Page 135 of Forking the Billionaire

But I was already here, and the hole in the fence was just waiting there for someone to walk through it. Plus, Jasper never found his luggage. What would it hurt if I took one last peek?

Then I could put all of this behind me. I could puthimbehind me.

Closure—that was all I wanted.

I set down my skateboard and slipped through the hole in the fence. I paused by the bush where Jasper had found his underpants.

A small chuckle bubbled up in my chest. I wasn’t just here to feel closer to Jasper. I felt lighter and more certain than before that this was actually a good idea.

I heard a whisper carry over the wind. “Just another warm place to stick your dick.”

The words felt like a fork to my heart. I’d said those words to Jasper. It wasn’t my recorded voice replaying back now. It was different.

“No big deal, so easy to forget,” the wind whispered.

Except the wind didn’t whisper, and there was no such thing as ghosts.

Ziggy had mentioned being tormented by the whispers, and I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. I was getting to the bottom of this. Now.

I hurried toward the sound of the voice, careful not to trip over any of the rubble.

It led me deeper into the ruins than I’d ever been, up and up the stairs. The farther I went, the worse the conditions grew. I had to find out who was doing this. I refused to believe it was ghosts. A real person was taunting me, and had been taunting the whole resort. I had to catch them and solve this mystery.

“Maybe there was a hurricane,” the voice said, this time louder. It seemed…not like wind, and not quite right, either. “That only damaged the one building? There’d be evidence elsewhere, too. The answer is clear. Ghosts. Obviously.”

This was my conversation with Jasper, the last time we were here. Still, the whisperer taunted me.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” I yelled back at whoever was here.

“You’re just confused. It happens. Two piña coladas. Keep them coming.”

Fred Malone had said that, the day I found out Gabe was coming here for his wedding. Had this person been spying on me all this time? How long had this been happening?

A small bit of nerves spread from my middle slowly into my limbs, tempering my fiery sense of justice. What if this was actually dangerous, and I was here all alone and then something really bad happened?

Loud and close, the voice said, “Poop on the stoop.”

Worry completely doused my flame of curiosity. But it was too late.

I could hear breathing above me.

It was like watching a horror movie and screaming at the screen,run, dummy!But even as I screamed it at myself now, in my own head, my limbs refused to move.

Slowly, I lifted my chin and looked up.

And I saw the one who had told so many secrets. And the truth was even stranger than the rumors.

It was a parrot.

“Stan dips his mustache in candle wax,” the bird said.

“No way,” I said. “It was you?”

“Pretty bird. Stupid bird.”

A rustling noise pulled my attention across the room. What was up here? A whole family of gossiping parrots?

I spotted a mountain of things that looked too new, too undamaged to have been here when the resort fell apart.

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