Chapter Thirty-Two Cole
“I’m not sure I follow.” I scan my living room and realize this looks a hell of a lot like an intervention, which makes me instantly sit up straighter.
Jessica breaks the awkward silence first. “IBSG is a real group, Cole. The things we do and talk about with Tracey are all real. None of that is a front.”
“Okay, so… What else is there?” I ask.
“There’s more to it than the meetings. So much more.”
“Check-ins. Buddy system. Accountability. I know, okay? I—”
“No,” she interrupts. “No, that’s not what I’m talking about at all.
We help people the system doesn’t. More specifically, people who are being stalked, harassed, or assaulted by someone the cops can’t catch and the courts can’t stop.
” Her words are calm but I’m having trouble keeping up.
“We have endless skills between us. We pool them together and make moves quietly. We do not get caught.”
The room is so still I can hear the traffic on the street outside. But what I cannot hear? My own thoughts. They’re spinning so fast, I can’t focus on a single one.
“So… You’re like…stalker superheroes?” An amused laugh escapes me, but no one else seems to find it funny. Clearing my throat, I decide to take a different approach. “How long has this been going on?”
Jessica is watching me like she isn’t sure she trusts me with the answer, but eventually she says, “A while.”
“Cole.” Tyler’s voice is serious as he steps closer to me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’ve been wanting to. I’ve been watching you try to do the work, watching you get further and further out on a ledge by yourself… There was only so long I could let that go on before I brought you in.”
“I still don’t entirely understand what you’re talking about.” I stand and begin pacing my living room. “You’ve been letting me feel like some creepy stalker, like I’m chasing all of you in recovery, when the entire time you’ve been lying to me?”
“You weren’t ready. You were still trying to convince yourself you weren’t a stalker.
You can’t be in this kind of group if you’re still in denial about what kind of person you are.
We can’t trust you to follow the rules if you’re still pretending you don’t need them.
You are still in recovery; it just looks different than what Tracey wants. ”
“And now you think I’m ready?”
“The woman you love is in a hospital bed,” Tyler says flatly, his poker face unwavering when I give him a look that asks how the fuck he even knows that. “You’re ready because if we don’t bring you in, you’re going to do something we can’t cover up.”
I stare at them each individually again, searching for the smallest shred of amusement, but there’s none to be found.
They’re serious.
They’re stalking stalkers.
They’re like…stalkers squared, or stalkers to the fifth power.
I scrounge for an ounce of seriousness to keep my head from spinning too much. “And you want to…help me?”
“We want you to join us. You have skills none of us do, and we could use someone like you. And right now, you need us.”
This is fucking wild.
I knew my recovering stalker buddies were a little…out there. But I never expected this.
Fuck. I do need their help. There’s no better way to hunt down Lars Winters than by utilizing these people.
“Okay, I’m in. Tell me about it.”
Tyler’s posture improves, like he’s surprised I’ve agreed to it without reading the fine print, but the reality is I don’t have time for that right now. Finding Lars Winters will be so much easier with the combined efforts of a group accustomed to learning more about people than they should.
Jessica takes over again, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward, elbows on her knees.
“There are three rules. They’re not negotiable. If you can’t live with all three of them, you walk away today, and you forget you heard any of this, and we go back to seeing each other in the community center basement once a week.”
“I’m listening.”
“Rule one. Tracey Doyle never finds out. Ever. Not a word, not a hint, not a slip at a bad moment. She is a mandated reporter. She is also the person we love most in this room outside of each other. She does not find out about this side of the group. If she ever does, the group ends, and we all go home and pretend none of this happened. There is no version of this where she knows and we keep going.”
I think about Tracey and how she unknowingly told me, two weeks ago, that this was exactly where I belonged.
“Got it. Tracey doesn’t find out.”
Jessica nods. “Rule two. The victim decides. Not us. We do not pick targets. We do not freelance. We do not decide what someone deserves on someone else’s behalf.
The person who has been hurt decides what happens to the person who hurt them.
