Page 74 of I Can't Even

Then he hung up, causing me to burst out laughing. “You know she’s going to never forget that, right?”

“I know.” He blew out a breath. “Maybe it’s time, man. Maybe what I need is to break it off.”

“I don’t know why you didn’t break it off years ago when she first got jealous of you being friends with me, because Ande was my sister.”

He scrubbed angrily at his face before dropping his hands and leaning his head back against the cushioned seat.

“This case…” He shook his head. “It’s really hit it home for me.”

“Why?” I asked.

He’d worked these cases before.

Nothing was new there.

“She’s been up my ass about being in Ande’s vicinity since I came here. Then I see you talk about your girl, and I start to think about the last time I felt like that about Crissa, and I couldn’t come up with one. You’re sitting here freaking out about your girl’s safety, and all I can think about is how, if Crissa was taken by this fucked up guy, I would care about her as much as I care about that girl who just came in today. I’d be mad that shit was happening to women. I’d be upset that I couldn’t protect her. But beyond that… I would feel like she was just a duty. Just a part of my job. And then I think about how you would feel if anything happened to Ellodie, and I think you’d be well and truly fucked up.”

“I would,” I confirmed.

He looked away, composed himself, then stood up and walked to the white board.

He pulled out a marker, and then the two of us got to work brainstorming.

A few other FBI agents came in, followed by the FBI profiler.

A half hour later, the profiler said, “This man is going to be pissed. He’s going to be unable to see or think of anything else besides this girl.”

“What about Ellodie?” I questioned.

“There are two very likely scenarios,” he said. “One, he focuses on the girl who got away today. Or he decides to hyper fixate on Ellodie. Either way, he’s going to be gunning for one of them.”

“What do you think will happen, man?” Tobin asked. “Give us your best guess. I have security all over this place, but we need to catch him. Our boss is giving us four days. He says that’s all the time we can spare the men.”

The profiler studied the board for a long moment before he said, “My gut is saying he’s going to go after Ellodie first. He spent time and effort trying to get her to go out with him. They talked. He got to know her. He’s contacted her multiple times now, right?” At my nod, he continued. “According to the messages, and Sage’s account, she was with him when those latest messages came in. That signals to me that he wasn’t all in with Sage, because his focus was split.”

My stomach flipped.

“So, what do we do?” I asked, suddenly incredibly scared.

“We hope that Sage can help us,” the profiler said. “Because otherwise, we still have nothing to go on.”

Sadly, we went past the four days allotted by Tobin’s boss.

We went well past it, actually.

Weeks passed, and the only thing that changed was Sage was allowed out of the hospital, and she retreated into her apartment and didn’t come back out.

It left Ellodie the sole focus, and still, nothing happened.

If I could give you one thing in life, it would be to see yourself how you truly are. Only then, you’d see how much of an asshole you are.

—Text from Ellodie to Quaid

ELLODIE

“Baby, wake up.”

I blinked open my eyes, lids heavy like anvils, stared blearily at Quaid, and swayed.

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