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“How? I didn’t say anything.”
“Your breathing changed.”
“Oh.”
“Just breathe,” he reminds me.
“I don’t want to go gray,” I whine.
There’s a moment of silence, followed by, “What?”
"Nothing," I huff. "What are we supposed to do once we catch her?" I ask, suddenly realizing how stupid it is that I haven’t questioned that before.
I’d just assumed we’d hand her over to the police to deal with, but it won’t be that simple. As Kai said, there’s no proof that she’s been stalking me. Even if there was, all that would earn her is a slap on the wrist and a restraining order. She hasn’t hurt me or done anything to warrant a prison sentence.
We could try to pin Richard’s murder on her, although other than his severed finger delivered to my door, there’s nothing to tie her to the crime scene. And even the finger won’t link back to her.
Hell, we don’t even know who this woman is. She certainly isn’t my friend or the girl I shared a dorm room with for four years. Is Mel even her real name? Probably not. She’s a stranger—a ghost.
“We kill her, obviously,” Wilder is quick to say, unaware that his words have me tripping over my own feet. “The psychotic wackadoodle isn’t going to stop any other way.”
“Shut up, Wilder,” Kai growls. “It’s not your decision to make. Emilia,” he says more softly, “you can decide what you want to do once we’ve got her.”
The back of my throat burns with the weight of that decision. Honestly, I’m not sure it’s one I want to make. One I’m capable of making. Sure, Mel has terrorized me, but she was also my best friend at one point. I can’t be objective. It’s not a decision I can make rationally.
One thing is for certain, though; this won’t end by going through the justice system.
“It’s not a problem for today,” Hawk states when I don’t say anything. “Let’s just focus on today’s plan, yeah?... Em?”
“Y-yeah, okay.”
My classes go by in a blur. I teach on autopilot, too caught up in looking for any sign of Mel to truly focus on what I’m teaching. I know she’s watching. I can feel her eyes on me, but so far, she hasn’t reached out or acknowledged my outfit—no flowers, no notes, no photographs. Nothing.
At this rate, I’m going to have a heart attack before the end of the day. In between classes, my mind runs off in a hundred different directions, wondering where she’s hiding, what she’s doing, what her next move will be.
The guys and I keep our conversations to a minimum, not wanting to draw unwanted attention or alert anyone to our communication. If Mel caught a whiff of our plan, she’d be in the wind, and whatever thin thread of trust she’s placed in me would go up in smoke.
“Damn, Miss H.” Jacob wolf-whistles, snagging my attention back to the classroom that’s quickly filling with students for my next class. “Lookin’ good today.”
“Who the fuck is that?” Wilder snaps through the earpiece.
I grit my teeth, ignoring Wilder’s question and Jacob’s roaming gaze as he takes a seat in the front row—definitely not his usual seat in this class. I remind myself that it's the last class of the day.Just get through this, and then you can go home and have a glass of wine.
Huh. I’m not sure when I started thinking of Hawk and Wilder’s house as home, but that’s what it has become. My sanctuary at the end of the day—even if that sanctuary does come with its own chaotic storm in the form of Wilder.
Running my eyes over the classroom, I firmly make a point of avoiding Jacob, before getting to my feet. “Okay, class. Today we’re going to talk about…”
I lose myself in the art of teaching, ignoring Jacob and the cocky smirks he keeps giving me when I look toward his side of the room. Forgetting about Mel and the fact that I’m practically waving a purple-colored flag in her face. Refusing to think about Wilder and whether he’ll still be resisting the inevitable between us, and definitely not thinking about Hawk and the dirty things we got up to in the cinema room last night.
“Don’t forget to read T.S. Eliot’sBurnt Norton.We’ll be discussing the distinction between the experience of modern man and spirituality in next week’s class,” I call out as students filter out of the classroom.
“I’m guessing this was a failure,” I say into the earpiece when the final student has left the classroom.
“It’s still early days,” Kai reassures, but I know we were all hopeful for a quick response from Mel. All of us are anxious to resolve this so we can move on with our lives.
“Who was that asshole?” Wilder interjects, obviously still hung up on Jacob.
“No one. Just a student.”
