Tangled together, Isaiah pants as he rest his head on my chest. My skin still buzzes from his touch. I run my hand through his blonde hair, pushing damp strands off his face.
“I love it when you do that,” he mumbles.
“What, play with your hair?”
“Mmm Hmm.”
The heat coming off his body is scorching, but I don’t want him to move. I know that I need to tell him about the phone call, but I don’t want to ruin the moment by mentioning Noah.
I’d much rather revel in the feeling of Isaiah nuzzled into my body. I’ll tell him tomorrow.
Chapter Thirteen
Isaiah
Rolling up on my elbow, I tug the blanket up to my hips. Emily does likewise, covering her chest. I lace my fingers with hers and swallow. Time to tell her what happened today. She loves me, and I want to keep it that way. I want to keep everything out in the open. As much as I hate to ruin the moment, I need to be honest.
“I need to tell you something.” My voice booms in the too-quiet room.
She wiggles under the blankets, her thigh brushing mine. “So tell me.”
“Don’t be mad at me, but I went to see Noah today. Caroline too.”
Her eyes widen slightly. “What? You did? I didn’t know you were going to do that.”
I nod, tracing her fingers with mine. “I went to his house and told him to stay away from you.”
She sits up, the blankets fall, exposing her chest to me. I’m so distracted by the fullness of the curve of her body that I almost don’t hear what she says next.
“Isaiah, did you threaten him? Will you get into trouble?”
Forcing my gaze up, I look into worried eyes. “I told him if he messed with you I’d make him sorry. He might tell my Sergeant. I’ll deal with it if he does.”
She stares at me, stone faced. “And Caroline?”
“I had a talk with her. She told me that he paid her and offered her the job, she had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I didn’t get a lot out of her. She said he told her that he was in love with you. I told her off, too. She was vague. I told her that if I find out she’s involved and something happens to you, I’d charge her with a crime. She was crying when I left.”
“You did that for me?”
I nod. “Yes.”
Emily leans in and kisses me. “Thank you. I need to tell you something, too.” She lays down, chewing on her lip.
I wait in silence while her eyes move from me to the ceiling. “If I tell you, you can’t mention it to anyone. I might lose my job.”
“Of course.”
“I pulled his file at work. He’s been on a bunch of anti-psychotic and anti-depressants. I got to thinking maybe he just can’t help it, so I thought maybe if I talked to him I could make him understand.”
I bolt up. “What? What did you do?”
“I called him.” Her face wrinkles when she sees the alarm in me. “I told him that I know it’s him and I know that he doesn’t mean to scare me, and that I need him to stop. I said we can’t be friends anymore if he’s acting this way.”
My heart rate picks up as what she says hits my ears. “Emily-”
She sits up, putting her hands on my shoulders. “Isaiah, he was nice. He told me that he didn’t want to scare me and he wants to make it up to me. I told him not to. He told me that he loves me. That was it. He wasn’t mean to me.”
I take her face in my hands. “You don’t understand. You can’t give these people any attention, it just feeds their delusion.”
Her eyes tear. “I thought-”
“I know. You thought you could be sweet and ask him nicely and he would get it. He’s sick, baby. He won’t get it. The more you talk to him, the more it feeds him. He thinks he loves you. Hell, he might think you love him too. I’m no doctor, but I’ve dealt with enough mentally ill people to have a good idea about things. You have to ignore him. No matter what. You can’t talk to him. No accepting gifts, no contact at all.”
Her tears slip from her eyes and over my fingers. I hate that she’s crying. She has to know, she’s got to understand that he’s not harmless.
“What if he shows up at my work?”
“Ignore him. Walk past him. Get someone to walk you to your car.”
She nods, sniffing. “And gifts?”
“Send them back.”
“I’ll try. Won’t he get mad?”
“Maybe. There’s more than one way this can end. I don’t much care if he gets mad. Promise me that no matter what he does, you won’t interact with him.”
“I promise. Are you mad at me?” she asks, softly.
“No. I’m just worried. I want you to do everything you can to stay safe.”
She holds my eye with hers, I wipe tears off her cheeks.
“I’m just tired of sitting and doing nothing. I feel like I’m sitting around and just waiting for something bad to happen. I want to do something.” Her eyes light up as if letting out this bit of information brings her to life.
I can’t help but smile at this spunk. I love the independent streak in her. “I understand that, but this isn’t a game. I walk around with a gun on my hip and I have training to deal with the mentally ill, you don’t. Please let me handle this.”
I see the fire in her eyes, but she nods. I can tell she wants to argue. Her bright red hair falls in her face and my gaze is pulled down to the chain hanging around her neck, the golden charm teasing her bare breasts. When I pull my eyes back up, her fire in her brown eyes has dissipated and is replaced by tender emotion that draws my lips to hers.
“Thank you. When this is over I’ll take you somewhere nice, just me and you.”
Her arms go around my neck and I inhale the sweet scent of her perfume as we lay down. She curls into my body, her head resting on my chest.
“The alarm people and painters are supposed to come tomorrow to my house. I took the day off.”
