11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
Are these dire circumstances?
Eden
G roup started late this morning because the coffeemaker stopped working. That’s how today is going-an appliance is stopping my productivity. “I used to be an amazing dancer. Would you like to see me dance?” Deanne asks as she does every group. One of the other survivors snorts.
“No. Yesterday it was no, last week it was no, session before that no. No, no, no,” Jack asserts before smacking his hand onto his leg. “Are you nuts?”
I should’ve taken the day off.
“Let’s refocus, okay?” Taking a seat in the circle of chairs, I try to get things back on track. Deanne ignores us all. She spins around the chairs using one of her hands to swish her long skirt around while humming to herself.
When Morrie launches into his sailboat story, he gives a variation of in each session, the anxiety from this morning carries my thoughts to all the strange activity lately. This morning on the way to work, I knew I had an agent following me, but a growing unease has made me leery of each passing vehicle, strange cars parked in the lot at the wellness center, and my desk phone ringing sets my heart galloping.
“Thanks, uh, thanks for sharing, Morrie. Let’s…okay, Deanne? Deanne? Please have a seat.” The struggle to be present mentally right now as I silently count to five while tapping my foot is a struggle. “We have a new member this week. Would you like to introduce yourself to everyone?” The young, redheaded man who asks to be called Juno hasn’t said much in our two private meetings. His records show he lived in a commune in Arizona called The Family International. He wandered away from them near a bus station, asking them to call for help. He’d been sexually abused most of his life, he was malnourished, and half his teeth were lost. Yet through it all, he insisted we need to save his family. I’ve made notes to pass along to Keir about the trafficking they are involved in.
Juno shakes his head. I’m disappointed he isn’t feeling like participating, but I’m not at my best today so I don’t try to encourage him. “Let’s go to our next group member…”
Again, my mind can’t stay tuned in completely, drifting from the middle-aged woman who wants to be called Starlight talking about the “tennent of the most high God.” I interrupt her when it sounds like she’s trying to recruit members to the Western Skies cult instead of working through her deprogramming. “I think we’ll pick this up next session. We’re going to end a few minutes early today.”
“Because of the stupid coffee maker,” Jack affirms, nodding his head.
He can think what he wants. I need to get my head together. Each step back to my office is punctuated by a sense of doom. Matt took a call last night that victim five was found in the Realists copycat killings. It was a former neighbor of my grandparents. “Steve, I’m heading home early today.” Agent Harrison is my personal security detail for the day. He probably thinks I’m a basket case. In all the years we’ve known one another, I’ve never acted jittery or anxious. Not that I can remember, anyway.
He nods at me with a frown. “Did something happen?”
I mutter, “Yeah, no coffee.” I laugh at myself lightly.
“Pardon me?” I didn’t think he could hear me, but at this point he may as well know I’m nervous about everything that’s been happening.
Shutting my office door, Steve raises an eyebrow at me from where he’s standing next to it. “Doc?”
“Listen…I should tell you I have a funny feeling I’m being watched. It doesn’t make sense to me, but…Do you know what I mean?” I rub my hands over my face.
That nagging feeling I’m not being careful…
Steve isn’t a big talker. At least, I’ve never heard him say much. He nods at me. “Doc, I’d say if you think that, chances are high you are being stalked.”
Now I’m the one questioning what’s being heard. “Y-you think I am?”
Slumping into my office chair, I unload all the things bothering me about Matt leaving for LA, the murders, the note, the phone call. He listens with little reaction. He’s ever the FBI agent-giving me no indication what he’s thinking. Matt does the same thing. Keir is the only one who lets his emotions play across his face when talking to me. I fear years on the job will eat that away.
“A year and half ago I did a stint in the Midwest following an activist who had a stalker. He swore up and down that this person was responsible for dead birds being left on his car. He’d get phone calls with dead air…there were a half dozen weird things happening, but my bureau chief wanted to pull us. He was convinced the guy had a screw loose. Until we found him decapitated near his vehicle one morning.”
I gasp, a hand flying to cover my mouth.
“I’m not trying to scare you any more than you already may be. I believe you. A stalker moves in the shadows. But Matt did the right thing by getting protection for your family until he can sort things out.”
What if he isn’t able to? What happens if Matt and the agents working for him can’t find the person doing the killings, making the threats?
My heart feels twisted in my chest.
I can’t spend the rest of my life feeling like this.