Page 92 of Texting the Wrong Bikers

“Mostly compliments. That I looked beautiful. That he’d dreamed about me. That we belonged together.” She swallows. “Then he started telling me things he couldn’t possibly know.”

I lean forward. “What things?”

“What I’d been wearing when I wasn’t at the gym.” Silence falls between us. “Or one time he knew where I’d had dinner one weekend.” Another pause. “He once asked whether my mom was feeling better after she’d been ill.”

I feel every muscle in my body go still.

“He’d been watching me,” Brielle whispers. “I knew he had.”

“So you reported him.”

She nods. “The manager brushed it off the first time. Said Tyler was one of their best trainers, and that I’d probably misunderstood.” She gives another humorless laugh. “It wasn’t until two other women came forward with similar complaints that they finally believed us and checked the CCTV.” She looks me straight in the eye. “They caught him following female members into the parking lot after his shifts had finished. They fired him that afternoon.”

“Why didn’t you report him to the police?”

Brielle’s straight face tells me all I need to know. “We did,” she says bluntly. “They didn’t take us seriously, said there wasn’t enough evidence. They spoke to him, and he charmed his way out of it. A handsome guy like that isn’t exactly the stereotypical stalker. As far as they were concerned there was no case. He’d been fired and had stopped bothering us. They told me to contact them if he bothered me again, but in essence, they didn’t plan to do a damn thing. It was clear they thought we were overreacting to a nice guy who was just trying to ask us out. One cop even said something about how guys can’t compliment a woman these days without fear of her calling it sexual assault.” Her voice laced with bitter disgust. “He said, wasn’t it enough that we’d lost him his job and tarnished his reputation?”

I grind my jaw in irritation. All too often, this sort of thing happens. The charming man gets away with it, and the police assume the woman is being hysterical, dramatic, or lying. They care more about the man’s reputation than about believing the victims. “I’m sorry that happened.”

She nods her acknowledgment. “Do you think Tyler has taken her?”

“I think so. He was definitely interested in her…”

I feel sick. Hate myself for doing exactly what those cops did. Underestimating Tyler, not seeing him as a danger. I just figured he was some egotistical jock who likes to flex his muscles. I thought he was acting the macho protective man. I didn’t think he’d become obsessed with Sadie, even though his possessiveness was staring me right in the face.

I pull out my phone and call Chief, quickly relaying everything Brielle told me. There’s a long silence on the end followed by a quietly hissed, “Shit. I should have figured it out. Should have known. The creep was trying it on with Sadie the other night at the bar when she was out with Dani. He acted the typical macho dude, posturing and acting tough, but he quickly backed down. I didn’t think…” The helplessness in his voice echoes my own turbulent thoughts.

I’m now convinced that Tyler is the man we’ve been looking for all along. Which means we’ve spent the last five days watching the wrong man while a predator has been getting closer and closer to Sadie.

We failed her. I failed her. If anything happens to her, I’ll never forgive myself.

“We need to find him, and fast. He must know that it won’t take long for us to figure out he’s behind this.”

The words on the last note left at Sadie’s house ring in my ears. If I can’t have you, no one can.

Chapter 30

Sadie

The steel door groans on its hinges as it swings open. My pulse hammers so violently I can hear it in my ears. Every muscle in my body locks, instinct screaming at me to run even though there's nowhere to run. The shard digs deeper into my palm, pain blooming through my hand, but I barely feel it. It’s the only weapon I have, and I'm clinging to it as tightly as I'm clinging to hope.

I hold my breath, standing rigid as he walks down the stairs, the door slamming shut behind him. His footsteps barely make a sound, clad in sneakers. He looks the same, down to the compression vest he’s wearing. He certainly doesn’t look like a man capable of kidnapping a woman and locking her in his basement. In his hands are a bottle of water and a protein bar.

My eyes linger on the water bottle, tongue darting out against my cracked lips, throat parched and sore. The bottle glistens beneath the fluorescent lights, tiny droplets running down the plastic. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything so badly in my life. My tongue feels too large for my mouth, every swallow scraping painfully against my throat. For one humiliating moment, all thoughts of escape disappear beneath that single, overwhelming need.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” he says conversationally, as if I’d just woken up from a nap. “I was starting to get worried that I’d given you too much.”

My mind races as I try to decide how to play this. “What did you give me, Tyler?” I heard somewhere that using a person’s name often is a good tactic to use with kidnappers. Using the victim’s name a lot makes them think of them as a real person; the victim using the kidnapper’s name builds trust and familiarity.

“Just a mild sedative. The effects should wear off soon. Here, catch,” he says, tossing the water bottle my way.

I fumble, my arms sluggish from the drugs in my system, trying to catch it with the free hand that isn’t clutching the shard of pottery. It falls to the floor, rolling off to the side. I’m too thirsty to focus on anything other than that direct need, and I scramble for it, tearing off the bottle cap and chugging the cold water as fast as I can. Tyler watches me silently the entire time, head tilted slightly, like a cat watching a mouse. He doesn’t blink. He simply watches with quiet satisfaction, as though seeing me drink somehow proves I’d already begun relying on him.

His eyes land on the broken pot, and he smiles like an indulgent parent at a wayward child. “You broke my plant pot, I see. I’m guessing you’re holding a shard in the hand you’ve yet to open. Really, Sadie, there’s no need for that. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Every instinct I possess screams that he’s lying. The terrifying part isn’t that he intends to hurt me. It’s that he genuinely doesn’t believe he is.

“Then why the hell am I here?” I spit.