AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His eyes narrow. “Are you sure?”
“Not really, no. All I know is I’m here on campus to pick her up. She texted me an hour ago confirming and she’s excellent about being on time. Went to her dorm and her roommate last heard of her an hour ago too. I know it’s supposedly too early to be concerned. But I have this bad feeling. She talked about a stalker a few weeks ago. Like a feeling someone’s following her. When she looks out her window, she finds a shadow hiding behind a tree. Then, she received a message when she wasn’t here last weekend along with photos taken of her as she was leaving.”
He bites the inside of his cheek and drums his fingers on the table. “We can’t report it to the cops, yet. Like you said, too early. But… we can pull up security footage. Do you know where she was last?”
“The library. Her roommate said Andrea wanted to stop by the library real quick.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
He brings me to a spacious room with workstations arranged in a grid-like pattern. Each workstation has a large desk with multiple computer monitors displaying live feeds from the numerous CCTV cameras positioned all throughout campus. From the halls to the cafeteria. Outside the faculty office. Streets. Everywhere. Or almost everywhere.
He asks someone to zero in on the library entrance and go back to two hours. The operator watches closely and forwards it for a bit. In fairness to the school, it’s not as grainy as I expected. I strain my eyes, hoping to spot Andrea.
“There!” I point at the image of a girl wearing skinny jeans and a shirt, hair in a messy bun. I’d recognize her anywhere. She’s semi-running to the library. The screen shifts and we see her approaching the librarian. She points her to a nearby bookshelf. Andrea spends two minutes looking for the book and finds it.
She heads out. At this point, there’s a sudden, heavy downpour. Andrea pulls out her umbrella, tucking the book under her arm.
Just on the edge of the screen, something appears, grabbing her. Both Mike and the video guy helping us try to look for any other camera that might have caught it. But none. Whoever it was knows the blind spots.
Fuck.
“Can you give me Blaine’s address?” I tell Mike.
“You think it’s him?”
“We don’t have other leads. I just want to talk to him.”
He’s clearly torn.
“Even if you don’t give it to me, I’ll spend the next hours finding his address. And I promise you, I will find it. You’ll just save me time and maybe help save her in the process.”
“Come with me.”
* * *
Rain poundsthrough the windshield as I sit behind the wheel, peering through the blurred streaks of water. The road ahead of me is covered in a misty haze. Headlights of passing cars cut through the rain. If I try to speed while navigating through the slick asphalt, I might just end up in an accident. Which means no one is going to save my girl.
So even if it pisses me off, I have to stay under the speed limit and be extra cautious even if all I want is to get there in five minutes, or more accurately five minutes ago to stop this from ever happening in the first place, assuming ‘this’ did happen. The thought alone causes me to grit my teeth and the sound of the steering wheel creaks as my fingers wrap around it.
The tires hiss against the wet surface, and I glance at the GPS. Twenty-five fucking minutes away.
Needing a distraction, I decide to call Paul. He’ll want to know what’s going on.
He answers the call but doesn’t say anything.
“Paul? You don’t have to talk. But I need you to listen.”
He doesn’t disconnect the call. So I continue. “I think someone’s taken Andrea.”
This time, I hear him suck in a breath. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Wish I was. Listen, I’ll tell you the details later. I’m on my way to this guy’s cabin outside of town. We’re not sure she’s there but I sure as hell hope she is, because that means we found her…and the sorry sack of shit who’s gonna get my fist rammed down his fucking throat.. Take this down and I’ll see you there.”
I give him the address and glance at the GPS again. Fuck, why is time crawling? Twenty minutes? Shit. When I get my hands on that fucker, he’s gonna regret even looking Andrea’s way. I know all the ways to hurt him without killing him, even though I know he doesn’t deserve the air he breathes.
My phone rings and I answer on speakerphone. “Hey.”
“Not sure if I should be telling you this right now, but… I found something. A complaint from four years back. Buried under a mountain of paperwork. An eighteen-year-old freshman filed a complaint against Professor Blaine. She accused him of stalking her, following her at parties, cinemas, and even while she was hanging out with friends. Her friends corroborated her story. There’s even a couple of photos where they decided to take a pic of the professor when they caught him in the bushes, lurking in the shadows and such. Apparently, that’s where he got the name. Then, out of nowhere, the student dropped the complaint and moved to a different state.”
