“Me?” I glared at him. “You’ve been following me and didn’t tell me. It wasn’t like you were in my life. Or at least in a way I knew about.”
“I thought your shadow was related to Project Compass somehow. Not like this.”
“You could have told me,” I answered flatly.
He groaned. “Ok. We can’t do this.”
“No. We can’t.” I poured us both another round of drinks. “We just have to be level-headed. Clear. We have to get ahead of him.”
AJ took the refill from me. “And why haven’t you hacked him? Why didn’t you track him down?”
I shook my head. “Because the emails stopped, and by then I was too busy to worry about it. I just thought it was a prank. I don’t think it really hit me how serious it was until Dallas. When they resurfaced is when I realized it wasn’t an accident. I wasn’t some random email account he targeted. It was me he was writing.” I took a smaller sip of bourbon this time. “There were no more excuses I could come up with. It hit me when I was in Dallas, that I was dealing with someone’s dark personality.”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “He mentioned destiny in every email. I didn’t want to think there was a creepy stalker out there who knew me. I should have dug into it, or reported him.”
AJ exhaled. I was glad he wasn’t pacing anymore.
“From what we have to go on, it sounds likely he is the man at the farmhouse. And that means he sent you those texts.” He stopped. “What do you know about Ethan Howard?”
“Ethan? He was someone I interviewed. He lived on the same hall as my mom at US
C.”
“You met him in person?”
I nodded. “Yes. I drove to his house. He lives outside of Dallas. I don’t know much about him. He’s single. He has a dog named Max. He’s a little non-descript, honestly. I do have the recordings from our conversation. Do you want to hear them? Would that help you if you could hear what we talked about?”
I was willing to do whatever I could to figure out who was stalking me. Who was scaring the hell out of me. It had to stop.
I knew why AJ was suspicious of Ethan, but it didn’t make any sense for a man like Ethan Howard to do this, and especially to expose himself so openly as a suspect. It was too obvious. But I wasn’t the FBI agent.
Chapter Sixteen
I knew what AJ’s answer would be.
“Yes. Yes. Let’s hear them. I want to know exactly what Ethan Howard said to you. There may be something there that points us in the right direction. We’re going to need this in a full transcript.”
“All right. We brought everything from my equipment bag, so I can set it up,” I offered. I hadn’t wanted AJ to collect my laptop when we escaped the farmhouse. I wanted to leave it behind and option that gave me the tools to hack, but now there was a use for it.
I hadn’t used it since the airplane. Turning it on felt strange, as if the first thing I was going to see was the marketplace. I sort of expected it when my screen blinked open. I reached for the recorder and inserted the plug into the side port and connected it to my laptop.
“I need to cue the interview, and I have to run the audio program,” I explained. “It’s going to take a few minutes.”
“Take your time.” AJ watched me work.
I plucked my headphones from his bag and fastened them over my ears. I needed to run through the audio before I played the interview with Ethan Howard.
AJ tapped me on the shoulder and motioned to his phone. “I have a call. It’s the Bureau.”
“I’ll just keep going.”
He huddled in the corner while I shuffled through the multiple recordings. I never felt comfortable listening to the sound of my voice on playback. I was glad I had a chance to skip over my monologue before AJ heard the interview.
I’d never shared my recordings with anyone. It seemed silly to be nervous, considering my podcast would be broadcast on a wide platform, but I wasn’t supposed to sit next to the audience. That’s not how it worked.
I sounded tense when I was outside Ethan’s house. I cringed when I heard him slam the door in my face after refusing to help me. I hadn’t decided if I was brave or desperate to return after that, but I listened to all of it. Just until the part when Ethan finally agreed to talk to me. I hit the pause button and looked for AJ.
His broad back was to me. He was still wearing his gun. I wondered if he’d take if off ever again. He shifted from one leg to the other.