Chapter 7
Bailey
When I was nine, I stepped on a bee. Not just any bee, but one of those fuzzy bumblebees. The cute puppies of the insect world. Like a pom-pom, adorably sewn on to the tea towels my mother always hung off the kitchen stove.
The four of us, Hollis, Axel, Rhett, and I, were hiking through the woods pretending to be Cedar Shores’ only pack of wolves. Barefoot, of course, because that’s how wolves travel — when I looked down to see the bee vibrating on the ground where my bare foot had just been.
I started screaming.
Hollis had frozen at the front of the pack, later telling me she was sure I’d seen a bear, or been attacked by an actual wolf, the way I was shrieking.
Axel, right in front of me, had immediately spun around and spotted the offending insect.
He stooped to check my foot for a stinger.
Then, not telling me whether or not there was one still there, he had taken a knee and insisted I hop on his back.
We’d all run back to the cabins for some Benadryl and an ice pack.
My mother, after hearing Hollis calling for ice, appeared outside holding a freezer pack zipped up with a towel wrapped around it.
When we reached the back porch, Axel dumped me off his back and into one of the sunny yellow chairs.
I’d braced myself against the armrests while my mom stooped to look for the stinger, still very much lodged in my foot, while Axel ran inside for a pair of tweezers.
Hollis had already taken off into her own cabin, claiming she could find her own set of tweezers faster than my brother could.
Which left Rhett.
Standing behind my mother while she bent forward, my foot propped up between her hands, searching for the stinger in my heel, while I squirmed and tried my best not to cry any more tears than I already had.
It was embarrassing enough without that.
At first, the face Rhett made at me over my mom’s shoulder was subtle.
I barely caught it.
Just one brow raised, which appeared to lift the corner of his mouth right beneath it, like a string attached to them both.
Then he dropped that side and raised the other.
Like a puppeteer had grabbed hold of his mouth and eyebrows, and attached a couple of strings I’d never noticed were there.
He began manipulating his face, subtly, but enough for me to quit paying attention to my mother and my throbbing foot, and pay more attention to whatever he was doing back there.
When my mom pressed her thumbnails together, not waiting for the tweezers, to pull the thing out, I’d scrunched my nose and braced myself for the shot of pain that was about to come screaming through me.
But Rhett scrunched his nose, too, and his gasp mirrored mine.
Then, as quickly as that look left his face, a smirk appeared behind it, then a full-blown smile.
A chuckle. Then a grin. All punctuated by the blueness of his eyes and the calmness of his face.
When a giggle escaped my lips, my mom had to look over her shoulder to see who — or what — was making me forget all about the bee.
He continued until Axel and Hollis came running back with two sets of tweezers, Hollis beating Axel by at least twenty seconds, which was on brand for her, and then they both joined Rhett.
Each was making silly faces to distract me from the pulsing venom still lodged in my heel, left over from the poor bee that had gotten the far worse end of the deal compared to me that day.
The calm in the storm.
Rhett has always been the calm in a storm, even before any of us were old enough to realize what that meant.
The one capable of slowing down enough in a moment of chaos to make sense of it. Get a laugh out of it. Make it far less scary than it was.
Which is why the look on his face right now is scaring the hell out of me.
We’re riding back to my apartment with a driver Rhett has deemed to have nothing to do with the guy at the party, since he’d arranged the pickup for whenever we might need it, even before the party got underway.
Although I have a suspicion that Rhett would be ready should the driver make one wrong move at any point that we’re in this car.
If looks could kill, Rhett’s face would have committed four murders by now. The slow-growing simmer in his eyes is scarier than anything I’ve seen on him before. Calculated yet perfectly in control.
Since standing in that catering kitchen, my mind has been stuck on one thing: Hollis orchestrated this.
He didn’t come for you. He came for whatever this is.
“There’s an attachment,” Rhett says, quietly, pressing another button on the phone screen before flicking his eyes up for me to look too.
“Great,” I mutter, hating how much I’m enjoying the heat coming from the side of his body while we ride in the backseat.
He feels like a traitor, coming here under the guise of friendship, while something much more sinister brought him back to me for the first time in years.
My stomach rolls angrily when I remember how I smiled when I saw him earlier tonight, then attempted to hug him, even told him I wanted to catch up afterward.
All while he was probably just nodding to get through the night as fast as possible, ready to jet out of there the second the party was over.
“Hollis sent me your login info earlier,” he tells me.
I glance up at him. “You have my login info?”
He shifts uncomfortably. “It was just in case any more emails came in tonight while she was dealing with her other client or sleeping. I don’t plan to make a habit out of logging into your author account unless more of these emails come in.
And now that you know, I won’t at all, not if you don’t want me to. ”
The air is thick when I glance up at him, but my head is spinning too much to make it an even bigger deal.
“Whatever.” I sigh. It’s not that I care so much about him having access to my author inbox — it’s just the icing on their little ruse tonight.
