It’s Not Stalking if You Leave a Gift
IT’S NOT STALKING IF YOU LEAVE A GIFT
Flynn
I replay the video again. The pressure in my head builds each time I watch it, but I’m looking for something, so I block out Hope’s cries and go through the video frame by frame.
Mirrors line the closet of the room they took her to.
It’s how I identified half the fuckers in the video.
The camera’s right in the corner of the bedroom.
It never moves, which is why it didn’t occur to me that someone was behind it.
I suppose it’s possible Sleet was making it up, but he was awfully specific, and I find people tend to lose the ability to lie when they’re about to die.
Normal people don’t know that sort of thing, Flynny.
Yeah, well, I hear the voice of my dead sister in my head—how’s that for normal?
The light shifts on the next frame and I pause the video.
I zoom in on the shadow in the mirror and adjust the exposure until the image becomes clearer.
It’s still blurry but I pull up a photo of Senator Claren and put them side by side.
He’s older, and clean shaven now, but it’s definitely the same guy.
“Tell them how much you love this. Tell the camera how much you love being our slutty little—"
I cut the sound off. The voices in that video belong to dead men, I made sure of that, and Senator Claren is going to join them.
I screenshot the still with his reflection and print it off, along with a photo of him smiling, his arm around a disadvantaged kid he sponsored. Strategic good deeds that hide a multitude of sins.
I get up from the desk and move over to what Lachlan’s dubbed the Stalker Wall. Surveillance photos of eight different men are tacked to the wall. I spent weeks tracking each of their movements, learning their routines, uncovering their crimes, before I wrapped my hands around their necks.
In the center of each grouping of photos is a portrait style snapshot. Seven of those photos have a red cross cutting through them.
I grab my marker and draw a fresh cross over the photo of Garret Sleet. Then I move over to a blank section of the wall and stick up the photos I just printed of Senator Claren.
I’m not sure Hope would be very happy if she saw this board, if she knew what I was doing in her name, but the memory of her voice is blocked by the men staring back at me.
Violence sings in my blood, it always has, but what these men did is a different kind of cruelty and the brutality of it buries her.
I stare at the photo of the senator.
His involvement complicates things. Garret Sleet was the final person on my list for a reason.
He spent the last five years inside Drayford, which meant the only way I could get to him was to be sent to Drayford myself.
I confessed to seven murders so I could commit an eighth, but I was always supposed to disappear after killing Sleet.
I’m a wanted fugitive. I should be halfway to the Caymen Islands by now and yet I can’t find even the slightest trace of annoyance inside of me.
Lachlan would have tried to force my hand, but even if everything had gone to plan, I don’t think I could have brought myself to leave. Not now I’ve found my Little Lilac.
I check Hazel’s shift schedule, the one I may have, totally, without her knowledge, sent to myself from her phone last night. She’ll be at work by now which means I have about six hours to get everything ready.
I grab my old glasses off the desk, because if it works for Superman then who am I to argue, and pull on a long-sleeved shirt with a hood in case I need to hide my face. My backpack’s already packed with the equipment I need so I hook it over my shoulder and head up the stairs.
Lachlan messaged me an hour ago saying that the police were gone now.
Clearly, they’re not very good at their jobs, but to be fair to them, the basement door clicks seamlessly back into place when I close it after me.
There’s no handle and if you didn’t know it was there it would be almost impossible to spot the door hidden in the paneled hallway.
I swipe one of his specially ordered pastries, from the bakery he adores, out of the box on the island as I pass. My lips curl up as I take a bite because I know it will piss him off.
“One day, Lachlan’s going to snap and kill you and when they ask me to give a eulogy at your funeral I’ll get up there, like I’m about to give this big, heartfelt speech, and all I’ll say is ‘I told you so.’”
I laughed hard when Hope said that.
The custard Danish is mouth-watering though and I decide that Lachlan can kill me as many times as he likes if it means I get to finish eating it.
I’ve been choking down cardboard sloppy joe prison food for the last three months and my eyes roll back in my head, the flaky pastry melting in my mouth as I look out the window over the kitchen sink.
My personal stakeout cop is still parked out front, so I backtrack out of the kitchen and up to the roof terrace.
I still can’t get over how neat my brother’s bedroom is. Even when I was in Drayford, with barely a handful of belongings to my name, my cell was still messier than this.
I pull the sliding terrace door shut on his freakishly ordered bedroom and hop over onto next door’s roof.
I think Clark Kent was on to something because an hour later I’m standing in a locksmith, with a bag full of groceries, as a man with a head like a boiled egg cuts a copy of Hazel’s front door key.
My mugshot is on the TV behind the counter, but he doesn’t even blink twice at me as he hands over the freshly cut key and takes the cash I use to pay.
The walk to Hazel’s place is nicer during the day, just the barest hint of sunshine tiptoeing past the clouds.
I take my hood down and run my hand through my curls, letting them fall over my forehead.
The first thing I did this morning was call the security company and buy Hazel an alarm system.
I paid extra to get it installed today because I hated the idea that she was living alone in that house.
When I get to the cute little bungalow, the new key slides perfectly into the lock and I tsk under my breath when punching 1111 into the new alarm turns the system off. Of course she would leave it set to the default code.
I take a moment to reprogram it and leave a note with the new code tucked behind the panel.
Hazel’s refrigerator is as sad as I remember. It takes a good thirty minutes to clean out the moldy take out and put away all the fresh groceries I bought. After I’m done, I check my phone. I’ve got about an hour until Hazel’s shift finishes.
I go back to the backpack I left in the hall and take out my equipment.
Carmen, the same woman who sorted out my new identity, sent me this tech and its next level spyware.
She probably wouldn’t be too happy with what I’m using the cameras for but as much as I want to be with Hazel twenty-four seven, I have a senator to kill.
The camera feed links up to my phone so this way, I can keep an eye on her wherever I am.
Once I’ve finished setting up all the cameras, I duck into her bedroom then reset her alarm.
I get home just in time to watch Hazel find the gift I left her.