"What's wrong, Vivienne? Is it Jane? Is she alright?" I stammered.
"Jane's alright; she's fine."
"Then what's going on here?"
"I... Someone broke into my daycare last night."
I certainly hadn't been expecting to hear that. My heart rate slowed back to normal, and the panic evaporated from my system.
"Well that's weird," I remarked. "Who would break into a daycare? Did they steal anything valuable?"
"No, nothing was stolen. It's worse than that."
"How so?"
"I know who did it."
"You do?"
It sounded now like she was crying.
"It's... it's my psycho ex, Simon. He's found me. He's found me, and he's coming for me..."
Chapter Seventeen
Vivienne
For a moment, there was silence on the line, then he spoke. "Are you absolutely sure about this? Are you sure it's him?" Everett asked.
"Positively sure. He used my real name – Alicia. Nobody in this town knows that about me except you, my friend Angie, and me. And obviously neither you nor Angie broke into my daycare and wrote that on the wall. I'm very, very sure it was him. It has to have been."
Everett paused on the other end of the line as he thought about everything I had just told him.
"I can come and get you, right now," he said.
Then, I heard someone else speaking in the background.
"Ev, is this an emergency? We have to see these kids' parents right away. We have no idea if they're on the run or if they've been home since the shooting—"
I heard the word “shooting” and immediately my heart started racing.
"Everett, who is that?" I asked. "There hasn’t been another shooting, has there? Are you alright?"
I heard him speak to the other person.
"Ben, hold on a sec; it is kind of an emergency."
He then returned to our conversation.
"That's Ben Henderson, the assistant principal of JFK High. Remember, I told you earlier about the kid who got shot at the school. That's what he's talking about."
"Oh my, yes, I'm sorry, in all this confusion and craziness I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t another one. How is he?"
"He's critical but stable. He was just about to go into surgery when we got to the hospital."
"Are the doctors going to be able to help him?"
"We hope so, Vivienne, we really do. When we went to see him, he helped us identify the kids who bought the drugs, the ones who would know who the shooter is. We're about to go talk to their parents to try to discover their whereabouts."