by Jami Alden
Talia grabbed it from her bedside table and handed it to him. It was eerie, how his entire demeanor changed in an instant. Wearing nothing but his underwear and armed only with a small Taser gun, he should have looked silly. But somehow it was like an invisible cloak had dropped down over him.
Gone was the tender lover who waited patiently, even uncertainly for her to accept him. Now Jack was a warrior, tough, dangerous, afraid of nothing and capable of taking on the world.
Still, concern made her stomach tight as she locked the door behind him. Jack was tough, but what if someone was still down there with a gun or a knife…
She pulled on a sweatshirt and a pair of yoga pants and waited for what felt like hours but was probably only a couple minutes for Jack to knock and give her the all-clear. When she opened the door, she saw that he’d gotten dressed, too, in a T-shirt and jeans, a pair of black running shoes on his feet. They had a few damp blades of grass clinging to the top. He must have gone outside.
“No sign of him?”
Jack shook his head, his mouth pulled into a tight line. “Whoever it was lobbed a brick through the window over the kitchen sink.”
“The one that faces my neighbor’s house?” she asked as she slipped on a pair of flip-flops and followed him downstairs.
Glass crunched on the linoleum as she walked across the room to assess the damage. The lower panel of the window was gone, only a few shards hanging from the frame. There was a pile of glass in the sink, scattered across the counter and on the floor. Carefully, she leaned over the sink to peer through the window. Jack had turned on the outside lights, illuminating the narrow strip of land that separated her kitchen wall from the neighbor’s fence. Roughly six feet high and lined by a row of tall myrtles on the other side, it completely blocked her from seeing into the neighbor’s lawn.
“If he threw it from behind the fence like I think he did, there’s no way we’ll have him on tape,” Jack said grimly, as though reading her mind.
Talia shook her head, frustration boiling up to chase away the fear. “This is getting ridiculous. He goes from sending me the DVD to throwing a stupid brick through my window? Seriously, is he going to do anything or just torture us for the rest of my life?”
“It wasn’t just a brick,” Jack said, and motioned to the kitchen counter. It was only then she noticed the envelope sitting there. “I didn’t want to open it until the cops got here.”
As if on cue, there was a loud knock on her front door, and Jack went to answer. She heard the low murmur of voices, and Jack came back to the kitchen with Officer Roberts in tow.
He nodded in greeting. “Sorry to be out here again.”
“Me too,” said Talia.
She gave him a quick sequence of events and then indicated the envelope on the counter. She watched, her heart in her throat as Officer Roberts pulled on a pair of latex gloves and used a knife to slice it open.
She couldn’t help remembering what she’d found the last time she’d been left one of her creep’s “tokens” and braced herself for the worst. Jack came up beside her and threaded his fingers through hers. She clung for dear life as Roberts slid a photo out of the paper sleeve.
Talia’s knees went watery as a cold that had nothing to do with the breeze coming through the broken window chilled her to her core.
“You know this girl?” Roberts asked as he held up the photo so she could get a better look.
“That’s my sister, Rosario. She was here the first time you came. She’s a freshman at Stanford.” The words seemed to come from very far away.
“Look at the time stamp,” Jack said, pointing to the yellow digits in the bottom left corner. “It was taken earlier today.”
Talia scrambled for her phone and dialed Rosario’s number. Her call went straight to voice mail. “She’s not answering,” she cried. “Why isn’t she answering?!”
Jack closed his hands over her shoulders. “Don’t panic. She called and checked in at eleven like always, right?”
Talia knocked his hands off. “Don’t tell me not to panic! It’s been hours since then. She could be anywhere. This could be a warning—Oh my God, maybe this is that sick fuck’s way of telling us he took her.”
She grabbed her purse and ran for the kitchen door, vaguely heard Jack say something about finishing up with him once they knew Rosario was safe.
“Okay if I look around?” Roberts called as she was stepping through the door that led from the kitchen to the garage.
