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“That fucking liar,” I spat.
Chris went on to swear that he saw a ‘struggle’ between Trey and I, and that he ran over to help. When the police questioned him about the nightstick they’d finally found, he admitted to grabbing it from the back of his car when he saw Trey’s overall size.
It got even worse, too. It turned out there was footage of the fight, from the building’s overhead cameras. But the footage only showed Chris running around the corner, and Trey grabbing him by the hood and thrashing him. Unfortunately, there were no cameras at all on the side of the building.
“So no one’s asking the bigger question here,” Adam said when Dante had finished.
Trey pushed another two waffle fries into his mouth and chomped down on them. “And what’s that?”
“How’d he know where to find you in the first place?”
All eyes turned toward me.
“I… I guess he followed us.”
“No way,” Trey disagreed. “It was late, and dark, and icy as hell. There was no one behind us as we left the restaurant, and practically no one on the roads.”
“What about when you entered the campus?” Dante asked. “When you passed the security gate?”
“Nope. Nobody.”
I shuddered a little, thinking about Chris making his way to faculty housing. Bringing his weapon. Sitting there, just waiting to ambush Trey. The whole thing was my fault, and I already felt terrible. But now…
Now he wasn’t just keeping tabs on me, he was stalking my boyfriends too.
“Wait a minute,” I said, turning toward Trey. “That first time I was on campus with you? Chris knew about that, too. He mentioned it the next day, at work.”
“But he couldn’t have known that,” Trey said. “We left your car off campus. Walked in from the west side, near the Hot Truck.”
Realization dawned on him, and suddenly he looked up at me. “Holy shit! This asshole slashed my tires, didn’t he?”
I stared down guilty, unable to meet his gaze. I nodded slowly in response.
“He was probably at our apartment too,” said Dante, nodding toward Adam. “That heart, you just said was carved into the ice on your windshield? Really think that was him?”
“Probably,” I sighed.
“Are you still sharing location with him maybe, on your phone?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I stopped doing that the second we broke up.”
“Check anyway.”
I did, and sure enough my shared location contacts were blank. Chris’s number was still blocked, too. I’d taken care of that again, immediately after calling him about the dead rose.
“How does he always know where you are, then?” asked Adam. “I mean, if he’s not following along in his car, but he’s showing up later…”
Dante’s eyes wandered down to the table, then suddenly up at me. I saw a flash of insight. A spark of inspiration.
“Brooke,” he said, reaching across the table. He shook his open palm. “Let me see your keys.”
Wordlessly I picked them up and passed them over. He went over the contents of my keyring one by one, eventually stopping at a faded Ithaca lanyard. “What’s this?”
“Mom gave it to me,” I said. “First year of college.”
He pushed it aside. “And this?”
I looked down at the pink leather tassel he was holding. “Some stupid woven keychain I bought in Arizona.”
