“Stop.” Townsend spreads his arms wide, trying to make himself appear bigger. He heard this is what you’re supposed to do if you encounter a bear. Maybe the same logic applies to this scenario. “Hey, stop.”
The Honda pulls away from the curb, undeterred.
Scaring her isn’t working; he needs to attack. “Stop!” Before the car can make any more progress, he runs forward, throwing his hands down onto the hood. “Fucking stop!”
After so many sightings, he’s finally close enough to the windshield to get a look inside. And when his eyes meet those of the woman staring back at him, he sees someone he doesn’t even recognize.
Chapter Seventeen
Kaitlyn
It feels a little surreal that—after nearly a month of researching him, following him, tracking his every move both online and in real life—Townsend now sits next to Kaitlyn in her car. Or, rather, her sister’s car. That was the first bit of information they needed to clear up.
Once he blocked her vehicle, rendering her unable to escape, she stepped out of the car and put her hands in the air. As though she were the culpable one. Then again, she had slipped into the gated neighborhood by following closely behind the car in front of her, so she was technically trespassing. He had the upper hand.
“You’re not Amanda,” he said, sounding perplexed.
Equally confused, she replied, “Of course I’m not.”
“Then why do you have Amanda’s car? And why have you been following me?”
“I’m Amanda’s sister. I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to her.”
“Nothing happened to her.” He said this coolly, factually. It pissed her off.
“She’s been missing for months, dude. Did you not know that?”
“She’s not missing. She broke into my girlfriend’s house last week.”
Kaitlyn felt suddenly woozy, a combination of the heat and this new information, which wasn’t making any sense. “Do you think we can go inside and talk for a minute?”
“You’re not coming into my house.”
“Can we at least sit in the car?”
Townsend looked at her carefully, as though trying to decide if she was a threat.
“I just want to sit in the AC and talk. It seems like you have as many questions as I do.”
“Fine,” Townsend agreed at last. “Just for a minute.”
Now they sit side by side in Amanda’s car, the AC spitting out cold air and a thousand unanswered questions lingering between them. This close, Kaitlyn can smell his sweat, see every pore on his face, watch his chest rise and fall. She’s spent so long fixated on the idea of him that she’s forgotten that he’s real, made of tendons and muscles and occupying space. He scares her and fascinates her in equal parts, but it’s hard to summon the hatred she’s felt toward him for weeks now that he’s here and next to her. And though Kaitlyn has preferred girls to boys since the sixth grade, there’s no denying it: Townsend is handsome, albeit in a generic, forgettable way.
I should let someone know where I am,Kaitlyn thinks,just in case this doesn’t end well.But the only other person she’s spoken to all day—other than her ShrinkGPT therapy chatbot—is the persistent data science professor, with whom she had a brief text exchange earlier that day. To ask her for help would only send the wrong message, and she doesn’t need any more drama in her life right now. She could use a few more friends, though.
“What makes you think Amanda broke into Talia’s house?” Kaitlyn finally asks.
Townsend pauses, seeming to clock the use of his girlfriend’s name but ultimately letting it go. “She was hanging out with a friend, and Amanda left a note on her bathroom mirror without Talia even realizing she was there.”
“What did the note say?”
“‘The police won’t protect you from me’ or something like that. I can’t remember exactly.”
“Why the fuck would she say that?”
Townsend blinks, taken aback by Kaitlyn’s outburst. “Because your sister has been saying shit like that to me and to my girlfriend for a while now. And I thought she’d been following me, too, but”—he gestures to the car—“apparently that’s been you.”
Kaitlyn feels her unwavering conviction—the only thing that’s been keeping her steady and, frankly, sane since she determined that her sister was missing—slowly start to crumble. “I thought you did something to her. I reached out to you. You wouldn’t return my messages.”
