Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 89840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
“You should pretend to be one of those psychics or voodoo ladies,” I said. “He got all hostile about that magician in New Orleans. If he feels like you’re into that kind of stuff, he’ll instantly become agitated. It’ll throw him off his game.”
“That’s good.” Jolene nodded eagerly. “You’ll have to make yourself seen. Let him know you’re watching—that you know something, even though he might think you know nothing. He has to be paranoid. That’s the only way we can make him feel weak. We can set up an Instagram or something, make it look like you’ve been watching him for a while now. Because he will look you up. He’ll want to figure you out and make you to go away to save his own ass.”
The next step was to kick the paranoia up a notch. That same weekend, Jolene offered us a key fob to the gates on the premises of her house, as well as a key fob for Dominic’s SUV. I had the idea of writing the notes and mentioning my name. Jolene told us to dial it up by bringing out the photos from that night too, so she bought a portable printer for us to use.
“We want him to feel like he’s being haunted by a dead woman,” Jolene said, and it was crazy to see how into this plan she was.
“Will he really believe that?” Samuel asked. He was shrugging out of his coat with a bag of Chinese food in hand.
“Trust me, Dominic will,” said Jolene.
The planned worked for a bit. We saw him spiral, and we did little things to trip him out. We planted the note in their mailbox, and Jolene took care of the note on the window after the attempted “break in”. We planted the dead crow, which literally broke my heart. Do you know there are people on the internet who will kill an animal for you and deliver it for a fee? It blows my mind the things you can find these days. Me and Shavonne hate hurting animals, but if we didn’t step it up, he’d lose his paranoia, so we unlocked his SUV after following him to Fox Trot and placed it back there along with a recently printed photo.
When he was in the apartment, that was Jolene’s bid. She knew he’d run there at some point. She had cameras installed and could see everything he was doing. Her plan was to use the cameras to prove she knew nothing of what Dominic had done, so that when she checked the apartment herself and found the evidence of Dominic’s secret, the police would believe her, and it would all be recorded. Or staged, I should say.
Jolene had followed Dominic to the apartment shortly after and while he showered, she went inside with her key and planted the photo of her and Dominic with our note on the back as well as the fake blood with my old purse. She left as quickly as she’d arrived and Shavonne and I sat near a gas station, laughing about it and even teasing Dominic a bit by waving at him when he stepped onto his balcony. He wouldn’t be able to make out who we were, but we were watching. We were always watching.
With the purse, Dominic would start pointing fingers and trying to figure things out. Who was tormenting him? Stalking him? Planting notes and dead birds? Why was he having so much bad luck recently? Was his past really coming back to haunt him? I wanted him to think a dead woman’s ghost was coming for him, so I watched him whenever he visited Executive Mansion. I saw him in the window looking right at me.
Shavonne had already spooked him as her persona of Eden. He was quick to point the finger at her and we wanted him to take the bait. We needed a reason to trap him, get him to be reckless again.
And he did. He took her.
The plan was for Jolene to meet me shortly after I sent her a text saying Dominic had either hurt Shavonne or had taken her. We’d both go after him and get her back, then call the police to report that he’d kidnapped her, but not before I could shoot him once or twice. Then the past would unravel about me, and he’d go to jail. That’s all I wanted—to hurt him the same way he’d hurt me, and to get justice for setting me up in New Orleans. I wanted all his dirty laundry aired so that people knew what kind of sick, twisted man he was.
But when I texted Jolene, she didn’t respond. I called. She didn’t answer. Then I got angry and drove to her house with my gun, parking on the street behind her house and using the fob she’d given me to get through the back fence. I had a feeling she would back out of this—that she’d panic when Dominic took Shavonne, or worse, take Dominic’s side.