“I remember. I have to work, but promise me you will be safe. I’m paying someone to sit there and watch your house until you are done.”
Her head tilts up and I press my lips to her forehead. “I didn’t know you did that.”
“I mean business.”
She yawns and, soon, I hear her deep rhythmic breathing telling me that she’s fallen asleep in my arms.
I have to think up a way to get rid of this guy. I have a feeling he just won’t go easily. The last thing I want is for Emily to turn into someone that’s afraid of her own shadow, but I’ll be damned if I won’t do everything in my power to protect her.
***
Emily
Why can’t I move?
Arms and legs feel like lead.
I taste the fear in my mouth like bile.
Turning my head, I see the shadow of a person standing beside my bed.
God, where am I?
Emily, Emily can you hear me?
I wake up thrashing, sweating. My heart still pounds from a dream that seemed so real I can’t help but doubt my senses as I glance around Isaiah’s bedroom. He’s sound asleep beside me.
At least I didn’t wake him up.
My head hurts. This is the first time this has happened here, with him. I thought that part was over.
With a deep sigh, I creep out of bed. My fear starts to fade as I head for the bathroom looking for something to take for the pain in my head.
Must be the stress. They say that it comes out in strange ways, but I always imagined myself strong. I didn’t think I’d be taken down easily, but I suppose we all have our breaking points.
As I crawl back into bed, I snuggle into his warm body, chilled by the trek to the bathroom. If not for Isaiah, I can only imagine the condition that I’d be in.
The next morning I got the lecture of a lifetime before I left the apartment. Isaiah doesn’t think I’m taking things seriously enough. He might be right, but I’m also inclined to believe that he’s overreacting because he’s a cop.
Thank God he doesn’t know I had another ni
ghtmare.
He’s paying an off-duty officer over thirty-five dollars an hour to sit at the end of my driveway and keep Noah away from me, and turn away any potential gift deliveries. We argued, and I lost.
So now I’m standing on my front porch for the first time since Sunday, staring at a patrol car while ADT drills holes in my walls and painters wait for them to finish so they can get started.
It felt good to be home, until I walked in the front door and saw the empty spaces left by my missing furniture. Let’s not even talk about the words scribbled all over my house. I spent an hour trying to get the paint off my headboard, only to end up in tears as I ask the painters to trash it for me.
I guess Isaiah is right, there must be something seriously wrong with Noah to do something like this, and then seem surprised when I tell him that it scared me.
How in the hell did he even get in here? I checked all the locks and windows again, didn’t find anything. Maybe he knows how to pick a lock.
With nothing better to do, I decide to check the house for anything else suspicious. Maybe I will notice something that an officer wouldn’t think to look for.
I spend over an hour looking over every nook and cranny that I can find. I scour my laptop, opening up my browser history.
That’s when I see the first thing that alarms me, someone opened up my school loan account weeks ago, and it wasn’t me. It’s not due yet.
When I open it up, my mouth drops open. It’s paid. Someone logged into my account and paid it weeks ago.
Tears spring to my eyes as I sit at my dining room table staring at the time stamp. He used my laptop to pay this off. The activity is clear in the browser history.
How long has he been coming and going in my house?
Has he been watching me?
Nausea rolls into my stomach as I look around, wondering where he might have been hiding. My sick stomach falls into my feet when it occurs to me that there is one place that I never thought to check.
The attic.
Rising to my feet, I close my laptop and pocket my phone as I walk to the door in the hallway that leads up to the one part of the house that I’ve never used.
After opening the door, I flip on the light that illuminates the attic from the bottom of the stairs. I swallow, staring up the staircase looming before me. What if he’s here now? Maybe I should wait.
Being cautious, I return to the kitchen and retrieve a large kitchen knife, then head back. This time, I take the stairs carefully, my eyes darting and my knife at the ready in my hand.
Once at the top, I do a full 360 before I allow myself to breathe again. He’s not here. I wonder if he hid up here. Maybe he only came in when I wasn’t home.
Unable to spot anything strange right away, I press onward. Careful to step on the beams of the unfinished floor. I should lay floors up here and turn it into a room, it would work as an extra bedroom or a game room or something.
I file the idea away as I move from corner to corner, searching for anything off.
That’s when I see it, a lump in the insulation in a dark corner. I shine the light from my phone to the area, I can’t tell what it is.
Once I get there, I wish I’d never found it. I crouch, and move the insulation to see a small, digital camera.
Fuck.
Tears flood my eyes and bile rises in my throat as I pick it up, turn it on. It still has enough of a charge to spring to life.
Oh God.
I stand on trembling legs, sweat dripping into my eyes thanks to the heat up here. I head back down the stairs and look around at all the people moving around in my house. The ADT guy approaches me and he shows me how to use the system, and I sign his paper with a trembling hand.
I head outside to be alone before turning the camera back on.
Sitting on my porch, on the porch swing that I hardly use, I sit and work through the menu as I cry.
With a shaking finger, I hit play.
My hand flies to cover my mouth to stifle a sob as I watch myself, filmed from above.
Dressing.
Walking around the house.
Playing with Maxie.
