His job here was done. When the light changed, he slowly drove forward. More honking ensued. His slow and carefulgrandpa-like driving was pissing off Robert, which made Cy very happy.
Thinking about his grandpa and how he would float between two lanes, going slower and slower with each passing year, brought warmth to his heart. He missed the old man. Cy thought his grandpa would approve of his actions tonight.
Stalking the parking lot where Willa worked so he could intercept Robert wasn’t a long-term solution to the problem. Tonight it had worked out. Tomorrow, it probably wouldn’t. He needed to come up with another plan, something that would help Willa. But she didn’t know him and had no reason to listen to anything he had to say.
5
Willa turned left, then took a right, then two more turns, checking behind her in the rearview mirror after each turn. No one followed her.
When she stopped at the next light, a car pulled up behind her, but it was easy to see the color was dark, like maybe blue or black. It wasn’t white, which meant it wasn’t Robert.
She breathed easier when the dark car turned into a parking lot a few seconds after the light changed.
She was in San Diego, but there were few cars in this area. She could easily see she wasn’t being followed.
Once she got close to the house with the room she was renting, the traffic would pick up for a little while and then die down before she turned onto the street where she lived.
The neighborhood was quiet, the house not too bad. The other people who rented rooms weren’t jerks. They tended to keep to themselves. It wasn’t like living in a dorm, but it also wasn’t like living on her own. The bathroom on her floor was shared with two other people, and they had worked out a decent schedule for showering. There was a small bathroom downstairs next to the kitchen that didn’t have a shower in it, which meant it was open most of the time.
The people who lived here weren’t all waitresses or bartenders. Almost half the people worked in offices and left for work around seven in the morning, a few worked retail and left around ten, and then there were the swing shift waiters and waitresses like her.
In her room, she had a hot plate and a microwave, which allowed her to eat most of her meals upstairs. Living here wasn’t too bad, but she did sleep with earplugs every night so she didn’t get disturbed by the early risers.
She entered the house, letting go of a heavy sigh. No elevators meant she had to climb up three flights of stairs. At least there were only three bedrooms on the third floor, and not five like on the second floor, where all of them had to share the one bathroom.
The climb to the third floor no longer took her breath away and made her regret her life choices. Climbing the stairs was tiring, but she figured that would go away soon, too. She was in the middle of lamenting her lack of working out when she’d been in her early twenties, when one of the guys who lived on her floor popped his head out from his room.
“Hey, Willa,” he said in a low voice that wouldn’t carry too far. They were a respectful bunch and tried not to wake each other.
“Hi, Dave.”
“Some guy came by earlier.”
The words weren’t meant to scare her, she was sure of it, but those words struck terror so deep it made her knees almost buckle.
“What? Who?”
“No clue. He didn’t leave his name.”
She reached for her phone, pulling it from her pocket, but her hands were so shaky she fumbled, and the device fell to the floor, bouncing against the wall.
“Sorry.” She hated how Robert made her so fearful. “I have a photo, could you look and tell me if you recognize him?”
“Oh, I didn’t see him. Bec saw him. She’s an early riser, so you’ll have to wake early to catch her. But tomorrow is Saturday, so I’m not sure when she’ll leave.”
“Shit. Sorry, not mad at you. I just?—”
“It’s okay. I understand. Just wanted you to know. You like to keep to yourself, so someone looking for you seemed odd.”
She nodded, trying to appear like his words hadn’t affected her, but they had. In her need to be discreet, she’d revealed herself. Maybe that’s how Robert had found her. She liked this place and her job. She didn’t want to move, but now it was looking like she would have to leave.
6
Cy woke early, even though it was Saturday. Sleeping late didn’t happen often for him, even before he became a SEAL. His buddies planned to meet for a run closer to seven thirty, so he had enough time for coffee and some food.
While eating, he pulled up a web browser and typed in Willa’s name, but then he realized he didn’t have her last name. But how many people named Willa could there be?
He was so wrong with his assumptions. So many people popped up on Facebook with that name, it would be impossible to find her. Plus, he didn’t know if she had social media. He needed more information about Willa to be able to find her.
