pills, or I’ll finish what daddy started.”
Trying to sort out the situation had passed. I had seconds to get the hell out before she lost what little hold on reality she had.
Fuck the recorder.
A blare of a car horn from below the brownstone window diverted her attention. I took the moment and threw myself forward, landing a knee in her abdomen, causing her to drop the knife and double over with a muffled cry. Holding back the tears, I went into autopilot and ran toward the door. Fear coursed through my veins as my fingers closed ar
ound the doorknob.
From behind, her hand grabbed a fistful of my hair and jerked me backward. Off-balance from the surprise, I tumbled to the ground like a rag doll. Instinctively, I braced the fall by throwing my arms behind me, landing with an audible force against the floor. A small cry escaped as immediate pain shot from my wrist all the way up my arm.
It couldn’t end here. Not like this.
With the room spinning wildly out of control, I attempted to move and collided with the foyer table with a sickening thud. Grasping the side of the table, I let it absorb my weight, the smooth finish of the top pressing against my cheek.
From above, laughter rang out in peals of amusement. “Oh, Phoebe. You’re so pathetic, it’s almost a shame to kill you. Looks like we’re gonna have to do this the hard way.”
Gasping for air and dragging myself along the edge of the table, my entire body weighed me down. I crawled until three feet stood between death and the front door.
Throwing all my weight against the table, I propelled my body toward my only chance at freedom. A purple figure appeared in place of it before I fell. Hands grabbed my arms and pulled me into them.
It wasn’t Julian. The soft landing and vanilla perfume were characteristically female.
She’d won.
“Princess, running was stupid. Now things have to get messy.”
The first cut felt like a swarm of bees stinging me at once.
Funny how you never forget certain things. Your first bike ride. Your first kiss.
The feel of a blade as it rips your flesh.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Julian
“It’s Tanna LeMyre.”
Jaxon Hough’s words filled my head and I could think of nothing else the whole cab ride to Phoebe’s brownstone. Tanna. Our Tanna. She was the reason for my hell.
Hough threatened me as I hung up the phone. He knew where I was going, and he knew it was pointless to try to stop me. Tanna wasn’t in danger. Tanna was the danger. She’d set it up to make us all wander around on a wild goose chase while she got to Phoebe. Jaxon Hough could go to hell. Nothing could stop me from making sure Phoebe didn’t pay for my stupidity. Even if she left me, she’d be alive.
