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“I’m a P.I.,” the woman said with a weary sigh. You can call the cops if you want but you’re just going to be wasting both our time.”
“A P.I.?” I glanced nervously at the guards, who took a few steps back but remained close. “Who hired you?”
“I’m not going to tell you that. But I find that most people can figure it out pretty easily.” She motioned to the guards. “You still going to have them call the cops?”
I shook my head and waved them off.
Reaching into my purse, I withdrew my checkbook. “How much?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” she said, clearly offended.
As if she had any right to be offended about a bribe after she’d been following me around for months. “Everything works that way. How much to hire you and have you stop tailing us and reporting back to Laurence?”
“Put your checkbook away.” She laid a gentle hand on my arm. “Don’t let people know you can be bought.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about blackmail. I’m worried about you following me around. I want to pay you not to do that anymore.” My hands shook as I rummaged around for a pen. “Do you take Paypal? I can Paypal you from my phone right now.”
“Sophie?” Mom called, the girls running behind her. “What’s happening?”
“You were at our house,” Amal said, pointing at the investigator.
“You were on our private property?” I shook with rage. Maybe the security guards should have stayed close, for her sake.
“I was on the public road that passes by your private drive,” she said as if that made it somehow defensible to spy on us. “Amal was out jogging–”
“Running!” Amal snapped.
I put myself between the two of them, stepping close enough to the P.I. that for a second, I didn’t trust that hand I raised to point a threatening finger at her wouldn’t become a fist. “Do not say their names!”
Mom put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to take the girls outside.”
“We’re getting a restraining order,” I warned the investigator. “And you are never to go near Olivia’s school ever again. Do you understand me?”
“I know my rights under the law, Ms. Scaife.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her card. “For the PPO.”
I snatched it from her hand without looking at it. “Not your first rodeo, huh?”
“Not at all.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re slime.”
“Sometimes, I work for slime. Sometimes, my work catches the slime.” She shrugged. “I’ll take it as a trade-off. But I won’t be following you anymore.”
I made a “Pff.”
“No, I mean it. PPO or not, you know that I’m following you. I can’t effectively do it anymore.” She lowered her head in a nod toward my purse. “Don’t offer the next one money. If they take it, they’re gonna ask for more.”
I watched her walk away, fully confident in her legal right to stalk our family and spy on the kids. And I wanted to commit murder.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I desperately needed that glass of champagne.
Instead, I blinked back tears, counted to ten, and headed for the car.
Fortunately–for her–the private investigator was not outside lurking. At least, not where I could see her. She had said it was pointless for her to try to follow us now that we knew what she looked like, but maybe that was a trick to throw us off so we wouldn’t look for her.
Joke’s on you, bitch. I’m never going to stop looking for you.
My chest constricted, and my lungs tried desperately to pull in air, seemingly to no avail. I leaned on the car with one hand, gasping and clutching my chest.
“Whoa, whoa,” a man in a Maserati shouted from his window as he pulled to a stop in traffic. “Hey. Hey, is she okay?”
His frantic signaling successfully caught our driver’s eye; she sprinted from the car and around the back.
“Oh my god, Sophie!” Rashida shrieked, launching herself from the backseat.
I waved my hand, trying to explain while also trying to convince myself, but I couldn’t get a breath.
“It’s a panic attack,” Mom said, perfectly calm in the face of what appeared to be a thirty-two-year-old having a heart attack. “She has them sometimes. Just sit tight; she’ll be okay in a minute.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the driver said and went back to her seat.
Mom rubbed my back. “Breathe, honey. It’s just a panic attack.”
I shook my head. “No! I’m dying, for real!”
“You’re not. You’re not dying,” she promised.
“Is this what an anxiety attack feels like?” I asked, knowing full well that it was.
“Exactly like this. You just had a terrifying thing happen to you. It’s natural to have a little extra adrenaline.” She paused to coax me to take slower breaths, then continued. “Remember what you told me about Neil’s PTSD? That he’s been in fight-or-flight mode constantly for decades?”
