Chapter Thirty-Two Townsend
Chapter Thirty-Two
Townsend
Next to Townsend in bed, Talia snores softly.
Lucky her, he thinks. He’s so tired he can feel the blood pumping behind his eyeballs, but sleep just won’t come.
Instead, he lies awake, watching out the window as the sun starts to rise over Downtown Austin.
It’s Saturday, Townsend realizes numbly.
It’s a new day. His company’s fraudulent data is possibly moments away from being exposed, his ex is likely dead, and the police haven’t caught the psycho who’s threatening both him and his fiancée—but it’s a new day, and Talia looks so beautiful, her sleeping form illuminated by the glow of the rising sun.
A few hours have passed since he and Talia left the police station, and Townsend still can’t wrap his head around everything he’s learned. Amanda, possibly dead this whole time, while someone else has been posing as her just to harass him—it’s insane.
After Talia went off with Harris at the station, Townsend followed Burrows to a separate room, where the detective didn’t waste any time dropping his bombshell.
Apparently, Amanda wasn’t Townsend’s stalker after all .
. . and she may not even be alive. Regret washed over him when he heard this—not for having broken up with Amanda but for having vilified her for so long.
It was certainly tragic to see a beautiful young woman gone too soon (as damaged and self-destructive as she may have been).
However, he wasn’t in the right headspace to mourn—not yet.
He was too distracted by his pent-up resentment, which now needed a new target.
“If Amanda wasn’t behind all those messages and threats,” he asked Burrows, “then who was?”
“Well.” Burrows cleared his throat. “We have reason to believe it could be Talia’s coworker, Meera Ratnam.”
Once again, Townsend felt his stomach drop.
“Meera? Are you sure?” Meera, his fiancée’s best friend, who just that night was in his home, alone with him.
She could have done anything she wanted to him, and yet, all she did was leave him with a threat: You deserve all the shit that’s coming your way.
Was it possible she then tried to burn Talia’s house to the ground while she was inside it?
She had proved herself savvier than Townsend had realized, sure .
. . but could she really be that unhinged?
Burrows gave him a curious look. “You don’t seem convinced.”
“It’s just . . .” Townsend thought back to Meera’s unexpected visit to his condo, to those grunts of pain she’d made as she got on and off his sofa.
“She has Hashimoto’s disease, right? From what I understand, it makes her pretty weak.
Talia told me she always struggles in their Pilates classes.
I just have a hard time picturing her breaking into a house, or throwing a brick through a window, or committing arson and fleeing the scene before she’s caught. ”
“Valid point.” Burrows didn’t seem particularly surprised by this argument. Really, he didn’t have much of a reaction at all.
“Plus, she has a kid.” The more Townsend thought about it, the more doubt crept in. “She has this seven-year-old daughter who is her whole world.”
“Mothers can’t be criminals?”
“I just don’t see her doing anything that would endanger her kid, you know?”
“Right. Well, we are exploring other theories,” said Burrows.
“What other theories?” Townsend asked warily.
Burrows ignored Townsend’s question and asked one of his own. “Has Talia ever mentioned feeling threatened by anyone? Possibly someone from her past?”
Townsend hesitated; it didn’t feel wise to mention this, but if it meant tracking down the possible killer after him and Talia, then it was worth it. “This is going to sound a little crazy.”
“Try me.”
“You have to understand that my mom is . . . kind of nuts. She thinks she’s being protective but”—Townsend shook his head—“I don’t know anyone else whose parent would hire a private investigator to spy on their girlfriend.”
Burrows raised his brows. “Your mother had Talia followed?”
“Like I said, she’s nuts, and I told her to fire the guy. Luckily, Talia has no idea that my mom was having her tailed, though she did know a PI was following her. And she told me . . .” Again, Townsend paused.
“What did she tell you?”
Whatever. He was just going to say it. Maybe it could help. “She thought the PI was hired by her ex-boyfriend’s parents.”
“Why would she think that?”
“I don’t know. I guess things didn’t end well between them.” Townsend hadn’t really asked questions; he was just relieved Talia didn’t suspect his mother.
But now, lying restless beside his snoring fiancée, Townsend wonders why he hadn’t asked for the full story about Talia’s ex. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t really care what happened in Talia’s life before him, instead choosing to focus on the new life that they’re building together.
Or maybe he’s afraid of what he’ll find out.
He’s about to close his eyes, to make one last attempt at sleep before getting up for the day, when he hears it: a muffled thumping that he can’t place.
No, wait, he knows what that sound is—it’s a fist bashing against his door.
“Oh, my God.” Talia shoots up next to him, her hand clutching her chest. “Is that her?”
“She can’t get in.” Townsend tries to sound calm, even as his palms go slick with sweat. “I’ll call the front desk. They’ll take care of her.”
“She already got past them. What are they going to do?”
The banging subsides, and Townsend allows himself to exhale. However, just as quickly, the rhythmic pounding of Meera’s fist is replaced with a series of high-pitched beeps.
Talia gasps. “Does she know the key code?”
If Meera did know his key code, she certainly hadn’t learned it from him. “She didn’t use it when she came over earlier.”
“She was here earlier?”
Townsend ignores this question. “Call 911,” he tells her. “And stay here.” Throwing the blankets off himself, he hurtles to the front door.
He arrives just in time to see Meera burst in. And she looks angry enough to kill.