Page 36 of Hunting Pretty

I ran through this new memory in my mind over and over as I picked up the lily by the stem with a tissue and threw it into the wastebasket.

Where was the greenhouse from my memory? Who was the man? Was he my stalker?

No. The man from my memory seemed a lot older than me.

Was it just a coincidence then that my stalker had left me this specific lily?

I sank into my chair and stared at the lily, half-hidden by the tissue.

My intruder, my stalker, took my evidence of him so he obviously didn’t want to be identified. But why not?

I thought about the rock thrown at Cormac which allowed me to escape.

He saved me last night. Surely, he wouldn’t turn around and threaten me? Hurt me?

Or did he save me just to taunt me? To play with me like a bored cat with a mouse before he took me.

Or was he keeping me alive for some other dark reason?

Did my stalker leave me this lily to send me a message?

And what was his message?

Was this lily a gift or a threat?

THE SHADOW

Icouldn’t have Ava go chasing after Liath. So I removed Liath’s voice message from her phone.

And I only felt the smallest amount of regret when I activated her phone’s microphone while she was in the dean’s office and heard her devastated reaction to the missing file.

Only the teeniest amount of guilt when none of the adults would believe her.

I thought that would be enough.

But my smart girl didn’t stop.

In fact, it seemed to egg her on.

It only took a few days of digging through decades of newspaper articles for her to make the link between the missing girls.

The “runaways.”

I promised only to watch Ava from afar. But she was being such a nosy girl.

And I had to stop her from investigating Liath’s disappearance.

Which meant I had to keep an even closer eye on her.

“The old system is over here,” Ebony’s young PA said. I’d forgotten her name already. “If you’d like to follow me.”

I gestured for her to lead the way.

She shot me a coy smile over her shoulder as she sashayed to a door at the end of the hallway in the back part of Ava’s mansion.

Even though I knew Ava was in her Media Law and Ethics lecture for the next two hours, I still glanced up the winding marble staircase for a flash of her dark hair, listened out for her breathy laugh and the patter of her light footsteps.

“Mr. O’Leary?”

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