Page 28 of Texting Dr. Stalker

Careening into the large department store’s car park, I locked up and headed inside.

It didn’t take long to find what I was after.

I grabbed the first cell phone I came across. Nothing fancy. I just needed it to be able to send and receive messages. As a bonus, it came preloaded with a SIM card and data.

I paid cash.

If I was going to do this, I wanted nothing tying me to an irrational, crazy idea all because I’d made a vow to an old woman and only now decided to honour it.

I strangled my steering wheel the entire trip back; I pulled up outside my house with chaos churning through me. This felt wrong. This felt seedy.

Yet I couldn’t seem to stop myself as I killed the engine and sat there in the night.

Ember Drive was quiet and hushed, people already in bed or preparing to. With suddenly shaking fingers, I tore open the cell phone box, booted up the new device, and put in a bunch of Xs as fake credentials to get it operational.

Scanning the prepaid SIM information, I went to save the number into my phone under her name, but froze.

What the fuck am I doing?

This was shady as hell…wasn’t it?

I mean, I’d bought a burner phone so I could message her without her knowing it was me, all in the idiotic hope that she’d trust a faceless, nameless stranger after being almost beaten to death.

You’re the dumbest fool alive.

Slamming my head back against the headrest, I groaned.

This was a new low.

I’d let every protective, nurturing part of me run wild.

I wasn’t qualified to help Sailor get through this. I had absolutely no business meddling in her affairs, especially hidden behind a wall of invisibility.

And yet…

Removing my glasses, I scrubbed my face. I couldn’t get the image of her crying—alone and in the dark—out of my mind. She looked so small. So lost. If Melody was here, she’d know what to do. She’d boss me around on how best to help. She wouldn’t evenneedmy help because Melody would know exactly what to say to her granddaughter and how to make her heal.

But she’s not here anymore.

Guess you’re doing this then.

Gritting my teeth, I typed the new number into my phone and saved it under LL.

LL for Little Lor.

Her nickname gifted by Rory, her grandfather, and a name I’d often heard dancing on the breeze as he played with her in the back garden.

Opening a new message on my own phone, I hovered my thumbs over the screen. It took far too long to figure out what to type. I deleted so many sentences with a scoff and a sneer. I wanted to tell her I knew she’d suffered. That I knew why she was crying, and she could talk to me.

But that would hint at who I was.

In the end, I settled for simple.

Simple or creepy, I could no longer tell.

I pressed send; the other phone buzzed with the message, waiting to be read.

Wiping it down on my shirt—fulfilling my destiny as some criminal mastermind who thought removing his fingerprints could pretend he wasn’t stepping over a line—I climbed out of my car and walked warily to Sailor’s letterbox.

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