Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 63702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“I fuckin’ knew it.”
“What does it say?”
“You should be careful where you’re walking, you don’t want to get ‘accidentally’ hit by a passing car.”
My stomach twists again.
This...monster, is really going out of his way to make my life a living hell. I’m not sure how much more I can take before I finally lose it and do something stupid. Something like hunt him down and do awful things to him just to make myself feel better because I’m damn well sick of his pathetic little games.
Colt shoves my phone into his pocket and takes my arm. “Let’s go.”
Everything after that is a blur as he straps me into his truck, and we drive back home. It takes a lot of effort to get out and into the house, but he manages to help me to get to my bedroom. Placing me down on the bed, he pulls off my shoes as I lean forward, praying I don’t get sick. My head is spinning and when he brings me a glass of water and some painkillers, I am more than a little thankful. Falling back onto the pillow, my chest rises and falls as my eyes flutter closed, the world spinning around me.
The floorboards creak as he goes to leave.
“Colt?” I murmur, keeping my eyes closed.
Silence.
“Do you think whoever this is, is going to hurt me?”
More silence.
Then his voice comes in low, so low I almost feel as though I imagine it.
“I’d never let anyone hurt you.”
“If only you really meant that,” I murmur, sleepily.
“You’re wrong about what you said,” his voice sounds like it’s more in my head than in the room, “you weren’t stupid to come here. You are not a mistake.”
That’s so nice.
Slowly, I drift off to sleep, letting those words play over and over in my mind.
18
“So, you were a good friend of Jeannie’s?” I ask, sitting across from a woman we managed to track down as being one of Jeannie’s friends.
It wasn’t hard to scroll through old Facebook posts and find pictures. Then, with Bonnie’s help, we narrowed it down and messaged her friends, asking if they’d be willing to talk to us about the night of her death. They are more than willing, and this one in particular, Kelly, was happy to come to town and chat to us.
“We weren’t besties or anything, but we were certainly friends and spent a lot of time out partying together. She was so much fun,” Kelly explains.
“Were you with her on the night she died?”
Kelly shakes her head. “No. She was in town visiting her brother. The two of them didn’t catch up very often. I’m not sure of the entire story behind it but she had come in with some guy she had just started chatting to that lived here. The two of them met online, and she wanted to come and meet him, so she thought she’d come see Colt at the same time.”
Jeannie was in town to meet someone – perhaps the man she was walking with when she was hit?
“Did she tell you much about him?” Bonnie asks Kelly, because of course, she had to come to this meeting too.
She’s as invested as I am.
“Not a great deal. She said they had met online, were chatting and getting along really well, and so she was coming to meet him. She had spent some time with him before that night, as she arrived in town a few days earlier, and it seemed they were having a great time.”
Pursing my lips, I ask. “Do you know why he was never named in the media?”
“I suppose for privacy. Something like that is traumatic enough, and the two hadn’t really been together much. I would feel the same, honestly. The police very quickly ruled him out, so we always knew he didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Did she ever tell you his name?” Bonnie questions.
Kelly nods. “Yeah, it was like, Arthur or Anthony or Arnold...I don’t know, something like that. It started with an A.”
In that moment, it feels as though my heart stops and my blood runs cold. I look to Bonnie, and her eyes are wide, too. It has to be a coincidence...right? Surely this can’t be true. Is Anthony...the Anthony I have been talking to...the person who is sending me all these messages? Is he the person who was threatening Chloe? Or is it just a person with the same name.
“Did she ever show you a photo?” I ask quickly.
Kelly thinks on it. “She showed me his profile on the app, but I can’t say I recall what he looked like.”
“Was he well presented, maybe with light sandy hair and blue-ish green eyes. Athletic looking. Handsome.”
Kelly purses her lips but nods. “From what I remember, he had lighter hair, but that’s all I could tell you.”