Jenna (McCarthy):What the hell do you want me to do???
Jenna (McCarthy):I want you to leave me alone.
Nathan:I’m going to make sure you get what’s coming to you.
Her phone pings with a LinkedIn notification. Nathan’s got a new job at HopeWorks.
Perfect. I don’t mind killing stalkers in a barrel with a machine gun. He moves into my “public display of destruction” pile.
An unknown number texts back as I’m trying to bribe Faulkner into coming to the meeting with Brock tomorrow.
Unknown Number:You know what I want.
Jenna (McCarthy):You don’t deserve anything from me.
Unknown Number:Don’t be a tease.
Hmmm…
I stare at the wall. Which one of these men is it?
Based on the text-message log, the messages started before she met up with the stepfather/stepson duo, so that rules them out, along with the parrot weirdo.
Could it be another stepfather or…
My finger settles on the photo of Rex.
For a split second, I think of going back upstairs, shaking Jenna awake, and demanding she tell me everything about Rex.
It’s him. Process of elimination. The others don’t make sense.
I scroll through the message history. They’d been coming for a while, though not as long as the time-share psycho’s.
Crawford’s wrong. If it’s a stepfather, that would be an ongoing issue, right? A yearslong thing?
Jenna had to have met this man recently.
I send an email to Jenna’s father via her phone, CC myself on it, then delete the message from her email folder.
Devin replies immediately.
Now all I have to do is figure out where I’m supposed to get a whole entire buffalo and how to get it into Seattle.
“You don’t needit right now.”
“Payment. First.” Faulkner glares at me.
I fucking hate my little brothers.
Isaac is sighing next to me on the top of the building.
“Why can’t you just bash him on the head?”
“Salinger would kill me then leave my corpse to rot in jail. I’m on thin ice. Besides, isn’t making people suffer more satisfying?”
We’re watching the restaurant where the supposed meeting is taking place. We’ve been staking it out since the early dawn.
“Can we get Thai food after this?” Isaac rubs the back of his neck.
