I smile back, but I shiver. He’s looking at me too closely. He was here at the shop yesterday, too, before I got the flowers. His long fingers brushed my hand when he gave me my coffee, the same way he does today.
My fingers tremble as I balance the latte bowl on its saucer.
I take a seat by the window, tuck my camera bag under the table, and sip my coffee. As long as the stalker is out there somewhere, am I going to be afraid of my own shadow?
The scrape of a chair snaps me out of my daze. A man slips into the seat across from me and he looks a little familiar, but I can’t place him.
“Hi.” He smiles, his hazel eyes laser-focused on me.
“Do I know you?”
“Not yet, but I’d like to know you.” The smooth, rich tone of his voice is music.
My pulse pounds as he leans toward me, and I pull back. “I think you’ve got the wrong girl.”
“Do I? I don’t think so. I’ve been watching you.”
Watching me? A thousand spiders skitter across my skin. “Go away.” I push back my chair, feeling adrenaline pump through my veins.
The man’s smile fades and his brows knit. “Wait. You haven’t even given me a chance.”
“I don’t have to.” My voice is breathy with panic. “I said, go away.”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “All right, I’ll go. All I wanted was to get to know you better. You’re beautiful.”
For a moment, his sad eyes make me think my instincts are wrong. Maybe this guy is just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Maybe he’s just trying to be nice? “Sorry. I just have a lot on my mind right now. It’s not a good time.”
“That’s OK, Violet. I can wait.”
My eyes snap wide. “What did you call me?”
“Violet. That’s your name, right?” He smiles and his slightly crooked eyeteeth look menacing, like they could rip my flesh.
I stand, backing away from the table in horror. “How did you…?”
He stands too, and steps toward me, grasping my hand. “Every time you come here, I can’t take my eyes off your pretty red hair.”
When I fuck you, I’m gonna pull that pretty red hair of yours until you scream.
The text echoes from my memory. Pretty red hair. I wrench my hand from his grip and run—out the door, down the street, running blind until I realize my feet are carrying me home.
But not even my home is safe, and as I approach the street-level door to my building I’m strangled by one thought: I left my bag behind.
My camera. My wallet. My phone.
Panic squeezes my lungs. I could have left the Hope Diamond at the coffee shop and there’s no way I’d go back. I have nothing but the keys in my pocket, not even a few crumpled dollars to get myself on the subway to Jayce’s apartment.
I drag in ragged breaths and punch my key in the lock. My eyes bounce over my shoulder to see if someone followed me.
There are men everywhere—standing outside the bodega, smoking on a stoop across the street, leaning against an alley wall, walking on the sidewalk.
And every single one of them can see that I’m home. Alone.
CHAPTER 19: JAYCE
The East Village is buzzing with activity, everyone gearing up for the kind of summer night that makes you want to stay out forever. The kind that makes you feel immortal.
I scan the street and try to memorize faces: a guy reading a newspaper on the stoop across the street. A guy repainting an iron railing. A guy selling magazines at the bodega. A guy hauling trash to an alley Dumpster.
I lean on Violet’s intercom and there’s no answer. Good, sort of. I can’t imagine that she’d come back to her place. I try more buttons on the intercom panel and one of the residents, C. Greer in 4D, answers.
“Hello?”
The voice sounds about my age, so I take a stab in the dark, hoping C. Greer is the neighbor Violet told me about. “Corey?”
“Yeah? Who’s this?”
“It’s Jayce, one of Violet’s friends.” My voice is casual, but my heart’s beating hard in my chest. “Can you let me in?”
“Sure, man, no problem.”
I push through the buzzing door and frown at the shit security. At least at my place, there’s a doorman.
I climb the stairs to Violet’s apartment and knock, softly at first, then harder. My skin feels too tight, too hot, as if I’m working up a case of claustrophobia. No answer.
I take another flight of stairs to 4D and knock. A muscular guy about my height answers it. His brows crease so I paint a smile on my face to put him at ease. “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Do I know you?”
