Chapter Thirty-One Cole
Three days since Hailey called me from her hospital bed, and my apartment doesn’t quite look like my apartment anymore. It looks like the rooms they show in true-crime documentaries right after someone calls the cops on the guy who lives there.
The phone call with Hailey discussing our initial steps only took a few minutes, but I’ve replayed it a thousand times since. Her voice was still so raw and broken, in a way I’d never heard before. The way she said his name and claimed him as her monster…
She hates him. She fucking hates him.
She’s spent the last three days in the hospital, so I’ve been at it for seventy-two hours straight, give or take passing out on the couch for an hour or two at a time.
The blinds are drawn, and I haven’t shaved.
There are coffee cups stacked on every surface that isn’t covered in printouts—and most of the surfaces are covered in printouts.
The first thing I did was hack the parking garage’s security system.
It was insultingly easy—outdated firmware, default admin credentials no one had bothered to change in three years.
Took me eleven minutes from start to footage.
Finding the right timestamp took longer because my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
I made myself watch.
I made myself watch every fucking second of it.
The grainy frames, the shadows, the moment Hailey walked toward her car alone with a small shopping bag in her hand and Lars Winters stepped out from behind a concrete pillar like the rabid fucking animal he is.
I watched her fight. I watched her almost win.
I watched her jab her thumb in his eye and elbow his nose and sprint for the stairwell, and I watched her leave a trail of blood—her blood—across forty feet of concrete because I wasn’t there.
That’s the image I want in my head when we find him.
The second thing I did was call Tyler. I told him I’d be out of touch for three days and would be missing the next IBSG meeting. I asked him not to worry.
I lied about why.
I told him Hailey called and we’re on speaking terms again, and that I needed time to process.
I said I wouldn’t be doing anything stupid, that I’d be back in the chair at the next meeting.
He bought it. Or maybe he didn’t, but he gave me space nonetheless.
It doesn’t really matter. I’ve stopped trying to read Tyler the last few days, because reading Tyler costs me energy I don’t have to spare.
The third thing I did was start over from scratch on Lars Winters. Everything I had on him before, I’d been gathering quietly, methodically, from a distance.
I’ve mapped his last six months. Every place he’s slept. Every place he’s eaten. Every job he’s had and lost. The two women he hurt before Hailey, neither of whom pressed charges, both of whom moved out of state within a year of coming into contact with him.
I’ve identified four people he might run to.
A cousin in Greeley who works at a body shop.
An old college roommate who lives outside Loveland and posts a lot of cryptic shit about “real men” on Facebook.
A mother in Colorado Springs who’s bailed him out twice.
And a Reddit user I’m ninety percent sure is him, who’s been venting in subreddits about “bitches who think they’re better than you” for the past eleven months.
I’ve printed all of it. The walls of my living room are covered.
Red strings, push pins, and everything else I could need to create the most elaborate evidence board outside a Hollywood thriller.
I caught my own reflection in the kitchen window an hour ago, and I looked like a monster—which struck me as ironic enough that I actually laughed out loud.
The tracking app pings every thirty minutes on the dot.
Shitstain Lars (a previously unfathomed downgrade from Shitbag) hasn’t been at his apartment in four days.
The last ping I got from his phone was outside a bar in Greeley, and then his phone went dark.
He’s either smashed it or pulled the battery.
He’s smarter than he looks. I should’ve figured he’d ditch the phone after he ran from the parking garage.
That’s fine. There are other ways to find people. I’ve done it before.
And I’m doing it again.
Hailey is being released tomorrow morning.
I haven’t seen her in person since the night of the attack, but we’ve been texting. Long, detailed exchanges where I give her updates of what I’ve found and what I think he might do next based on a pattern analysis of his last six months.
I’m on my second pot of coffee when the buzzer to my apartment goes off. I force myself to look away from my screen and glance at the clock on the microwave. It’s 8:47 in the morning. I’m not expecting anyone.
The buzzer goes off again, twice this time.
I drag myself off the couch and over to the window, pushing up the blinds just enough to see the street. Tyler’s beat-up van is parked out front. I roll my fingers over my temples a few times, then cross the room to press the intercom. “Yeah?”
Tyler’s voice is loud and clear as it plays through the speaker. “Open the door, Cole.”
What the fuck?
“What are you doing here?”
There’s little patience in his voice. “Just open the door.”
“I’m really not in a place where—”
“Cole. Open the goddamn door.”
There’s an edge in his voice I’ve never heard before. I consider telling him to fuck off, but I ultimately decide against it and press the button to let him in.
Seconds later, I hear an entire stampede of footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Tyler,” I yell into the intercom. “Who is with you?”
But he doesn’t answer.
I unlock my door and crack it open just as they round the landing.
Tyler is in front, but behind him are Jessica and Grant, with Austen and Zach bringing up the rear. The whole fucking group, marching up my stairs at quarter to nine in the fucking morning.
“What are you—”
They push right past me without waiting for an invitation. Tyler is first through the door. He stops in the middle of my living room and looks around at the walls. The string. The pushpins. The printouts. The maps and endless photos.
He turns back to me, his face scrunched into what I can only interpret as judgment.
“Yeah,” he says quietly, nodding. “That’s about what I figured.”
Jessica steps beside him and puts her hands on her hips, looking at one specific wall. The wall where I’ve pinned a full-size photo of Lars in the center, with red string radiating out from it to every known address and associate I’ve been able to confirm. She turns to me.
“Cole,” she says, in the calmest voice I have ever heard come out of her mouth. “Please sit down.”
“What is this—”
“Sit down, Cole.”
Every instinct hardwired into my brain tells me to stand and fight, to find out why the fuck they’ve barged into my apartment uninvited, but there’s a small voice in the back of my brain telling me this’ll go a lot faster if I shut the fuck up and listen. So I do.
The five of them arrange themselves around my living room like they’ve done this before.
Tyler falls into the armchair across from me.
Jessica makes room for herself on the coffee table directly in front of me, blocking my line of sight to the wall.
Grant is standing by the window, scanning the street.
Austen leans in the doorway with his laptop bag over his shoulder, and Zach is against the wall by the kitchen, arms folded.
“What did you tell Tyler?” Jessica asks once everyone is settled.
“Uhh…” I raise an eyebrow, looking to Tyler for answers, but he provides none. “I told him I needed three days.”
“You told him you and Hailey were on speaking terms again and you needed time to process.”
I’m unsure what she’s getting at, but I answer anyway. “Yes.”
“Were you lying?”
A sliver of the truth will get me through this. It always has with this group. “About Hailey? No.”
“About the rest of it.”
I open my mouth, then clamp it shut. What does she want me to say? And how the fuck does she know there’s more to the story?
Jessica’s eyes move slowly around my apartment again, analyzing everything. The wall. The whiteboard. The empty coffee cups. Her eyes eventually come back to mine.
“Cole,” she says. “We need to talk.”
I lean back on the couch uncomfortably. “About?”
She and Tyler exchange a look. A long one, and whatever passes between them only confuses me more. Why are they looking at each other like that?
Tyler silently nods at her, once, and Jessica turns back to me.
“About what kind of group you’re actually in,” she says.