Page 15 of Shadowing Her Stalker

“Tom is Tom Wasinski,” he clarified, shooting her a glance.

“Yes. Tom Wasinski.”

“He and Chris Sharpe are your partners in LYYF,” he stated.

“Yes.”

“And you knew them from...college,” he prompted, hoping to get her talking.

“Yes. We were suite mates our freshman year. Stayed friends through school and after.”

“You did the voice-over work for them from the beginning?”

When she didn’t add anything more to the story, he stole a peek at her. She stared stone-faced through the windshield, and he winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to trample all over your story.”

“Not my story,” she said in a clipped tone. “But you seem pretty well-versed in the lore of LYYF, so who am I to spoil it for you?”

Biting the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning his frustration with himself, Wyatt tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I think I was trying to impress you with how much I know.” He offered her a wan smile as they slowed to pass through one of the myriad small towns along the route. “I want you to feel comfortable talking to me. Safe. I’m here to help.”

She shifted in her seat, turning to face him more fully. “If you want me to feel comfortable telling my story, you might try listening. I don’t need you to recite the press clippings to me.”

Chastened, he ducked his head to acknowledge the point scored. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. The tires hummed as silence overtook them once again. He waited, but when she didn’t volunteer anything more, he pressed his lips together and nodded, owning his ignorance. “Would you tell me what happened?”

She blew out a long breath, letting her head fall back against the seat. The woman beside him didn’t look anything like the glossy, glowing guru on his app. She looked haunted. Hunted. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse.

“Everyone latches on to the voice work like all I did was show up and read a few cue cards one day.”

For once in his life, he had sense enough to keep his lips zipped.

“They were working on a finance app.” She gave a dry little laugh. “It wasn’t much more than a bookkeeping tool. Like one of those account trackers my mom used to use to record each check or ATM withdrawal. You know, the little booklet with three years’ worth of calendars printed on there?”

“Checkbook register,” he said with a nod.

“Exactly. Anyway, they were developing it all through school. It changed and evolved as we did. People weren’t tracking checks and more banks had apps where you could see your transactions real-time, so they started retooling it to be more of a finance guide for kids our age.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Simple stuff. Interest calculators, a stock market widget and some how-to guides one of the business majors a couple years older than us wrote up as part of their thesis project.”

“Interesting.”

She scoffed. “It wasn’t. It was boring. But by the time we graduated, almost everyone we knew had made some sort of contribution.” She gave him a smirk. “I recorded a few videos with tips and tricks for acing job interviews.”

“And this was under the LYYF banner?”

“At the time it was Life.L-I-F-E.We even had some cheesy tagline about it being the only tool a person needed to win at the game of life.”

“Catchy.”

“Anyhow, the concept grew and evolved, and as Tom and Chris became better programmers, the possibilities kept expanding.”

She propped her elbow on the door and pressed her thumb into her temple as if talking about the past gave her a headache. But he didn’t give her an out. He couldn’t. Her life was on the line.

“How did LYYF as we know it come about?”

She gazed out at the passing scenery. “Sometime in my sophomore year, I’d gone on a commercial audition where I met a woman who was into Transcendental Meditation. We got to talking, she told me about a retreat happening near campus. It was free, I was...searching...”

The last word trailed away, and he let it go for a few minutes. He knew sifting through memories was sometimes like reading lines of data—whatever you were looking for usually popped out the moment you let your focus go a bit fuzzy.

They were navigating one of the steep downhill stretches before she spoke again.

“Anyhow. I got into meditation and yoga as a way to deal with the constant rejection,” she said quietly.

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