“Knock yourself out,” Talia called. She was already buckled into the passenger seat and redialing Rosario’s number when Jack climbed in beside her.
“Still no answer,” she said, her throat tight.
“They don’t have a landline?”
She bit her lip to stop its shaking and shook her head. “She and Dana decided it didn’t make sense since they both had cells.”
As Jack pulled out of the driveway and headed down the street, she scrolled through her contacts to see if by some chance she’d taken down Dana’s contact number, but no dice.
“You have her phone in your GPS locator system, right?” Jack reminded her. “Why don’t you check and I’ll try to get the campus police over to check her room.”
Talia logged onto the tracking site, though she half suspected that Jack’s suggestion was more to distract her than anything else. It would be easy enough for someone to disable the signal if he knew what he was doing.
Still, as she half listened to Jack’s conversation with the Stanford campus police, she pulled up the device’s tracking, cursing as it loaded at a snail’s pace. Mingled guilt and fear threatened to choke her at the thought of how she’d let Rosie’s earlier call go straight to voice mail.
Because she’s been too busy fooling around with Jack to answer her phone. “If anything happens to her… because we left her alone…” She buried her face in her hands, replaying the moment when her phone had rung. Talia had looked at the display, seen it was Rosie calling at her usual time, and had rolled back over to bury herself in Jack’s embrace. What if she had answered? Would she have heard something in her voice, a trace of fear that wouldn’t have come through on the voice mail she’d left? “I won’t be able to handle it if something happens to her because of me.”
“I’m sure everything will be okay,” Jack said, reaching over to rest his hand on her thigh.
For the first time, the warmth of his hand didn’t bring her any comfort.
She looked down at her display and saw that the GPS tracking site had finally loaded. She felt a small measure of relief when she saw the dot that represented Rosie’s phone showed up at her dorm’s address. Still, if someone grabbed her, what was the likelihood that he’d let her take her phone with her?
They reached the parking lot of Rosario’s dorm just as the police were pulling up. Talia waited impatiently for the kid who was sleeping on the lobby couch to rouse himself and let them in.
He eyed the cops nervously, and as Talia got closer, she understood why—the kid smelled like he’d spent the night at the bottom of a keg.
“Hey, you’re not s’posed to go up without signing in—”
Talia ignored him and bounded up the stairs to the second floor, Jack hot on her heels. “Rosie,” she called, pounding on the door. There was a muffled thump and some shuffling and finally the door opened.
Dana, Rosie’s roommate, squinted through the narrow opening. “Talia? What’s up?”
“Is Rosie here?”
Dana’s eyes widened with surprise at the sight of Jack flanked by two cops behind her. “No—I came back after midnight and she wasn’t here. Is she in some kind of trouble?”
Talia’s heart went into overdrive as she pushed past Dana into the room. Sure enough, there was Rosie’s phone on the desk. When Talia tried to turn it on, she saw the battery was drained. She started to hyperventilate. “Jack”—she couldn’t keep the panic from her voice—“we have to find her. Promise me we’ll find her.”
“Her backpack is
n’t here,” Dana said cautiously. “Let me check my phone. Maybe she left me a message.”
Talia barely kept it together as a thousand nightmarish scenarios burned through her brain.
“Yeah, she texted me around eleven-thirty,” Dana said, and held out the phone. “ ‘Heading over to Kevin’s will probably stay over see you in the morning.’ ”
Talia’s panic dialed back several degrees, but she knew it wouldn’t disappear entirely until she saw Rosie with her own eyes. “You could have told us that before,” Talia snapped.
“Sorry,” Dana snapped back. “It’s not like I get Rosie’s crazy sister and the cops pounding on my door every Saturday night—Sunday morning,” she corrected herself.
