Page 42 of Jett in Jeopardy

The guy’s already annoyed expression deepened. “Silver.”

It could have been a Corolla that followed me home from Brody’s, and I was fairly certain that the car that nearly ran me over was silver. Neither of these factors was the smoking gun I needed for the police.

“Look, I’m in the middle of something,” Simon’s roommate said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

“Right.” I’d been so caught up in my own thoughts I nearly forgot I was holding the door open. “Thanks for your help. I guess I’ll see Simon in the New Year.”

“Sure, whatever,” he said, closing the door and leaving me alone in the hallway.

So now what? I reached into my pocket for my phone and turned off the voice recorder app. Hmm… I could call Simon. He’d given me his number that day he’d asked me out. Maybe I could get a feel for if he was still in Saltwater Cove or if he really had gone back to Colorado.

I pulled his number up, my thumb hovering over the call button while I debated.

Chapter Eighteen

Jett

BythetimeIgot back to Brody’s, I was no closer to figuring out what to do about Simon. Outside, the gray skies had darkened to a deep blue, and Brody, who wasn’t home when I let myself in, had obviously been gone a while since there were no lights on in the apartment, leaving the space dark and shadowy. For the first time since I’d moved in, apprehension prickled the back of my neck. The silence was strangely unnerving. I couldn’t shake the image of Simon waiting for me, hidden and watching in the darkness.

Get a grip, Jett.I was letting my imagination get the better of me, and I knew it. Brody’s apartment had an alarm system I’d had to disarm when I let myself in. Besides, between Brody and his staff, if anybody had been lurking around the back of the bar so they could creep up to the apartment, someone would have noticed.

As much as I knew all those things to be true, after locking the door behind me, I moved from room to room through the apartment, flipping on lights and checking inside of every closet, even behind the shower curtain. I just needed to be sure no one else was there, and I was alone.

Having tied the break-ins, the fire, and nearly being run down in the street to Simon made the whole experience more unnerving. Knowing who my stalker was made everything real and no longer a hypothetical theory, like when my stalker was just a faceless possibility.

Worse than everything else though, was not knowing where Simon wasnow. He may have gone back to Colorado like his roommate suspected, or he could be hiding in his car, waiting to hit me when I crossed the street.

The possibilities were endless, and my stomach knotted painfully.

I couldn’t just sit around waiting for him to turn up. I needed answers and a plan. First, I needed to know where he was, and if he had left Saltwater Cove. And if he had left, I needed to be sure when he was coming back.

I grabbed a spiral ring notebook and pen from the pile of my schoolwork at the far end of the kitchen table and flopped onto the couch. After opening the notebook to a fresh page, I wrote down everywhere I had seen Simon that I could remember and when, as if I could pinpoint his location based on where he’d popped up over the last few months.

The last time that I had seen Simon had been when I came out of the cafe after telling Grier I’d be moving in with Brody temporarily. The same day, Simon asked me out. That had been weeks ago.

Since then, not only had I not seen Simon again, but there had been no more strange cars following me or attempted hit-and-runs, no more break-ins or mysterious fires. Maybe he’d given up. Maybe whatever he’d been trying to do had got away from him, and now he was going to let it go and move on.

As much as I wanted to believe that Simon had grown bored and just given up, I didn’t believe it. He’d been fucking with my life for months. I doubted he’d give up and go home now. He’d burned down my house, tried to run me over in the street, and for him to just walk away without some kind of big, final confrontation was more than unlikely.

So, where the hell had he been for the last few weeks, and what was his end game? I thought of him asking me out, and again I wondered what he would have done if I said yes.

I stood up from the sofa and started pacing. Why was he doing this? His father had been the one to assaultme, and I wasn’t the only one. Hell, when it came to the testimony responsible for his father’s arrest, mine had been some of the weakest. So why had he targeted me specifically?

I looked over at the clock on the stove. It was nearly six, and Brody still wasn’t back from the bar. He didn’t usually work on Monday nights, but often spent the day in his office dealing with paperwork. He’d be up soon to make dinner.

I still hadn’t decided if I was going to tell him about Simon… yet. On one hand, I knew I shouldn’t keep what I had worked out from him, especially while I was living under his roof. He had a right to know who was trying to hurt me—and him through association. But I knew as soon as I told him, he’d want me to go to the police, and there was no way I was going to do that without proof. Especially while it was only my word against Simon’s.

But more than anything, I didn’t want to tell Brody about Simon because if I did, I would have to tell him about Gregg too, and just the thought made my skin crawl. I didn’t want Brody to know, not because I was ashamed, but if he asked anything like the cops had, insinuate insinuated I had done something, said something that invited what the man had done to me, it would break me.

All the more reason, I needed to find Simon now and get him to admit what he’d done. Then I could take his confession to the police and move on from all of this once and for all. I was probably being naïve, but I didn’t care. I just wanted this over and Gregg Hargood out of my life once and for all.

I looked down at my notes. So where could he be now? There was the possibility that he’d gone back to Colorado, at least until next term, but I didn’t believe it. He’d been hanging around The Square a lot over the past month. Could he be staying somewhere nearby? The hotel would be a likely choice—close and not especially expensive. I could ask Alistair to check if Simon was registered or if he’d seen him staying there. In the off-season, the hotel’s guests were minimal. It shouldn’t be hard to confirm if he was staying there or not.

I picked up my pen and started to make notes in the notebook, but it ran out of ink.

“Shit,” I whispered. There had to be another pen around here somewhere. I leaned over the arm of the couch, tugged open the side table drawer and dug past the television remote, random cables and a heavy photo album.

Who even used these anymore?I snorted, pulling the book free from the drawer—my search for a pen momentarily forgotten. Of course, Brody would have an old-school photo album. God, sometimes he could be such an old man.

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