“No, but I’ve heard about you. From Violet, your neighbor?”
His smirk sickens me. “The hot redhead? Nice piece of ass.”
“Yeah.” I take a step closer to the door and for a moment, I don’t think he’ll let me in, but then he moves aside and nods. “Thought we might want to work something out about her.”
“Hey, I’ve been trying to work something out with her for months.” His laugh is low and slimy, and I want to punch the leer off his face. “She’s got a boyfriend, some slick guy in a suit from upstate. Says she doesn’t want any on the side.”
“No boyfriend anymore.” I curl my fist and then force my hand to relax. “You’ve tried to get with her?”
“’Bout a dozen times.”
“You got her number?” I need to know if he’s one of the fuckwits who’s been texting Violet.
“Dude, she lives downstairs. I don’t need her number.”
“You want it?”
He crosses his arms over his chest. “Why do you care?”
I paint a harmless smile on my face and make some shit up. “Well, I’ve got a girlfriend, and now that Violet’s single, my girl’s fucking jealous, you know? So since I heard Violet talking about you, I thought maybe if you two were going out, my girl would lay off.”
Corey nods with me, grinning, like we’re both saying chicks are stupid.
“Violet’s shy. So you got to call her.” I put out my hand. “Give me your phone. I’ll put in her number.”
Corey hands it over and I put my number in, not Violet’s. No way I want this jackass calling her. “Hey—I was wondering, what was the movie Neil borrowed from you?”
“Bent on Annihilation. Good shit.”
“Can I check it out?”
Corey turns to the entertainment system in his living room that’s littered with DVD cases. He paws through the stack, buying me just enough time to switch over to his text messages and verify that he hasn’t texted Violet.
When Corey hands me the DVD, I hand back his phone and pretend to read the movie blurb on the back of the case. “Looks good.”
“You can borrow it if you want.”
“Nah, you’ll be doing me a favor if you just keep an eye out for Violet. Be a gentleman and shit. Keep that up for a few weeks and I’ll bet when you call she’ll be all over you.”
Keep that up for a few weeks and I’ll figure out who’s messing with her. And I’ll mess him the fuck up.
I mentally cross Corey off my list of suspects and descend the stairs, but pause again at Violet’s door when I hear a small noise behind it.
I knock, and then as disgusting images of the stalker tear through my brain I pound on the door harder and yell, “Violet? It’s Jayce! I have to know you’re OK!”
I listen, and another tiny sound encourages me to wait. I press my ear to the door and hear a muffled footfall, a sniffle, and then the chain sliding back, the deadbolts clicking open.
Violet’s face is red and blotchy, her eyes puffy and tearful. Her hair is tangled and limp, her T-shirt rumpled.
Another sniff and then a sob. She falls in my arms and I react without thinking, catching her and wrapping her into me. “Shh, honey, oh, Violet, it’s OK. You’re OK.”
That might be the biggest lie I’ve ever told. Violet’s body is limp as I hold her, refastening the chain and
locks behind me, carrying her back to her bedroom. This is starting to become a trend, and I’m afraid to hear what spurred this new horror.
I do the one thing I know makes her feel good, the one thing that feels right to me. I curl my body around hers and stroke her hair.
“He found me,” she finally whispers.
I pull back to see her face, and maybe I’m looking for physical signs of damage.
“I went to a coffee shop near here, a place I go pretty often. He sat down at my table.”
“Did he talk to you? Did he hurt you?”
She shakes her head at the second question. “He said he’s been watching me. He told me I was beautiful, and that he wanted to get to know me. He knew my name, Jayce.”
Violet buries her face against my chest and I feel the hot stain of tears on my shirt. I keep petting her hair, inhaling its cherry-blossom scent, comforting her the only way I know how.
“I got up and ran,” she says, “but everything—my camera gear, my wallet, and the phone you gave me—they’re all gone. I left them. All I had were the keys in my pocket.”