Talia winced. “I’m sorry, Dana. It’s just, I don’t know if Rosie told you anything about what’s been going on with me—”
“Does this have something to do with your stalker?” Dana asked. There was no mistaking the slightly titillated note in her voice. “Has he been watching Rosie? Do you think he’s been spying on us?” Her eyes flitted around the dorm room as though looking for a hidden camera on the bookshelves.
Talia knew better than to put anything past anyone, but since the picture of Rosie had been taken outside of the library, she took that as a hopeful sign that no one had invaded Rosie’s personal space.
Yet.
Jack gave a small shake of his head, as though Talia didn’t already know not to give any more information than necessary. “It’s probably nothing,” Talia said as she headed for the door. “But I just need to make sure Rosie’s okay. And if anything out of the ordinary happens, don’t be shy about calling me.”
“Or us,” one of the cops quickly interjected.
Before she left, she made sure she had Dana’s contact info for future reference and looked up Kevin’s phone and address in the campus directory. He lived off campus in an apartment complex that flanked the campus’s north side.
She buzzed his apartment repeatedly on the intercom system. It took a full minute before he finally answered. “What the fuck?”
“Is Rosie there?”
“Who the fuck wants to know?”
“It’s her sister, Talia.”
There was muffled conversation; then Rosie’s voice came on over the intercom. “Talia, what are you doing here?”
Talia’s knees went watery with relief, and if Jack hadn’t caught her around the waist, she might have sunk down onto the pavement.
“We’ll let you in on the details in a little bit,” Jack said, “but right now your sister really wants to see you.”
All the energy seemed to drain out of her. She turned her face into Jack’s chest, absorbing his warmth as she took a deep, bracing inhale of his spicy scent. She could hear voices whispering and footsteps across the courtyard as they approached the gate.
“Shit, you didn’t say she’d brought the cops,” Kevin said, stopping short of the gate.
“Talia, what happened?” Rosie said as she shoved open the gate, the clang of metal on metal echoing through the courtyard.
Talia didn’t say anything, just grabbed Rosie in her arms and breathed a deep sigh of relief. She stepped back, reaching up to stroke her sister’s hair as she did a quick once-over to make sure she was okay. Her nose wrinkled at the hickey on her sister’s neck, and as she looked closer, she saw Rosie was wearing a worn T-shirt bearing Kevin’s fraternity letters, too big to belong to her sister.
She bit back a snide comment. As much as she was disappointed by the fact that at some point over the last two days Rosie had gotten back together with Kevin, she’d take finding Rosie in her unworthy boyfriend’s bed any day over any of the horrific scenarios that had played in her head.
“Jesus, you didn’t tell me she brought the cops with her,” Kevin repeated. “What the hell?”
“You have something to hide?” Jack asked in a menacing voice.
Kevin lifted his chin and flipped him off like the arrogant snot nose that he was. “You’ll never know without a warrant.”
“Jeez, Kevin, do you have to be such a dick? Talia wouldn’t come here without a good reason.” She turned back to Talia. “What happened?”
Talia quickly brought her up to speed on the picture that accompanied the brick crashing through the window.
Rosie’s hand went to her throat. “I didn’t see anything. But I’ve had a weird feeling lately, like someone was watching me.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Kevin interrupted before Rosie could answer. “God, you are so much more of a pain in the ass than you’re worth.”
Rosie whirled on him. “And you are so much more of a dick than I even gave you credit for. Someone is, like, stalking me. Don’t you even care? God, I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I let you talk me into giving you another chance.”
She started stalking toward the parking lot, ignoring Kevin saying, “Rosie, wait, I’m sorry.”
“Asshole,” Rosie muttered under her breath. “He only gives me the time of day when I ignore him. So are you going to catch this guy or not?” Rosie said, and it took Talia a couple seconds to realize she was addressing the cops.
“We called them to go to your dorm room when I couldn’t reach you on your phone,” she said, the anger and frustration at not being able to reach her once again flaring to the surface now that she knew Rosie was safe. “Why the hell was it dead? Why didn’t you have it with you, for God’s sake?”
