Stay With Me (She's With Me #2) - Jessica Cunsolo Page 0,15

was reassured by Agent Dylan, the man assigned to my case, that Tony couldn’t track my phone, but that didn’t comfort me at all. If he could find my phone number, then he sure as hell could find my house. After that, I was constantly paranoid, and what little sleep I was getting virtually disappeared, making me reliant on sleeping pills.

Not long after that, I came home from school and could tell that something was off. Nothing in my house was out of place, nothing was there that would have alerted me that Tony was there. But somehow, I felt the shift in the atmosphere, felt the tension and dread snaking its way through my body. Grabbing the baseball bat I kept by new habit by the front door, I slowly crept up the stairs.

I tiptoed through the house, holding my breath at every creak the floor made as I got closer and closer to my room. When I finally peered into my room, nothing was out of place, no black spray paint decorated my white walls with death threats. I sighed in relief and slumped against the door frame, placing the bat down and laughing at my own paranoia.

But then I froze—I had celebrated too soon. Something caught my attention: an object sitting innocently on my bed that I had definitely not put there. I tiptoed over to it, not daring to draw a single breath, as if it would manifest into Tony himself and fulfill the promises he’d made about revenge.

Looking at the object that was taunting me, I recoiled in horror when realization sank in. Sitting innocently on my bed was a doll, with a very real, very sharp kitchen knife stabbed through its head. As if that wasn’t creepy enough, the doll had been altered to look just like me—not Thea, but Isabella. And as if that didn’t get the point that he knew what I looked like across, stapled to the doll was a picture of me, as Isabella. It had been taken a couple of days ago, as I was leaving school, and I wasn’t aware that it had been taken. It looked like a surveillance picture, like Tony was following me and taking pictures of my whereabouts.

Tony knew where I was—he knew what Isabella looked like. He had been in my house, in my room, without anyone having the slightest clue. I dropped the doll on my bed and took a couple of steps backward, shocked by the revelation that Tony had found me, and was taking his time toying with me. Before I could decide what to do, there was a loud crash, and I instinctively ducked to the floor and threw my hands over my head as pieces of glass rained down on me.

I barely registered the glass creating tiny slices on my arms as a heavy object thumped onto the floor next to me. Once the glass stopped falling, I hesitantly looked at the object—a brick had been thrown through my window. As I rushed over to the window, I was met with the taillights of a truck speeding off into the distance.

Tony was here. He was outside, and he knew where I was.

I walked over the glass, not caring that I was only in socks, and picked up the brick. There was a note attached to it, Tony’s crude writing spelling out: “You can run Isabella, but I will always find you.”

I dropped the brick on the floor and sprinted out of my house, not stopping until a few blocks later when I got to a friend’s house. I didn’t explain anything, didn’t justify why I had shown up bleeding, breathless, and shoeless at her front door. I asked her if I could stay there for a bit until my mom arrived, lamely muttering something about how I’d lost my house keys. I called my mom from the bathroom and she took care of the rest.

Like the previous time, there was no trace of Tony, no evidence of where he was or where he could’ve gone. After a few days in a hotel, during which I refused to sleep and was constantly paranoid, it was quickly arranged for us to be relocated again.

Like last time, my mother and I were given new identities in a new state, a new house, a new car, a new job, and a new school. In May of my junior year, I became Hailey Johnson, with straight, black hair and colored contacts that made