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“I want you to go through each of these yearbooks and see if anyone stands out.”
“Stands out?” I question, still thumbing through the first book.
“Anyone you remember paying you any extra attention or making you feel uncomfortable. Anyone you noticed hanging around your dorm or whose presence struck you as odd.”
“But these people were seniors when I was a freshman.”
“Doesn’t matter. Anyone who was at Halston when you began getting gifts is a suspect. It was during your freshman year, right?”
“Yeah, just before winter break.”
He taps on the pile of yearbooks in my lap. “Better get cracking then.”
Holding out his other hand, he hands over a pen, a highlighter, and a stack of sticky tabs; his level of organization reminding me of my high school and college days and making my neat-freak heart sing.
“Shouldn’t I start with my yearbook?” I question, taking the proffered items. “Isn’t it more likely that whoever this is, was a freshman at the same time I was?”
“It is, but I figure you’ll be able to get through these years faster. There will be a bigger suspect list in your year group. It’s easier to rule out people in other years first, and then we can focus on those in your year.”
“Makes sense.” Agreeing with his logic, I return to the front of the yearbook in my lap. Before I can start looking at the first page of faces, Kai snags my attention as he settles more comfortably beside me on the sofa and cracks open the lid of his laptop. “What is it that you are doing?”
“Now that I’ve ruled out the few people closest to you and anyone you've had contact with since moving to Springview, I’m running background checks on all Halston staff members.”
Hearing him talk about all of this in such a clinical manner sends a shiver down my spine. “Have you dealt with many stalking cases?”
“A few,” he answers in a brisk tone, his concentration mainly focused on the laptop on his knee.
“And how do they usually end?”
His fingers pause on the keyboard, and he seems to think over his response before answering. “It varies. Sometimes the guy is caught in time, and sometimes the pieces don’t all come together until it’s too late.”
I want to ask him what exactly he means by that, but I’m terrified of the answer. It’s clear by the way his entire body has tensed that it’s not something he wants to discuss, so instead, I start scanning the multitude of faces in front of me.
* * *
“Ugh,”I groan, hours later, slamming the yearbook shut. Even when I close my eyes, unfamiliar faces swim in front of me. “This is pointless. I don’t remember any of these people.” I’m seriously beginning to think I walked through college with blinders on. I don’t recognize a single person.
Kai looks up from his laptop, glancing at the yearbook I just shut before meeting my gaze. “The next one is your year group. Hopefully, you’ll have more luck there.”
I shake my head, defeated. “What if this guy wasn’t someone at my college? He could literally be anyone. Someone I crossed paths with in a coffee shop, a checkout person in the supermarket, a cab driver.Anyone.” I can hear the panic in my voice as the endless list of possibilities run through my mind. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack—impossible to find.
“Emilia.” Kai waits until I lift my head to meet his steady gaze. “You can’t think like that. Whoever this person is, they will have attempted to insert themselves into your life. Even if your initial contact was brief and unassuming, they would have pursued you. Maybe started up a conversation with you or showed up in other places you frequented. They won’t have been happy sitting on the sidelines. They’ll have wanted to integrate themselves into your life in some way.”
I shiver, feeling more and more bothered about all of this with every passing second.
“You told Hadley there were phone calls?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah. Only when I was out of town, here or visiting my mom.”
“Tell me about them.”
I blow out a breath, shaking my head. “There’s nothing to tell. No one ever spoke to me. I’d answer and hear silence on the other end for a second before they’d hang up.” I shrug. “I assumed it was a wrong number, except it happened every time I left campus.”
“Probably because whoever this is couldn’t keep an eye on you then,” Kai says thoughtfully, unaware of how concerning his words are. Does that mean someone was watching my every move when I was on campus?
“Sometimes it felt like someone was watching me,” I murmur quietly, chewing on my bottom lip as I think back. “I’d feel eyes on me when I walked between classes or when I was in the dining hall.” I shake my head. “I thought I was just being paranoid, being in a new environment and all that. I figured I’d gotten more comfortable than I’d realized having Hadley, Wilder, and the guys around, and now that I was on my own, I was being hypervigilant.”
“There was probably an element of that, too,” Kai says reassuringly.
