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“Hannah.” His eyes had gone hard. “You don’t want any part of this—”
“Try me.”
He glared at her for the longest moment, until she was sure she’d pushed him too far and he was going to yell at her to get the hell out of here. Regret began elbowing its way into her thoughts. She wasn’t angry at Michael. Not really.
This rage was all about her father.
She realized she expected Michael to shove her out the door with dismissive words, the way her father would. To treat her like a little girl who couldn’t deal with the big, bad issues of the world.
But Michael straightened and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “Here,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
He unlocked the screen, went to the text messages, and handed it to her.
She read the first few on the screen, and they didn’t make sense.
Right now, who is hunter, and who is prey?
Do you really think a jail cell will keep you safe? That’s funny, Michael.
As if you’d even get to a jail cell.
As if I’d let you leave this neighborhood.
The tone was chilling, even from the relative safety of a cell phone screen. Someone was stalking him? Were these messages from the man her father had killed? Why didn’t Michael want to tell her about this?
Then she stopped on the next line.
Your girlfriend is adorable how she plays fireman. Maybe I should introduce myself.
Her eyes flicked to the top of the screen to see that these texts had been sent from a random number, not from anyone in his contact list. She directed her gaze up to Michael. “Who sent these?”
“Warren Morris. The man your father shot in the woods.”
She glanced at the phone again, then back up at him. “Does my dad know about these text messages?”
“Yes.”
He put out a hand, but Hannah took a step back and held the phone out of reach, scrolling up, reading through a brief exchange. “Do you know this guy?”
“No.” He paused. “Sort of.”
“So someone has been threatening you? For how long?” Michael didn’t say anything. She glanced past him, to where Tyler and Hunter were sitting at the dining room table. “Do they know?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, so they get to be in on all the secrecy.”
“Hannah—”
She glanced at the text messages again. “Did this just start today?”
“No.” Michael took a long breath. “It’s complicated.”
“Is this related to the fires in your neighborhood?”
He hesitated. “Yes. And the restaurant bombing.”
He didn’t say anything else, but she kept looking at him expectantly. “There’s more,” she said. “I can feel it.”
