AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Rude,” Ash muttered.
Cora shrugged. “That was fine,” she said.
She took another sip.
“I forgot about the whole thing, until flowers showed up on my doorstep. From Neil.”
Hunter felt a spark of rage start inside of him, just listening to Cora tell the story.
What is wrong with people?he wondered.
“For a while, it was just stuff like that. Flowers, chocolate, cards, and even though it was really creepy, it was hard to put my finger on why. I’d tell people that I had this guy sending me tons of stuff, and they’d act like I was crazy not to enjoy it, but I really didn’t.”
“Because he couldn’t take no for an answer,” Hunter said. By now his grip was tight on his mug of hot chocolate, and what he really wanted to do was chuck it against the wall, shift, and go tear this fucker limb from limb.
Calm down, he told himself. You can’t protect her if you’re tearing through the woods when he comes for her.
He ground his teeth together and took another sip.
“Then, one day there was a picture of me, sleeping, in my mailbox. Taken from across the street or something.”
This time, Ash and Hunter both growled. Hunter jumped to his feet, unable to keep still any longer, flexing his fists and cracking his knuckles.
“Did you tell the police?” Ash asked. He’d finished his drink and put his mug down, and had his thick arms crossed over his chest. Hunter could see the muscles in his forearms flexing as he made his hands into fists.
“Of course,” Cora said. She shook her head. “They said they couldn’t do anything.”
“You have to be shitting me,” Hunter exploded. “Nothing?”
Cora pinched the bridge of her nose between her finger and her thumb.
“I couldn’t prove that it was him sending the pictures,” she said. “The police told me that the fact that he was sending notes and stuff was only circumstantial, that it could easily be someone else sending the pictures. The best they could do was a restraining order.”
“Which is useless,” Ash muttered.
“It got worse,” she went on. “More pictures. More notes, about stuff I’d been doing, places I’d been. He’d do weird things like compliment outfits I was wearing.”
“And the police didn’t do anything?”
Cora just shook her head. Hunter could see that she was furious again, and trying her best not give in to angry tears.
His bear was ready to tear through his skin and go on a rampage. He felt like he could knock down the entire forest if that was what it took to find the jerk who was stalking Cora.
The only problem was that it might not help.
“I moved twice,” she said. “I stayed with my sister, with friends, in a motel a couple of times, but he always found me. It wouldn’t take more than a day or two.”
“Is that why you moved here?” Hunter asked, quietly.
Cora nodded.
“I got fucking tired,” she said, still pacing. “Tired of trying to shake him, and tired of trying to convince the police to do something. So I got a job on the other side of the country and moved.”
“That rock that smashed your window,” said Ash. “Was that him?”
Cora bit her lip again. “I really, really wanted to think that it wasn’t,” she said. “He did it twice before, once to my work and once at work, but those both had pictures attached.”
She drained her mug of hot chocolate.