This sets off a fresh wave of tears and I crush her against me.
“What did he look like? Was he the delivery guy? Or the barista or the clerk?”
“I don’t know! I was so surprised when he sat down. When he grabbed my hand, all I could see was him touching me.”
I wait for her breathing to even. “Listen to me, Violet. That stuff? It’s nothing. We can replace it, buy a new phone, and order you new cards. We can fix that.”
But it kills me that I can’t fix the real problem: she’s not safe. The fact that she was so close to him, that he could have done something to hurt her, shakes me to my bones.
I can’t let that happen. Seeing her broken like this, shaken to her foundation, frightens me more than the prospect of what he could have done.
“Come here, Violet. Let’s go home.”
I lace my fingers through hers and try to pull her up, but she resists. Her lips purse and she shakes her head.
“No. This is where I live. Go home, Justin.”
CHAPTER 20: VIOLET
I can’t let him keep rescuing me. I can’t hand him the keys to my life and expect that he’ll just take care of this. I force breath into my lungs to quell the sobs, rub the tears from my puffy eyes, and sit up on the bed, scooting a few inches away from Jayce.
He reels as if I’ve slapped him. “Go home?”
“Yes.” I turn away from him, barely hanging on to my resolve. I’m a big girl. I created this mess by trusting the wrong person. I don’t want it to spiral into an even bigger mess by trusting the wrong person again.
Jayce isn’t someone who sticks and stays. Worse, he comes with a truckload of baggage he’ll never shake—the curse of the media microscope.
I saw the feeding frenzy firsthand at the hospital, when they cut down Tyler with nasty speculation about a drug overdose.
Jayce reaches for my hand but I slip it away. His jaw twitches and I see a dozen emotions slide across his face—anger, frustration, maybe even want.
“You don’t have a phone,” he says.
“I’ll figure it out.” I’m not sure how yet, but I will. Neil can help.
“You have lousy security.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “You can’t be the one to protect me.” Time to put on my big girl panties and deal with this.
“What if … what if I want to?” Jayce’s words hang between us, the most raw admission I’ve seen. Want. His caramel eyes are warm and pleading.
“And what happens when you don’t? When you get tired of me? You can’t make me your Rapunzel.”
I force myself to stand and cross my arms over my chest, gathering the courage to say something I know will cut him deep.
“Thanks for coming by. As you can see, I’m OK, just a little shaken up about losing my camera gear. But I think it’s best if you don’t come back. I don’t want a reporter following you here and blowing up my life because of you.”
Jayce’s jaw tightens, his eyes going dark and angry. It kills me to say it this plainly, but I think that might be the only way he’ll really understand it. He has to know this isn’t a game.
I’m not playing hard to get. I am hard to get.
Considering the threat of the photos, I’m pretty much impossible.
“Don’t do this. Come back to my place for another night and then we can sort all of this out tomorrow. Can you give me one night, Violet?”
Jayce is pleading, and it’s so tempting, like a hot cup of tea on a cold morning. I want him to feed me, cuddle me, weave his fingers through my hair and whisper secrets until dawn.
But I know better than that. The police haven’t promised to do much to battle my stalker, and Jayce can’t do more.
And a tiger doesn’t change his stripes—I’d never heard of Justin Cameron McKittrick before my freelance assignment with The Indie Voice, but now that I’ve Googled him, I know he’s a player.
And I don’t want to be played.
I stride to the front door, trying to look confident about my decision even while my heart is stabbed with disappointment and loss. I pull back the chain and place my hand on the doorknob, ready to see him out.
“One night?”
I realize I still haven’t answered him. “No. I know how to quit when I’m ahead.” I pull open the door and turn away so he won’t see the indecision and pain on my face. One night—chaste, sweet, wrapped up in a blanket burrito while we traded confidences instead of kisses. While he stroked my hair.
I hear him breathing, hear his steps carry him out of my apartment and into the hall.
