Stalking Her Sweetly - MINK Page 0,33

girl, Jamie.

Jamie 2.0: Afternoon! Want to grab lunch and go over some stuff?

Lunch? I groan. I don’t want to go to lunch. I walk over to the window and peek out to try and see what Silas might be up to, but I don’t see him. He should be my lunch. Not my coworker. Sitting around having small talk with a stranger is the last thing I feel like doing today.

Jamie 2.0: I know a great place! I’d really like to meet in person. My video chat still isn't working.

Me: Sure.

I relent thinking it would be a good way to pass the time. Plus, she’s new, and I don’t want to be a jerkface. I might be able to get this done before Silas gets back. Then I’ll have the rest of the day free. I think of all the naughty things we could do. It’s terrible, because I should be focusing on catching Lindsay. She killed Trevor and who knows how many others.

Jamie 2.0: Yay! I’ll see you in a little.

She sends over a location next. I click it and see it’s only ten minutes away. I head for my bedroom to quickly get dressed. The sooner I get this done, the sooner I can be home in bed with Silas. I throw a pair of leggings on, a tank top, and flip flops. I don’t even bother trying to do anything with my curls. I slip a headband in to keep them off my face and apply some lip gloss.

I grab my purse and trot out the front door after giving Toby some kisses. It’s daylight, so I’m not too worried about anything happening. I would think that stalkers sleep during the day since they always seem to be lurking around outside at night. They have to get tired at some point. It only makes sense that they don’t attack people in the daylight, I reason with myself as I get in my car. I’ll go to the restaurant and come straight back home. I’ll be in public the whole time. Safe. Lindsay can’t get me.

What’s the worst that could happen?

21

Silas

I’m digging through Lindsay Calhoun’s life. Every step she’s taken from the moment she left Joshua Martin’s house, I catalog it. First to college where she spent freshman year barely passing. Then sophomore year where she adopted the same pattern. Less-than-stellar grades.

More to the point, she also caught some charges for stalking. Apparently, a former roommate of hers moved into a different dorm but found Lindsay sitting outside in her parking lot watching her window, stopping by when she wasn’t home and leaving notes, and even going so far as to visit her parents out of state when the roommate wouldn’t answer Lindsay’s calls anymore.

Jamie isn’t the first one Lindsay has stalked, but she’ll be the last. I keep flipping through background check information, then do a search on the former roommate. I find a memorial for her and her parents. They died in a carbon monoxide incident in their home shortly after her freshman year.

“No such thing as a coincidence.” I return to Lindsay’s history.

She and Jamie became roommates senior year. After that, it seems that Lindsay Calhoun drops off the map. Her background check goes cold, and there’s no activity via new addresses or jobs or even phone numbers. It’s as if Lindsay Calhoun just vanished.

I keep looking, closing out her file and flipping over to Joshua Martin’s to look for some connection to her. His trail is cold, too, other than his address and his usual contacts.

I rub my eyes and open Jamie’s file. When I first saw her, I tracked her down and looked her up. Clean record. Squeaky. I pore over it, then close out. On a whim, I open my browser and hit up my usual background check resources. With the click of a few buttons, I have a whole new data trove that’s up to date.

Same clean record. Same--wait. I lean forward. Four new credit cards in the past three months. Big purchases.

“What the fuck?”

A notation that she’s moved into an apartment over on Hillshire. One of those ridiculously expensive ones with a view of the river. I keep clicking through until I get to her recent application for a new driver’s license. When I open that document, I see Lindsay Calhoun smiling back at me in the ID photo. Curly hair, button nose, and even a smattering of the same freckles across her nose. She’s a bad copy of my