Stalking Her Sweetly - MINK Page 0,28

he was on a killing spree and the cops were onto him, the last place he’d show up is his own apartment. I think we’re all right.” I take her hand but palm a blade in my other just in case.

We enter the main living room. It’s dark, but there’s enough moonlight and city glow to make out the shapes of furniture. All of it white, as Jamie pointed out.

She turns and goes toward the kitchen. I keep holding on to her hand as she opens a few drawers and peeks in the mostly empty refrigerator.

“There has to be something here. Some sort of clue about what he’s planning. Or if he isn’t the killer, then maybe the killer, like, killed him and his body will be stuffed in a closet or there will be a bloodstain on the floor or something.” She shrugs and walks out of the kitchen and into a short hall.

The first room is an office. Nothing seems particularly out of place.

“His laptop is still here.” She chews her lip and peeks inside some of his file drawers. “Nothing in here.” She frowns. “I think this office is just for show, anyway. His parents had all that money. It’s not like he was some big career sort of guy. He was lazy, truth be told.” She shuts the drawer and we re-enter the hallway.

Bypassing a hall bath and an empty spare room, we come to the bigger door at the end of the corridor. It’s closed, a piece of yellow police tape wrapped around the handle.

“You think they found something in there?” She looks up at me.

“I don’t know.” I reach up and pluck another piece of the tape from the door frame. “Look. It’s been cut. The tape used to block the door all the way across.” A creeping sensation trickles down my spine, and I ease Jamie behind me. “Someone’s been here.”

“Trevor, you think?”

“No.” I reach out and grip the handle. “Get ready to run.”

“I won’t leave you. Ever,” she whispers fiercely.

I love this woman. It’s so true in that moment that I feel like a glaring spotlight shines on me. Can she see how she makes me whole? Gives me a glow that used to only be darkness?

“At least stay back.” I turn and kiss her forehead, then go back to the door.

With a careful grip, I twist the nob and push the door gently open. I don’t know what I expect to find, but it’s definitely not the scene that greets me.

I open the door all the way and stride in, then race to the closet and fling it open. No one. The bathroom is next, then I check under the bed and back down the hall.

“What is it?” Jamie walks past me to the bedroom as I sweep the house to make sure no one’s here.

“Oh. My. God.” I can hear Jamie’s strangled cry.

Rushing back to her, I wrap my arm around her waist. She looked like she was about to fall.

“I can’t breathe.” She stares at the mess on the wall behind the king size bed.

“Sit here.” I ease her onto the corner of the bed. “Breathe.”

Her inhales are too fast, panic setting in.

“Shh.” I drop my knife and put my palms on her cheeks. “I’ve got you. Okay? I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

“Who would do that? What even is that?” She tries to turn and look at the wall again, but I keep her focus on me.

“We’ll find who it is, all right? You don’t have to be scared.”

She blinks hard, her eyes watering. “But I am scared. Your picture is up there, too.”

I finally give the shrine another look. Two candles burn beneath a collage of Jamie. Her image has been pasted to the wall hundreds of times. And each photo is different. Her in her house, her at her mailbox, shopping, coffee shop, pruning flowers, walking the neighborhood, standing on my porch--anywhere and everywhere Jamie has been, there’s a photo. Her name is written all over the wall in red--could be lipstick, could be something else. And at the very center is a blown-up photo of the two of us. It must’ve been that afternoon when she was trying to pick the lock on my back porch.

But the image is all wrong. Jamie’s face has been cut away, and another woman stares back at me. My arm around her waist, my gaze fixed on hers. She looks like Jamie. So much so that it messes with my