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“Are you being serious right now?” Siege asks.
“Yeah, and that’s not all. I think the crazy fucker killed her best friend and sent Serena a message saying she was next.”
“Oh hell, no. This is not happening to my baby sister.”
“I told her we would handle it. So, we need to handle this shit.”
“I want to talk to my sister.”
“No can do. She cried herself to sleep and I’m not waking her up just so she can cry herself to sleep all over again when you’re done talking to her.”
Siege’s voice changes, sounding more sympathetic and concerned. “Alright, we’ll meet at your place ASAP.”
“We’ll meet in my pool house. I don’t want to wake Serena.”
“Sounds good enough to me. I’ll get everybody together we’ll be at your house within the hour.”
“Sounds good. We need to find this fucker and give him a dirt nap.”
As I wait for my club brothers to arrive, I start pacing in my living room. The moment I saw that threatening message I knew there was more to it than what Serena was admitting to. She was always the kind of person who minimized problems, but this is beyond anything I ever thought she was capable of ignoring.
I can’t believe that after having an abusive ex, she actually thought the threatening messages on her phone were meant for someone else. She’s a lawyer and has represented abused women, surely she knows how manipulating and dangerous these assholes can be? I sit down on the sofa and run my hands through my hair, totally exasperated with this situation.
I try to parse my way through what her thinking on this situation was. If all this happened months or weeks before she left San Francisco, that means the trauma is still fresh for her. Thank God, she got herself out of this situation reasonably quickly before she got seriously hurt—not that a fractured wrist was something to be taken lightly—and took out a restraining order.
She said she took precautions to make sure he couldn’t find her, and that included trading out her phone. I suppose it makes a certain kind of sense for her to think those messages weren’t meant for her, since he didn’t have her new contact information.
A certain kind of knowing comes to the forefront of my mind. If this man knew where her best friend worked, that would have been enough for him to get his hands on her. One quick look through her phone would have given him Serena’s new phone number. As an attorney he also would have been able to find out stuff that perhaps a regular person couldn’t. Did he know she was in Las Salinas? As an attorney, Serena’s professional contact details and place of work would be easy enough for anyone to track down. That means we have to be extra careful.
The missing piece of the puzzle is why kill her best friend? He has a restraining order against him, for domestic violence. Why exacerbate the situation by drawing yet more attention by law enforcement. Serena said the man was brilliant, maybe I’m missing some small piece of information that makes all this make sense.
***
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here mulling over the situation, but I jump up when my phone pings, and it’s a message from Siege saying they’re outside.
When I open the door, I see Siege, Tank, Dutch, Rider, and Zen. I automatically hand Zen her phone and lead everyone out to my pool house.
Siege starts asking questions right off the bat, “Are you sure my sister has an honest to God stalker? If she does, what makes you think it’s her ex?”
Zen speaks up. “From what I’m seeing there is definitely a stalker and a nasty one at that. He’s threatened to rape her, slit her throat, and all manner of grotesque stuff.”
I ask, “Can you tell who’s sending the messages?”
“No, the caller ID is blocked. I can tell you the signal is coming out of San Francisco. This is likely a burner phone. I might be able to get more once I’m back to the clubhouse.”
“Serena has been trying to contact her best friend for the past week. This evening, while we were out, she got a weird one-word text message from her. When we got back, she tried contacting Gina’s family, the woman’s father reported that she’d been murdered and dumped in a local park.”
“Shit,” Rider says.
“Just after she hung up, she got another text from her friend’s number. She previously thought the stalker was targeting whoever had the cellphone number before her—but this was a direct threat to her.”
“Zen,” Siege says with growing alarm.
“On it, boss. I pulled the friend’s name from the phone logs and I’m cross-referencing them with local news reports of deaths.” Within moments, Zen speaks again, “I found it. Regina Samson, age twenty-six, went missing five days ago and was found three days ago in Rigers Park near Buffalo, San Francisco. She was naked and bound, but the police aren’t releasing any details at this time as the investigation is ongoing.”
I curse under my breath. “Sounds like sexual sadist. That fucker isn’t getting within a hundred yards of Serena.”
“Speaking of which, why didn’t she come home like I asked?”