Vomit rises in my throat; the acidic taste of bile floods my mouth.
Me, sleeping.
Showering.
In the throes of orgasm.
The one that makes me bend over the rail and heave my breakfast into the yard is the last one I can stand to watch. Night time, I’m sound asleep. The camera is placed on my dresser and a dark figure, a man, I can’t see his face, is walking around me. The figure carefully pulls back the covers to reveal my naked body. He touches me, he unzips his pants and eventually comes into a pair of my panties.
I turn the camera off and set it aside, unable to look any longer. I can’t even process what I’ve seen as terror sickens my empty stomach.
It isn’t until now, that it’s too late, that I realize I never should have touched this camera, these buttons. I probably just ruined all his fingerprints.
***
God, Isaiah was right. This guy is dangerous. Suddenly I’m scared to death and looking over my shoulder. Is he always watching me? Has he been in Isaiah’s apartment too?
No, that can’t be. No one knows I’m there.
It’s as if the fear that I wasn’t feeling all this time suddenly catches up with me and I’m terror stricken.
The cop at the end of the driveway is talking to someone in a flower delivery truck. A fresh sob escapes me when I see the delivery guy standing there with a massive bouquet of flowers turned away.
How did he know I would be here today?
How much does he know? Has he been watching me for months?
I dial Isaiah. This is so much worse than I thought.
“Hey sweetie, how is it going?” His chipper voice only makes me cry harder.
“Isaiah, I found….”
“Hey! Hey what’s wrong, are you okay?”
I shake my head no, as if he can see me. “I found a camera in the attic. Please, can you-”
“I’m on my way. Is he on it?”
“You can’t see his face. There’s no way to tell who it is. I can’t believe, oh God, I’m going to throw up again.”
I drop the phone and heave again over the side of the porch, sobs shaking me as I vomit.
I’ll never be able to live comfortably in this house again. I’m going to have to sell my home.
“Emily,” he’s calling my name when I pick up the phone again.
“I’m here, sorry.”
“Baby, what’s on it? You don’t sound like you are okay.” His voice is heavy with worry.
“Just come and see for yourself. I can’t even say it.”
***
Isaiah comes pulling up in an unmarked, black Lincoln town car. There is a determined purpose in his steps as he crossed the yard to me. Reaching me, he takes the camera and pulls me into his arms.
“I’m here, it’s okay. Come sit in the car with me.”
Moments later, I’m sitting in the seat beside him as he watches the same videos that I just watched. His brow is furrowed and his face grows red as each sickening moment is exposed. I’m still crying, curled up into a ball against the door as if it can protect me from the horror that is on that camera.
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe he left this behind. He must have been expecting you back. God I’m going to fucking murder him.” He whispers the words as if talking to himself.
The whisper sends a chill through me, all the way down to the bone.
Looking up, Isaiah meets my eyes. His are angry.
“What do I do now?” I choke.
“We are going to add this to your harassment report, for starters.”
He holds my eyes for a long moment, then turns the camera off. “He’s been watching you, filming you for weeks. Maybe longer,” he says, casting his gaze out the window as he runs a hand over his blonde head.
“I can’t live here. I can’t. I’ll always think so
meone is watching me.”
He moves, I’m grabbed by my arms and pulled against his chest. His voice is a rough whisper into my hair. “You can live with me. I’ll get an alarm installed. I’m so sorry, Emily, Fuck. I’m going to kill him for this.”
I clutch at his shirt, burying my face in his scent for comfort. “You can’t kill him. Please don’t get into trouble. I need you.” I’ve never needed anyone before.
“I can’t sit and do nothing. There has to be a way to get to him, to stop this. You are moving in with me, you hear me? You won’t be coming back here. I’ll get your stuff moved and stored for you.”
I lift my head, so close to his face I feel his breath touch my lips.
“Move in? Like forever?”
“Yes.”
“But-”
He silences me with his lips. A hungry, desperate kiss, as if he’s claiming my lips for his. It settles the nausea in my gut and stills my pounding heart. When he pulls back, I look up into desperate, gorgeous copper colored eyes and nod. It’s crazy. Moving in, this soon. Moving out and selling my house.
It’s insane.
This whole situation is complete madness. But Isaiah loves me, it’s all over his face with an unspoken plead. He’s silently begging me with a look.
I can’t ever live here again, and I know it. I can take the money and buy a new house. Maybe with Isaiah.
“Okay then. I’m going to sell this place; I can’t even look at it again after this.”
I don’t even know how I’m going to be able to go back to work now, I’m going to be terrified to cross the parking lot. Scared that every time I look up, he will be there.
Are things ever going to be normal again?
Chapter Fourteen
Emily
Later, at home, I change into something comfortable and sit heavily on the side of the bed. I’m painfully numb. Too many thoughts bouncing off the walls of my skull as Isaiah walks in, leaning on the doorjamb and crossing his muscular arms over his chest.
“I called ADT but they can’t get here for a week and a half to do the install. I talked to the apartment manager she said it’s fine as long as I get it removed when I move out. I also ordered pizza while you were in the bathtub. It’s here.”
Crazy Love Page 10
