CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hannah was on high alert.
As Kat drove down Flower Street, trailing Wren Rivera as she walked slowly to work, Hannah sat in the passenger seat, looking for any men with odd, shuffling gaits and moles on their left cheeks. So far, she hadn’t seen anyone matching the description.
“How does it feel to be out and about again?” Kat asked her, hoping to sound casual.
Hannah knew she was trying to help by checking in on her emotional well-being. The truth was that the question only exacerbated things. But she did her best not to make that obvious when she answered.
“Getting better every day,” she said, even though this was only the second day that she’d been outside in a month. “I thought our meetup at Grand Central Market went pretty well. I didn’t freak out once. And so far, so good today.”
She didn’t mention that even though Dallas Henry was currently incarcerated and awaiting trial, she still had nightmares of him attacking her on that hiking trail in the mountains.
Nor did she say that, in addition to keeping an eye out for Wren’s stalker, she was also currently on the lookout for Ash Pierce, even though she knew the chances of running into her were infinitesimal.
“Have you talked to your sister lately?” Kat asked.
“Not in a couple of days, but don’t read too much into that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know that you’re worried that Jessie and I are still at odds because she lied to me for months about Finn being in that safe house. And I’ll admit that I still resent it a little bit. But we’ve mostly moved past it.”
“Really?” Kat sounded skeptical.
“Really,” Hannah replied. “I know that she thought she was doing what was right, for Finn’s safety and for my emotional health.
And she was probably right, considering that if I knew where Finn was, Dallas might have found out somehow and gone after him.
Intellectually, I get that, but it still hurts a little bit not to be trusted. Truthfully, I feel worse about Finn.”
“What do you mean?”
“I still haven’t visited him since he woke up,” she said.
“Sure, we’ve talked on the phone a few times, though not in any real depth.
But because I’ve been holed up in your apartment, I haven’t seen him in person.
I’m embarrassed about that. And he says he understands.
But I really think it would be nice if I checked in on him before school starts up again, especially since the guy got stabbed challenging a person who intended to, you know, torture and kill me. ”
“I can always drive you over there,” Kat volunteered.
“Maybe,” Hannah said. “For now, I’m just proud to be out in public. Let’s not push it too hard.”
Kat was about to reply when Hannah noticed something.
“Is that guy walking with a shuffle?” she asked, pointing at a man who had emerged from a coffee shop and fallen into step about twenty paces behind Wren.
“He kind of is,” Kat agreed. “I’m going to call Wren.”
She put the call on speaker. Wren, who had an earbud in, answered immediately.
“What is it?” she asked nervously.
“Just keep walking normally,” Kat said in a soothing tone. “Don’t look behind you or stop moving. We think we may have a suspect, but we want to be sure. So I’m going to have you tweak your routine a bit to see what he does, okay?”
“How?”
“So you’re still a block from your building, right?”
“Yeah,” Wren confirmed.
“Okay, so at the next intersection, I want you to cross the street,” Kat instructed. “I know it’s out of your way to get to work, but that’s the point. We want to see if this guy follows you. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Wren waited at the crosswalk, then joined a crowd of commuters as they hurried across the street. Hannah could tell that she desperately wanted to look behind her, but to her credit, she avoided it.
“Okay, go left once you cross the street,” Kat said. “I see a bakery about half a block up. Go inside and get in line. Don’t look out the window. We’ve got eyes on this guy, so you don’t need to.”
Wren did as she was asked. The man also crossed the street, barely making it before the light turned red.
Then he followed the same route that Wren had.
For a moment, it looked like he might enter the bakery too.
But instead, after stopping to look through the window briefly, he continued on for another fifteen yards before pausing at a bus stop.
“He’s not even looking for the bus,” Hannah noted. “His eyes are fixed on that bakery entrance.”
Kat eased the car forward slowly in the mass of traffic and edged into a loading zone spot in sight of the bakery and the man, where she paused.
“Can you tell if he’s got a mole?” she asked.
“Not from this distance,” Hannah admitted.
“What’s going on out there?” Wren asked. “I’m almost to the front of the line in here.”
“Buy something so it doesn’t look like you went in there to avoid him,” Kat told her. “When you come out, return the way you came. If this guy follows you, I want to get a good look at him as he passes by us.”
A minute later, Wren exited the bakery and headed back to the intersection, passing by them. She glanced in their direction but otherwise gave no indication that she recognized them. Hannah was impressed.
Just then, the man headed back their way as well.
As far as Hannah could tell, he’d never shown any interest in catching a bus.
As he approached, she pulled out her phone and held it up slightly, pretending to scroll.
But she was actually preparing to take photos of the man as he got closer.
Beside her, Kat fiddled with the car’s display panel, as if she had no interest in the man just outside.
“Don’t make it obvious,” she muttered under her breath, even though the windows were closed.
“I’m not,” Hannah said as she snapped multiple images of the guy. “I’m just a shallow blonde teenager fixated on her social media page. I’m busting out my most ditzy expression for this.”
As the man passed by her, she did actually switch from her camera app to Instagram so that if he glanced over at her, he wouldn’t see anything suspicious.
But his attention was on Wren. Hannah checked the side-view mirror, waiting until he began to step into the crosswalk before returning to the photos and pinching in for a close-up.
“What do I do now?” Wren asked, back on the other side of the street.
“Continue into work as if everything’s cool,” Kat said.
“Okay,” Wren said, “but did you get a good look at him?”
Hannah held out her phone for Kat to see.
The man they were looking at was in his mid-thirties with black hair hidden under a purple L.A.
Lakers baseball cap. Hewore jeans and a bland, button-down gray shirt.
He was pale and had a wispy black mustache.
More importantly, he had a prominent mole in the center of his left cheek.
“We sure did,” Hannah said. “And I’m willing to go out on a limb here and say that we may have found our guy.”