“I am going to find you, and I am going to make you regret this.”
Sounds kinky.
A strangled laugh came through my speakers, and the grin that split my face in response felt evil. Got her. She was enjoying this on some level, too. Now, I just needed to keep pulling her strings until I found the one that unraveled her enough that she stopped fighting against her nature and joined me on my descent into darkness.
“Do not misconstrue the sound that just came out of my mouth,” she said. “It was hysterical laughter only. Brought on by stress and a murderous rage.”
Hot, I replied.
She choked on another laugh. “Goddamn it. That’s it. I’m turning off my computer.”
I sent a crying face emoji.
“You’re not funny,” she said.
Then why do you keep laughing?
“I am not laughing. Not really.”
I pulled up my photo app, double-checked that the background of the video I needed was blurry enough that her room wasn't identifiable, and then sent her an outtake from last night, just to keep her talking.
She went quiet as she watched a shirtless me trying to film myself in her mirror, only for Fred to suddenly leap onto the bed and start meowing at me at the top of his lungs, rubbing against my hand when I wasn’t fast enough to pet him.
This was a huge risk. The room might be blurry, but me pictured alongside a black and white cat could prove harder to defend. I was operating on instinct alone at this point. Aly hadn't reported me yet, and if my gut was right, there was a good chance she never would.
“No,” Aly said. “There is absolutely no way. What did you do? Cover yourself in catnip? He hates men.”
Now, why did that little piece of information suddenly make me feel so special?
He just has exacting taste, I said.
I sent her another outtake, this one of Fred stalking up behind me before pouncing at my dangling fingers, slapping at them without using his claws, and then bounding offscreen, where he yowled like he wanted me to play chase with him.
Aly chuckled, but it turned muffled after a clapping sound, like she’d clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle it.
“This means nothing,” she said. “Cats are sociopaths by nature. Fred simply recognized a similar creature.”
If I’m the cat, what does that make you? I asked. The mouse?
“I’m a mother fucking wolf,” Aly said, and then her computer cut off as she killed the power.
Damn it. Well, at least I still had her bedroom camera for a few more minutes. I locked the tablet and switched my phone to Bluetooth to hear her better over the speakers.
“What the hell is this thing?”
My phone started rapid-fire chiming.
A CAMERA FINDER???
NO.
DUDE.
NO.
YOU BETTER NOT HAVE.
She marched straight into her bedroom with the device aimed.
Welp, here goes my last way to monitor her in her house, I thought.
It took less than a minute for her to find the camera I planted, and when she did, she just stood in front of it, staring for so long that I started to get nervous.
Unable to stand it any longer, I picked up my phone.
Say something, I typed.
She glanced at her phone screen and then back at the camera. “The other night, after you sent me that video. Did you –” She snapped her mouth shut like she couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
Aly, no, I said, feeling desperate. I wanted her to be afraid of me, but not like this. I stopped.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, so low I barely heard it.
Fuck, I was starting to lose her, wasn’t I?
And you don’t have any reason to, I typed. But I’m still telling you I stopped.
“Have you been watching me change and sleep and…”
No. My moral compass might not point north, but it’s not that fucked up.
“Why should I believe you?”
I sighed, wanting to convince her but knowing that wasn’t the right move. As far as she knew, I was a stranger on the internet.
You shouldn’t, Aly.
She let out a low noise of frustration and shook her head. “Fuck.”
As I watched, she yanked the camera from the socket, and even though I knew it was coming, I wasn’t ready for the sense of loss that punched through me.
I don’t want to hurt you, I told her, knowing I might regret it when this all went to shit, and she finally reported me.
Didn’t you just imply I’d be an idiot to believe you? she responded.
I suppose I had.
Her “online” notification cut off as she logged out of the app.
This was fine. I’d expected Aly to be pissed about the camera for a little while. She had every right to be.
But if everything went to plan, I was going to prove that I didn’t intend to hurt her, and she could trust me.
Chapter 7Aly
Ineed to stop checking my phone, I thought as I pushed open the breakroom door.
Every time I had five seconds to myself, I dashed inside to look at it. I’d installed my security system yesterday, placing the little sensors on all my windows and setting up the doorbell cameras. It also came with interior cameras, but there was no way in hell they were getting installed. Not when the Faceless Man could use them to keep spying on me.
The bastard.
I couldn’t fucking believe he’d put a camera in my bedroom. Breaking in was bad enough, and even though I shouldn’t have been, I was halfway to forgiving him for it yesterday. I mean, I had asked him to do it. But watching me without my consent crossed the line, and after everything he’d done, I’d be foolish to believe his “Aly, I stopped” bullshit, despite my weird gut reaction telling me I could trust him.
What kind of stalker had that moral fortitude? How was that his line in the sand? Maybe it made me a bad person, but if our roles were reversed and I’d gotten the chance to watch him masturbate, I wouldn’t have stopped. I would have slid a hand into my underwear and joined in on the fun.
Two notifications were waiting for me from the security system when I grabbed my phone from my locker. One showed a tubby little raccoon ambling past my back door, and I saved it to my photos to rewatch it later because even though I knew they were wild animals and carriers of the rabies virus, every time I saw a trash panda, I wanted to pick it up and smoosh it.
The second video was of my weird neighbor Steve from down the street, who ran late at night, even in winter. He was an ultramarathoner and competed in some of the most extreme environments on the planet, and the harsher the conditions, the better, according to him. I knew far too much about the man because he was also chatty as fuck, and he’d cornered me at the last neighborhood block party and talked for a solid twenty minutes about his training regiment and how ultramarathons were more about being mentally tough than physically tough. I’d avoided him since. His intensity was unnerving.