“I wasn’t trying to ruin your life,” she said in a low murmur, trying desperately to come up with some kind of plan. “Your wife called me for help. I was just doing my job—”
“Ex-wife,” he corrected sharply. The air between them jumped about a thousand degrees, before he cooled it back down with an easy smile. “But that’s all in the past. It’s certainly not why I brought you here today, Lacy.”
Over the years, both Lacy and Sarah had been through a couple of close calls with the disgruntled former-partners of their clients. A threatening phone call. Dead roses delivered to the office. The occasional slashed tire. It was to be expected, given the incendiary nature of their work, although it never failed to scare them—every time.
But this...this blew all those other times out of the water.
“So why did you bring me here?”
A part of her almost didn’t want to ask the question. A part of her was afraid that when she did, the games would stop and she’d be faced with a sudden, unpredictable conclusion. But there was nothing more to be gained from minced words and room service. The man had lured her there for a reason. It was time to find out what that reason was.
“Why did I bring you here?” The man’s face was suddenly awash with the most tender of smiles. A smile she had seen on Logan’s face many times before, but one that looked both terrifying and totally out of place on a stranger. “Why isn’t it obvious, Lacy?”
Without another word, he crossed to the window and abruptly pulled back the curtains.
“I’m in love with you.”
It was worse than she could have ever imagined. A literal nightmare, come to life.
The curtains were pulled back, but the room didn’t get any lighter. Probably because there wasn’t a single inch of the windows that wasn’t plastered over with one of a thousand pictures. Pictures taken from every angle, at every time of day and night. Pictures taken in various stages of undress and unawares. Pictures that would haunt her forever.
Oh my goodness.
It was Lacy. Every single one of them was of Lacy. This man, Peter, had built a little shrine. A thousand images of her face—memorialized, shadowed, and flickering in the faint golden glow created by the tea lights.
Chapter 27
“This...” she took an automatic step closer, staring in horror at the terrifying collage as her eyes welled up with tears, “this is...”
There were no words.
It was easy to see where Peter had gotten the naked pictures he’d sent that morning. The man had a seemingly endless supply. There were pictures of her and Logan on the beach, staring deep into each other’s eyes as they made love on the pebbly shore. There were pictures of them standing frozen in the icy surf—as naked as the day they were born. In most of them, he was cut out. In others, he wasn’t. But by far—the most disturbing images were yet to come.
“You’re the man in the shadows taking pics of me! It wasn’t the press or tabloids. It was you.”
“Why yes indeed. You are so smart. Not just pretty, but smart too.”
Mixed in with the pictures of her picking up a cup of coffee or walking obliviously into the office, there were other pictures as well. Ones that had been taken much closer. From inside her very house. She sucked in a silent gasp as the room around her started to spin.
How is this happening? How is it possible that I didn’t wake up?
Her eyes lingered on a particular photo of her in bed. Her eyes were closed and her entire body was resting comfortably on the sheets. Not a stitch of clothing in sight. She could just barely make out a tuft of Logan’s blonde hair on the pillow beside her, but what struck her most was the box of Chinese take-out in the corner. A box she suddenly realized was still there.
“You took this last night,” she said in horror, slowly turning back around to look Peter right in the eyes. “You were in the house.”
“And I want to thank you both for putting on such a spectacular show for me,” he replied sweetly. “Which, of course, brings us back to the reason why you’re here.”
He didn’t say it outright. He simply sat down in the center of the bed. Maintaining eye contact the whole time. A shudder ripped through Lacy’s body and she backed away to the wall.
“You can’t be serious. You are out of your fucking mind.”
The man gestured to the window with a calm smile. “Obviously. But Lacy,” he stood up slowly as she started inching towards the door, “I’ve also thought this through.”
She froze in her tracks, still too far away to reach the handle.
“You see, when you set me up last year on a date with your friend—a date which cost me a marriage, by the way—you taught me a very important lesson. I realized that I hadn’t lost my wife by chance, nor had I been caught by any sort of coincidence. You did your homework, Lacy. You knew my life, inside and out. It made catching me in the act almost easy.”
The room darkened and it felt like the walls were closing in. With every frantic heartbeat, Lacy felt her world get a little smaller. Felt the air get a little harder to breathe.