Page 84 of Stalker

“Fine.” He followed me up the ladder silently. I was always in awe of how he moved without a trace. Especially for a man as big as we were, even I couldn’t move that quietly. “I’ll just watch the show. Maybe they have snacks.”

“You’re a fucking nutcase.” I barked, climbing to the third floor.

“Duh.” He chuckled. “Normal is boring.”

I scoffed but stayed silent as I made it to the landing outside the apartment I was after. Maddox edged up next to me and watched as I tested one window; it opened without any effort. I shook my head, even more frustrated that Peyton had lived with such a lack of security around her, and then silently crawled in.

“It’s no fun if you don’t have to work for it.” Maddox whispered, sliding it closed behind us as I looked around.

Peyton’s scent hit me like a brick wall the second I stood tall. She was everywhere.

Yet Tyson didn’t deserve to live in her aroma, even if she was physically with me. Something I’d rectify by the time I left.

I took the edge of my gloved finger and pushed a lamp on the end table until it fell to the floor, crashing into a million pieces.

“Original.” Maddox rolled his eyes as he walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge. The fucker wasalwayshungry.

“Peyton?” Tyson’s nasally voice called out from the bedroom as he clicked his light on. “Is that you?”

He came rushing out into the living room like he was about to rush her when I stuck my foot out and tripped him, sprawling him out onto the floor.

He caught the sight of Maddox first raiding his fridge, and then rolled over, gasping in fear as I stood over him. I dropped my bag onto the floor, letting the clanking of its implements rattle around and fray his little bitch boy nerves further. “What if I told you that you would neverseePeyton, ever again?”

Chapter 30 – Peyton

As soon as my feet hit the floor, I knew my stalker had visited overnight. But he snuck in and out without waking me.

Or fucking me.

Rude.

I stretched, shaking off the dreams of my monster, and wrapped my robe around my body before starting my search for coffee. If he had come to me last night while I slept, like I hoped he would, I wouldn’t have dreamed of him.

When he was near, my dreams were empty. Like he could only exist in one reality at a time.

But he didn’t wake me when he snuck in, and I was going to figure out what he did while he was lurking.

As soon as I made it out to the living space, though, I figured it out.

“Oh, my god.” I whispered when I saw the pile of various electronics piled on the kitchen table. And then I saw the rest of the things laid out around the living room.

Mythings.

My clothes, pictures, keepsakes. All from my apartment that I shared with Tyson. Things I wasn’t sure I’d see again if I ended things with him while I was staying at Hartington Estate. “Oh, Dane.” I ran my fingers over the blanket I always cuddled under when I read on the couch in the middle of the night to avoid going to bed.

“You rang, Puppet.” His baritone voice tingled my ears as it flowed through some invisible speaker somewhere. I left my phone in the bedroom when I got up, so I knew he was watching me on the cameras he hid somewhere.

It should have bothered me, but I didn’t hate it one bit. I loved being the center of his attention.

“What did you do?” I asked gently, trying to curb the fear building inside of me as I saw every last piece of my existence removed from that apartment and hand delivered to me. All the things that mattered to me returned.

“Nothing.” He replied dismissively.

I kept walking around and stopped when I got to the table with the electronics on it. A laptop, tablet, cell phones, two to be exact, external hard drives and thumb drives all littered the top. I picked up the cell phone I recognized as Tyson’s but gasped and dropped it back into the pile when I felt something sticky on the thumb print sensor.

I looked at my finger and saw a crimson stain on it. “Is that—”

“No.”

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