We give them options. We carry out whatever plan they choose.
If they want their guy left alone, we leave their guy alone. End of conversation.”
“Even if you disagree,” Zach chimes in for the first time.
“Even if we disagree,” I repeat back to him for the group to hear.
The serious tone in Jessica’s voice only hardens further when she continues, “We learned the hard way. That’s the rule we hold onto tightest. The minute we start deciding for people is the moment we stop being different from the people who do harm.”
Of the two rules thus far, this is easily the hardest to agree to. It’s always been one of my biggest flaws. Overstepping and taking control.
“Okay,” I say, exhaling slowly. “I can do that.”
“Rule three is open communication. All the way through. Nobody runs solo. Nobody keeps secrets from the rest of the group. If someone is spiraling, everyone knows. If someone is having second thoughts, the group knows. If a target turns out to be more or less dangerous than we thought, the group knows. We move as a unit, or we don’t move at all. ”
This goes against everything I’ve just spent the last seventy-two hours doing.
My eyes find the red string and papers stuck to my walls.
I have to give up control to help Hailey.
This is what she wants. She said Lars Winters is hers, so I’m going to serve him to her on a silver platter. We’re going to serve him.
“Cole.” Jessica’s voice pulls me back to reality, gentler now.
“You’ve been spiraling. We know. We’ve all known.
We waited to see if you’d come to us first, and you didn’t, so we’re here.
That’s how this works. That’s what rule three means in practice.
Nobody on this team gets to disappear into their own head with a project.
Not even when it’s the one that matters most.”
“Okay,” I mutter, surprised by the raw emotion pressing behind my eyes.
“We aren’t mad at you for what you’ve been doing. Most of us would have done the same thing in your shoes. We’ve all been there, done versions of it. We’re telling you that if you want to be part of this, you don’t do it alone anymore. You bring us in.”
I take a breath, and it comes out shaky. “Okay. Yeah. I hear you.”
“Can you live with it?”
I sit with it for a moment before I answer, riffling through all the thoughts in my head, which are settling into a semblance of order now that the spinning has slowed.
This is what Hailey would want. I could have endless resources at my fingertips, and all I have to do is say yes. She can have her revenge and then some, and we won’t be in it alone. We can put Lars Winters away forever.
In jail. In the ground. Doesn’t much matter to me, as long as he can’t ever get to my girl again.
I’m not entirely sure a blanket “yes” would be one hundred percent truthful, so I answer honestly instead. “I want to. I think I can, but I’m going to need help, especially when it comes to not running solo. That’s where I’ve been…broken, since before I met any of you.”
“That’s the right answer,” Tyler beams, clapping his hand on my shoulder. The entire group seems to exhale at once, like they’d all been holding their breath.
“It is?”
“If you’d answered an unconditional ‘yes,’ I would’ve been on my feet and out the door.”
“Alright,” Jessica says. “Glad to have you. Now—”
“There’s one more rule,” Tyler says, his tone switching from light-hearted to sober in the space of a blink.
“What’s that?” I meet his eyes, finding a mischievous twinkle.
“We only refer to ourselves as Stalkers Anonymous.”
Jessica stands up, laughing while she pulls her jacket off the back of the chair.
“We’re meeting at my place tomorrow night at seven.
Talk to Hailey about it, and bring her if she wants to come.
If she doesn’t want to come, you call me and we figure out something else.
The point is for her to run the meeting. Not us. Not you. Her.”
“Got it,” I smile, feeling genuinely appreciative. “I’ll talk to her.”
“And Cole?” Jessica stops on her way to the door.
“Yeah?”
She scans the wall behind me. “Take this down. All of it. Tonight. Before you bring her in.”
I turn to my murder map, then back to her. “Why?”
“Because she’s going to walk in here and see what you alone with your spiraling thoughts looks like, and she’s going to be scared. Trust my female perspective. She sees this? It’s over before it starts.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” I wave her off. “I’ll take it down.”
“Don’t throw it away. Just take it off the walls. Bring it with you tomorrow.”
