My heart is hammering against my ribcage, my breath catching in my throat.
The man looks very familiar. I can’t wrap my head around it, but it looks like…Ace Ross?
How is that possible?
What in the ever-loving fuck is Ace Ross doing in my apartment? He’s my stalker? It makes no sense, and I stare at the screen a long time. Maybe it isn’t him. It’s been ten years, after all, and I only spent a significant amount of time with him that one night. This guy is older and more…rugged. It’s hard to be sure, though, and I need to be positive because this is baffling.
I stare at the screen through my entire break, watching the man in my apartment reading my diary. I keep it hidden in a little compartment I discovered beneath my headboard because Mrs. Winkelhofer and Sandra sometimes water my plants for me when I travel, and I didn’t want them to potentially find it. Not that I think they would go looking, but I have all my hopes and dreams and fantasies in there, and now someone has read them.
My face flames at the thought of Ace reading my sexual fantasies. Granted, they’re probably pretty tame compared to other women, but they’re still mine, and not for anyone else’s eyes.
I get angrier and angrier as I watch him, and I blow out a breath, trying to decide what to do.
What if it isn’t him?
It’s hard to verify whether or not that’s Ace, considering the quality of this picture, and that scares me a little more, because if it’s not, then I could be in serious danger. Whoever it is got access to my home. To me. And that’s unacceptable.
Not for the first time since my father passed, I miss him.
He would have handled this by now. Just like he handled my lying, cheating husband. I feel a stray tear leak from my eye and swipe at it angrily. I’m my father’s daughter, and though he’s gone, he didn’t raise me to be a wimp.
I was meek through my formative years because my mother insisted that was how ladies behaved, but a bad marriage and losing the man I loved and respected more than anyone changed me, so I can’t allow myself to be victimized without disrespecting my father.
And the first thing I’m going to do is confront whomever this is.
Lt. Colonel Wayne Barrow raised me and there has to be at least a little of his huge heart and military savviness in me. And even if there isn’t, I’m going to fake it.
I don’t have a choice.
I give my students mostly busy work the rest of the day. I don’t like to do that, but with exams coming up, working on a study guide is both functional and something they need to do anyway. It gives me the time I need to think, wrap my head around everything going on.
Part of me is terrified while the rest of me is determined. I can and will get to the bottom of this. I have a plan and I’m not stupid. I know the neighborhood between the school and my apartment like the back of my hand, every alley, shop and streetlamp. I have Mace in my purse and I know Mr. Koelzig at the chocolate shop always looks for me. If I walk past his shop, he’ll be watching for me and give me a sample of something.
I can’t plan for every contingency, but by the time I leave the school I’m prepared for what I consider the confrontation of a lifetime. It’s possible Ace, or whoever my stalker is, won’t be following me today, but he spent hours at my apartment. Obviously, he wants something he didn’t find because from what I could tell, he left without taking anything.
I can’t be sure since the camera is set up in the living room and I couldn’t see what he did in the other rooms, but unless he took something small enough to fit in his pockets, he didn’t have anything with him when he headed toward the door.
So today, and every day until I can confront this guy, I’ll be prepared.
I keep the Mace in my hand and my hand in the pocket of my coat as I walk toward Mr. Koelzig’s bakery. I keep my pace pretty slow, pausing to look in stores and pretending to window-shop. I stop to speak to people I recognize, pet a few dogs, and even take the time to buy a loaf of bread because I actually need it.
The whole time I have my eye on a guy in a leather jacket and a baseball cap who’s walking on the other side of the street. It could be anyone, but he isn’t getting lost in the crowds when I stop and I feel a slight rush of adrenaline as I realize it’s probably him. I didn’t know who him is, but it has to be my stalker.
I walk into Mr. Koelzig’s bakery and smile at him. “Do you mind if I go out your back door?” I ask when he approaches me. “One of my students has a crush on me and keeps trying to give me presents, so I’m trying to avoid him.”
He smiles. “Well, as beautiful as you are, of course young men want to buy you presents! Yes, go.” He nods toward the back door. “It’s open.”
“Thank you!” I wave and hurry out the back, skirting behind the building and then all but running the length of two short city blocks. I turn right at the next alley and head toward the main street, hopefully two blocks beyond where I last saw my stalker. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to cross the street and then ambush him close to the hardware store. It’s always busy this time of day, because it’s the only evening of the week they stay open late. So, there will be people everywhere and hopefully I’ll get some answers.
I take a few seconds to take off my coat and turn it inside out. It’s double-sided, one side maroon, the other black. I thought it was fun to have the ability to change colors, and now if it confuses him even for a few seconds, that’s all the time I need.
With the Mace still in my hand, I come out on the street and look down to where he was. Sure enough, he’s still there, leaning against the building as he faces Mr. Koelzig’s bakery from the other side of the street, ostensibly waiting for me to come out. The light turns and I fall in with a group of people crossing, just as he appears to get antsy and begins walking toward me.
Now that he’s so close, just a few feet away, I almost lose my nerve, but with crowds of people all around us, it’s now or never.
I rush forward and stop right in front of him.
“Why are you following me? What do you want?”
