Page 139 of Dare To Fall

“Maybe not. Still don’t like it, though.”

“She’ll be fine with Miles.” He pushes the laptop to one side. “Okay, the texts are coming from somewhere inside the school. So that rules out anyone that isn’t at Churchill Bradley.”

“How do you know? There’s no way of tracking the location of a cell number.”

“No, but the timing of the texts and the instructions in them make it clear that whoever was sending them could see both you and Arabella.”

“They had a tracker on her phone.”

“Yes, but they didn’t on yours, and they knew if you were in the same room or not.” He stands and crosses to the mini refrigerator in the corner of the room, stoops, and takes out two bottles of water. Handing one to me, he sits back down. “But, and this is the weird part, the texts aren’t always from the same person.”

“But they come from the same number.”

He nods. “I ran the phrases through a piece of software that flags up similarities in sentence structure. It uses algorithms to—” He looks at me and laughs. “Your eyes are glazing over. Okay, let’s just leave it as it’s clever, and given enough data, it can tell if two pieces of text are written by different people. I didn’t have enough data for it to tell me for sure … until spring break.”

“What happened then?”

“She stopped responding to their texts.” He pauses for a mouthful of water. “See, that brought out the primary person behind this whole thing. During spring break, they wanted her to carry on goading you. Stupid things like break into your bedroom at home, destroy your sketchbooks, slash your clothes. Damage stuff in the house and blame it on you. When she didn’t respond, they started threatening her.”

“But she didn’t see the messages.”

Kellan nods. “And neither of you were where they expected you to be.”

“In the Hamptons.”

“That’s right. And then it took another turn. Threats to climb through her bedroom window, reminders of what they did to her in the dorm when they tied her up. The wording changed, became more aggressive when they discovered neither of you were there. One of the texts demanded to know where she was, where you were. And that narrows it down further. Because it means they were local to the house and know where you live.”

“And now?”

One side of his mouth lifts. “I replied to one of the texts on Monday, pretending to be Arabella. I told them I left the cell here and didn’t get any of their messages, but that it was over and that she wasn’t going to do what they wanted anymore.”

“So why haven’t they retaliated yet?”

“Because she … I … am still talking to them. I have them convinced that she’s with you just so she can break your monstrous little heart and destroy you as payback for the shit you’ve done to her. It’s eased them off a little. They’re waiting and watching to see what happens.”

“And while that’s going on …”

“They’re leaving more and more clues about who they might be. They’re here in school. They share classes with you both, which makes them seniors. And …” He licks his lips. “I’m pretty sure it’s the same person who killed Zoey.”

I stiffen. “Why?”

“Zoey’s diary. The things they wanted her to do are so similar to the texts Arabella has been getting. All targeted at alienating you. Her last entry talks about going to the cemetery because her anonymous texter wanted to meet and talk and explain why they needed her to do these things.”

“But no name?”

He shakes his head. “Zoey was sure it was someone male, though. She made a note in her diary about the way they phrased things and said it was definitely a masculine way of speaking.”

“So, what’s the next step?”

“To get them to the point where they want to meet and explain themselves.”

Chapter 94

Arabella

“Come on, Bella.”

Jogging along behind Miles, as we hit the tree line, I try to keep up. “Slow down.”

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