“Got it.” Inexplicably, I shoot finger guns in her direction. “Take it down and don’t scare Hailey away. Easy.”
“Oh,” Austen pipes up, finally moving from his slouch. “Did you put a geofence on this guy’s phone? I assume it’s gone dark, right?”
Okay, stalker. Asking questions like he’s the pro.
“Yeah. Three days ago.”
“Send me what you have. The number, the carrier, the apps you had it tied to. I’ll see what I can do. If we can get him pinging again, we can locate him before tomorrow. Even better.”
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll send it tonight.”
His response is short and quick. “Cool. Thanks.”
He opens his laptop and starts typing on his way out the door, following Jessica back to the van.
I turn to Tyler, giving him a confused look.
Tyler shrugs at me, like yeah, that’s what he does, and follows the rest of them out the door. “We’ll be in touch with Jessica’s address.”
I’m starting to understand that I have been seriously underestimating my therapy group.
…
I pick Hailey up from the hospital at eleven the next morning.
She’s in a wheelchair, even though she hates it, because that is hospital policy and Rachel—aka The Enforcer—has informed Hailey that she is going to follow hospital policy to the letter on her way out the door, whether she likes it or not.
Rachel pushes the wheelchair, and Hailey rolls her eyes the entire way to the curb.
I stand at the open passenger door of my car like I am chauffeuring royalty. My queen.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Hailey grumbles when she sees my face.
“Like what?” I tease, helping her out of the chair. She holds my arms as she lowers herself into the passenger seat with a tight little exhale that tells me she is in significantly more pain than she’s letting on.
Rachel hands me a discharge folder, but she does not let go of it right away. Instead, she gives me an assessing look before finally saying, “Drive carefully.”
“I will.”
She lets go of the folder and steps back when I turn to Hailey, helping her buckle in before closing the door and walking around to the driver’s side.
After I get in, I sit there for a second with my hands on the steering wheel.
I take her in—all the bruises and cuts, the tight lines of anxiety around her eyes—and think about how the fuck I’m going to convince this woman to let me take her to a meeting where five strangers are going to hunt down her stalker for her.
I should ease into this conversation.
Very, very slowly would be the right thing to do.
Instead, I throw caution to the wind and dive in head first.
“So… The therapy group I’m in.”
“Yeah?” She adjusts her body in the seat, but there’s no comfortable position for someone who’s been through what she has. She’s hurting.
“It’s not exactly what you think it is.”
She turns her head slowly to look at me with her one good eye.
“What did you do?”
The immediate accusation stings a little, but I can’t really blame her. “I didn’t do anything. They came to me yesterday. I want to be clear about that.”
“Who came to you?” There’s not much patience in her voice.
“The group.”
“Your therapy group?”
“Yes.”
“Your therapy group…came to you outside of therapy? And what did they say?”
It’s now or never. Here we go.
I take a deep breath and don’t let myself stop until I’ve said everything that needs saying: “There’s a second version of the group that our therapist doesn’t know about, and their whole mission is to help people in situations like yours, and they’d like to meet you tonight, if you’re up for it, so you can tell them what you want done about Lars Winters.
They want to help you find him. Help us, I mean. ”
The pause that follows is painfully long.
“Are you fucking with me?”
“No, Hailey, I’m not fucking with you.”
She stares at me, and I stare back. Her good eye narrows at me, the corner of her mouth twitching just slightly.
“The meeting is tonight at seven. You only have to come if you want to. They’re going to pitch you straight, no pressure, and leave you alone if you say no. The whole thing is your call.”
“Cole.”
I should’ve known she’d never go for this.
“Yeah?”
“Drive me home.”
Disappointment fills my entire body, and all I can do is nod. “Okay.”
“And then drive me to this meeting at seven.”
I turn back to her so quickly my neck gives a little pop. “Yeah?”
“Obviously, yes. What kind of question is that? Fuck Lars Winters.”
I throw the car in drive, repeating after her, “Fuck Lars Winters.”