Stare at the words scrawled there in big black letters.
‘Don’t you love kids?’
We’re sitting in the living room downstairs, the kids playing on the carpet at our feet. A very pale Matt is hunched up beside me, a hand in his hair, red spots on his cheekbones.
“Who the hell wrote that in his book? Did anyone get inside the house? Any worker, or salesperson?”
“No, of course not.” I do my best not to feel offended at this. He’s stressed, and sick. “Could it be from when that lady down the street looked after them?”
“Maybe.” But he doesn’t look convinced.
I’m not either. I mean, I’ve been there every day when Cole was coloring. Never saw those words before. “You can’t think that psycho sneaked inside the house? Wouldn’t the security cameras catch that?”
“There are some issues with the cameras,” he says, and a chill runs through me. When he puts his arm around me, I tell myself not to read anything into the gentle touch. “We’ve been locking all doors and windows. I’ll check them all again.”
But the chill remains as we watch the kids play, innocent and unaware of all the fears plaguing us.
“You don’t think he’ll hurt the kids?” I whisper. “Those words…”
He pulls me closer. “He’s trying to scare us, that’s all. Fucking Ross. Just don’t let my kids out of your sight until we find proof.”
I nod against his shoulder.
I’ll get that proof. I’m going to confront Ross, my bully, and make him confess. If his problem is with me, then this is the only way.
Chapter Thirty-One
Matt
Octavia is a mass of nerves, and my own thoughts are too much of a fucking tangle to reassure her everything will be okay.
It has to, right? If Ross is doing this, the police are on it. And what the hell will he do? Kill more cats? Write on the windows?
Fucking boo.
I’ll take that fucker down, if the police refuse to touch him. Scaring us, scaring my kids and my girl isn’t fucking acceptable.
My girl.
Fuck.
If not for the unease in my gut telling me this isn’t over, that things will get worse, I’d have gone off to punch something.
Because if this crazy psycho has it in for me and my kids, then he has it in for her, too—and if she got one threatening message already, then I’m scared goddamn shitless it won’t be the last.
I was weightless last night. Free. Not pinned down. With her in my arms, I was flying on top of the nightmares, never sucked in.
Now it feels as though the weight of the world has crashed back down on me.
Leaving Octavia with the kids, I call John Elba and tell him what happened, more to keep him up-to-date than expecting anything to be done.
As predicted, he says the words were probably already in the book when I moved here, or were written by some kid when I was leaving Cole with Dolly.
“I’m sorry to say it, Hansen,” he says. “But if this isn’t a prank like I think and you’re right that this is some psycho, then the key is you. It all points to you. You are the link.”
“Is that so?” I growl, just because I know no other way of letting my frustration out.
“That is so. Octavia got a message, and she is connected to you. She says her boyfriend got a message, and he is connected through her to y—”
“He’s not her goddamn boyfriend.”
There’s a silence at the other end of the line.
It allows me to think about what I’ve said, and how I said it.
Jesus.
But John goes on, “And then the messages you got point to your kids and your past. Nobody is talking about Octavia’s past. Only about her connection to you.”
About me fucking her.
I don’t know what’s going on, but somehow I dragged her into my shit, into the bullying I want to save her from, and maybe into real danger, too.
“John…” I hesitate. I’ve closed myself off for so long it’s hard opening up to people, but hell, I’m trying. If anything, what I feel around Octavia made me realize I have to start relying on people more. “I have a bad hunch about this.”
There, I’ve said it. It’s off my fucking chest.
Or it should be, but it’s still there, dammit—weighing a ton, crushing my lungs.
“Is there something else you know?” John asks quietly. “Anything you remembered, or figured out?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Could this be about a woman? An ex-girlfriend?”
“But why? And why now? Above all, what would Ross have to do with it?”
“You’re convinced it’s him, huh?”
“That motherfucker.” Keeping my temper is a struggle. “You don’t believe it’s him? Even his own father believes it.”
“I believe in evidence,” John says. “Even some clues and hints wouldn’t hurt at this point, and we have nothing. So lie low for a while, all right? Don’t go punching Ross again. Let us do our job.”
“Isn’t it your fucking job to find those clues and catch that asshole?” And I hang up on him because what else is there to say?
I could tell him where to shove it, yeah, but insulting a cop? Not the best idea when you want him to catch the psycho hounding you and your own.
But then what the hell is left to do?
Like Octavia told me this morning, I have text messages on my phone, from Zane and Kaden. Missed calls, too.
My finger hovers over the call button.
What am I gonna do? Shovel my shit on their doorstep? Tell them, what, that I can’t deal with a few messages that make no sense and a dead cat on my doorstep, and that they should drive over and hold my hand?
Fuck that.
So I compromise. I send them each a quick message saying “Still alive,” since they’ve been wondering about that, and throw my phone on the kitchen table.
Run a hand over my face.
What next?
Ross.
John doesn’t believe Ross is behind the messages. He thinks I’m the link.
The link to what?
An ex-girlfriend, John said. We’ve been over that. I had one before I left St. Louis back when I was eighteen. I was with her during my last year of high school.
We broke up a couple months before I skipped town. What was her name again? Elina. Alina. The family name was something Russian. Solokov?
Yeah, that was it. Pretty girl. Blond. Curvy. Nice. What would she have to do with any of this shit?
“Remember who you left behind.”
Nah, this is bullshit. Who I left behind could be just about anyone in St. Louis. Or in Milwaukee. Literally anyone I ever met in my life.
But what is most precious to me? Am I supposed to combine the messages?
Who I left behind.
What is most precious to me.
You will lose what she has lost.
And the first message. You will suffer for your sins.
What has she lost? Who? What sins?
The only clear thing is that he’s targeting my children, and Octavia. That is has to do with a woman, who lost something. Something precious.
Because of me.