“It’s not like I knew some creep was watching me—”
“You said yourself you felt like someone was watching you. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I didn’t want to freak you out any more than you already are! And I seriously thought it was just your paranoia rubbing off on me.”
Guilt knifed Talia’s stomach. She’d tried so hard over the years to keep her fear from affecting Rosie’s ability to live a normal life. But that was nothing compared to the truth, that once again, despite all of her efforts to protect her, Rosario wasn’t safe from the evil person determined to make sure Talia never forgot her past.
She was startled from her thoughts as a series of squawks burst from the radios strapped to the cops’ belts. “Looks like you’ve got everything under control here?”
Talia nodded.
“Be sure to call us if you have any problems,” they said to Rosie, “even if you think you’re just being paranoid.”
Rosie nodded and they bid them good night.
But Rosie wouldn’t be calling them, because until they found the creep responsible, she wouldn’t get a chance to feel paranoid. “You have to go to a safe house,” Talia said without preamble. “Tonight, if Jack can arrange it that fast?”
She turned to Jack, who nodded. “Let me make a call.”
“No way! No way am I going into hiding again.”
Talia grabbed her sister by the arms. “It won’t be for long. Just until we figure out who is behind this.” Although given the complete lack of clues, there was no telling how long Rosie’s exile might last.
“I have midterms coming up this week! If I don’t take them, I’ll have to do the whole quarter over—”
“I could give a shit about paying for an extra quarter of school if it means keeping you safe.”
“You promised,” she said, her voice breaking in a sob. “And you promised too!” she said, pointing an accusing finger at Jack. “You said it was over when David Maxwell died. You promised me we would never have to hide again. You promised our lives would be normal!”
“Rosie, stop,” Talia yelled as Rosie stormed across the parking lot.
She took off after her as did Jack, who caught up with her first. “Okay, if you don’t want to do the safe house, you come stay at Talia’s. I can keep an eye on you both.”
Rosie stomped her foot in a move more suited to a three-year-old than an eighteen-year-old. “But I have midterms next week.”
“All of your exams are in the daytime, right? Should be
no problem for us to go with you.”
Talia felt a spurt of irritation that Jack was laying this out as a choice without consulting her. “I don’t think—”
“What about study groups and extra office hours? Do you know how screwed I’ll be on my physics exam if I don’t make Gene’s office hours?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Whatever I can’t help you with, you can have Gene come to the house or the restaurant if need be—I’ll buy him dinner. As for the study groups, schedule them when we can go with you, or Skype in.”
“Do I get any say in this?” Talia asked.
They both ignored her. “This is so lame. I don’t see why I can’t just stay at the dorm if I promise to be careful and never go out alone—”
“It’s either this or the safe house.”
“You can’t make me,” Rosie muttered, again channeling her inner three-year-old.
Jack folded his arms across his chest and glowered down at Rosie. “You want to test me on that? I’m not the cops. I’m not worried about your civil liberties. You can try to charge me with kidnapping later. I don’t give a shit. The only thing I care about is keeping you”—his gaze floated over Rosie’s head to lock on Talia—“and your sister safe from this asshole.”
“Fine,” Rosie said sullenly, and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “And I guess this means I don’t get to go on the dorm camping trip next weekend.”
“Not unless Talia can get off work so we can go with you.”
Whereas part of her wanted to call him a jerk for using his size and his attitude to intimidate her sister, Talia had to admit it was kind of hot, the way Jack took charge and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
But it didn’t stop her from getting in his face as he took off for their car. “I think I should make the decision about whether Rosie goes to the safe house. If this guy is after me, won’t she be safer if she’s not under the same roof?”
Jack glanced at her and his face looked suddenly weary. “And what then? If Rosie’s in the safe house, you’ll want me there, keeping an eye on her, and that means I’ll have to get one of the other guys to keep an eye on you.”
Talia’s nose wrinkled at the thought.