Besides, all I should care about right now is whatever this guy sent over, but it feels like I’m getting punked, and I don’t like it.
I shrug. “There’s nothing in that inbox but work emails and apparently a few more from a stalker, so have at it. ”
I lean in to see what he’s pulled up, and suddenly, every one of those other thoughts disappears. When Rhett gets the attachment open, all I can focus on is the purple dress I’m wearing right now, appearing on the phone screen in his hand.
It’s me. In a video sent by whoever left that envelope earlier tonight.
I’m talking to the journalist from the magazine.
A voice recorder is being held up in front of me. I’m laughing. It’s the part of the conversation where I’m telling her about this dress I’m wearing, and how the purple was meant to match the moody hues of the book cover tonight.
Then the camera angle moves away from me.
A few people are standing in front of it, before the view clears out.
After that, it’s Rhett on the screen.
I gasp.
The video is of him watching me get interviewed.
The camera slowly pans back and forth between us, like whoever’s taking the video is making a point.
“What the hell?” I whisper. Shocked that someone had a camera recording me without any of the venue’s staff or security team noticing.
But when the camera pans back over to Rhett, all the air I’ve just gasped in drains right out again when I see the look on his face. His eyes are smiling from the sides, the corners of his lips are turned up, looking at me like he’s—
“It’s the guy,” Rhett interrupts. Completely unbothered by the way he was just caught on film, looking at me like — like he was happy to see me. More than happy, really.
“Who?” I ask, snapping back to what he just said.
I’m still watching the video. It’s already past the look Rhett was just giving me, and the camera has focused on me talking to the journalist again.
“I saw a guy watching you while you were talking to the magazine, then he turned his eyes on me. If it’s the guy I think, I walk toward him in a second, and he’s about to cover the lens.”
I hold my breath, waiting to see what happens next.
Just as he predicted, the screen shows Rhett turning to face the camera full-on before the view jerks away and a hand comes up to cover the lens.
Then the whole thing goes black.
And that’s it. That’s the end. The video loops around to the beginning.
“Yep, it’s him,” Rhett confirms, sounding certain.
“How did I not notice someone was filming me?” I turn to face him. “Why didn’t you say something when it happened?”
“I didn’t know he was filming you at the time, but I felt like something was off with him.
He was watching me. The camera must have been hidden on him.
A button cam on his shirt, maybe? I started walking toward him and that’s when he put a hand up to his chest, which you can see in the video — that’s him blocking the lens.
I was about to run after him when that tray went down, then you and I ran into each other. ”
I search my memory for anything weird I might have noticed leading up to that moment, but I must have been too focused on Rhett’s profile running out of the room to notice anything but him and that mess on the floor.
“I thought he’d left for good.”
“That’s why you ran out just then,” I realize out loud.
Rhett had sat beside me at the book signing table like nothing was happening, knowing there was some creep already there for me.
That’s why he wouldn’t look at me. He was studying that line of people as if it were his job.
Because it was his job tonight.
I press the button on the door to lower the cab window an inch, letting some air flow in.
I’m such an idiot.
Of course. I should have known something was going on when he randomly decided to come two days ago.
I press my fingertips to my forehead and rest my elbow on the door.
“You said his name is John?” Rhett asks, turning toward me. “A big fan of yours?”
“I’m not sure if that’s him. The video didn’t show his face. And besides, John is so nice, I can’t picture him doing anything like this.”
“I bet we can get a gallery camera to show whoever took this video,” he offers. “And I’ll show you the other three emails from before tonight that Hollis sent over. See if anything rings a bell or looks familiar about them. By the way, how secure is your building?”
My stomach quietly doubles over. I wish that Rhett and I were riding in the backseat of a cab on our way back to my place under much different circumstances. I steal a glance at the gray slacks he’s wearing and starched white button-up shirt, realizing he really came to play the part.
“My building isn’t anything special when it comes to security,” I tell him, picturing my apartment and how I left it earlier. I can’t remember whether I left the office door open on my way to the party tonight or not.
He continues rifling through a list of to-dos out loud, just like the trained security guy he’s been asked to be tonight.
I lean back and let the cool air from the window wash over me, missing the way I felt sitting beside him when we were younger, wondering if he feels any of that on his side, too.
This is all such a far cry from not having a care in the world.
“We can text Simon to let him know we’re already heading back to your place. Can you ask him to forward whatever camera footage he gets from the gallery tonight? We need to see exactly who we’re dealing with, if we can.”
I hand him my phone and tell him the code so he can shoot Simon whatever text he wants. Next, he gets out his phone and starts calling the local police station while sending a few more texts to Hollis and then Simon again.
I nod each time he asks me a question, feeling more like I’m underwater than riding in a car back to my place. But I keep my eyes glued to the passing sidewalks outside, wondering if there’s any part of him, no matter how small, that’s glad Hollis asked him to come.