I close the deadbolts behind him and listen for footfalls, which pause for a long moment and then finally descend the stairs. I hear the faint sound of the apartment lobby door opening and closing to let him out to the sidewalk, and I grimace, hoping nobody spotted him.
I open my laptop and pour a glass of wine in preparation for a long research session ahead. This is the day, I resolve, that I’ll figure out how to make the stalker stop.
***
I was wrong. Friday wasn’t the day. Saturday wasn’t good, either. I get nowhere on the revenge porn sites. I trade emails with my little sister Katie, borrow cash from Neil, and buy a bus ticket. I’m going to fix what’s broken, starting with a new driver’s license.
The four-hour bus ride to Ithaca gives me plenty of time to think. For the millionth time, I’m kicking myself for shutting Jayce out of my life. Despite the fact that he’s a well-documented playboy, he never once treated me like I was disposable. He acted like he really cared.
But maybe that’s just an act, how he scores his women.
I’m also kicking myself for running away from the guy in the café and leaving my camera gear bag. With nothing but a backpack full of clothes and a laptop on the bus seat beside me, I feel naked without it.
I tried using Neil’s phone to contact the coffee shop about my bag on Saturday, but of course it never turned up in lost and found. There’s a couple thousand dollars’ worth of equipment inside, a twenty-first birthday gift from my parents. I’m lucky I didn’t have my laptop inside; I never packed it to take to Jayce’s house.
Jayce. I forced him from my mind yesterday. Canceled my credit cards and ordered new ones. Trolled Craigslist to see if my camera gear was being sold. Called the police and left messages, begging the detective to tell me he’d made progress.
All dead ends.
The bus pulls into the Ithaca station and I call Katie from a pay phone. She picks me up in the beat-up Honda she just bought with her own money saved from years of babysitting.
“You made me leave the church social,” she pouts.
“Pie?” My mouth waters. The after-church potluck is a pie-making throwdown among the church ladies. For my dad, it’s a chance to round up more votes.
Katie grins and reaches behind my seat for a paper plate laden with a slice of strawberry pie and gobs o
f whipped cream. Even before I thank her for snagging me a piece, I stab the point with the plastic fork and swallow, in ecstasy.
“Mrs. Ernst, right?”
“She’s amazing,” Katie agrees. “I think she puts crack in the filling.”
The bright red gelatin quivers, stuffed with the last of the season’s fresh berries. Katie drives us home and I wolf down the pie.
I follow her upstairs to our old room, which she now has to herself because she’s oldest. Brianna and Samantha share. Twin beds still line the walls like when we were little.
Katie sweeps most of her closet off the bed that’s supposed to be mine and starts hanging her clothes up in the closet. I drop my bag and lie back on the pillow, remembering the way we used to talk at night.
The way I talked to Jayce. My cheeks heat, remembering the smell of him fresh from the shower, his spicy body wash, and damp, dark hair that curled slightly on his forehead.
“Spill it, sister,” Katie orders, her back to me as she hangs up a short dress that I’m positive isn’t Dad-approved.
“I told you in the email. I lost my purse. Had to come back here to get my birth certificate so I can go to the DMV tomorrow and get a new license.”
“What’s the rest of it?” Katie hears the evasive answer better than my parents could.
“I, ah, I’m not teaching next year. At my school. They let me go.”
“What?” Katie spins around and instantly she’s perched on the bed beside me, concern shining in her eyes. “You were really excited about next year!”
I scrunch my face, confessing that much is true. I can’t tell her about the pictures, so I just say that my principal rearranged teaching assignments. She doesn’t look convinced.
Our old chocolate Lab’s gruff barking alerts me that the rest of my family’s home from church.
“Bree and Sam are going to be so surprised to see you! I didn’t even tell Mom and Dad you were coming. Mom’s making ham for dinner, and I’m supposed to make rolls. You want to help me start the dough?” This is Katie trying to take my mind off the loss of my job, and I’m grateful for the distraction.
Revenge Bound Page 9
