Page 4 of Indecent Proposal

I received a disturbing phone call in the middle of the night from Richard. I answered, assuming that something was wrong if he was calling me so late—and I was right.

“Claire?” he sounded panicked and out of breath. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, instantly on alert. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m at the office and I don’t have time to explain. Just go to the apartment and to my desk. If you—”

Then I heard something I’d never heard from Richard before—a scream of fear, and it sent shivers up my spine.

Then, the line had gone dead.

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I knew he was in danger. I called the cops immediately, sending him to his office where I’d heard the scuffle, but when they finally arrived, they found him hanging from the ceiling.

“Suicide,” they told me.

Judging by the scene they’d found, I understood why the police bought that idea, but I also knew that despite his odd behavior of late, Richard hadn’t been suicidal . . . and considering his last words to me, my gut told me that something else was up.

A few days later, needing some kind of answers, I did go to his apartment and spent hours rummaging through all of his desk drawers based on his last words to me, but I couldn’t find anything that stood out or grabbed my attention. Just normal banking information, records on his car ownership, his diploma… various personal files and business contracts. I pored over all of it, over and over, but there was nothing there that I considered suspicious in any way.

But then—someone began following me.

It started when I went back to my apartment from Richard’s place that day. When I arrived, I smelled gas in the hallway and immediately called my landlord. When a representative from the gas company arrived they said if I’d been in the apartment only ten minutes earlier, I would’ve passed out from the excess fumes and died—that there was some kind of leak.

I didn’t know how, but I trusted my gut and knew that “leak” wasn’t just an accident. Someone had set it up with the intent of harming me.

That’s when I checked into a hotel under a fake name.

Even then, I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being followed everywhere I went, even though I couldn’t pinpoint who it might be. That intuition came in the form of a visceral prickling at the back of my neck, and it made me want to throw up.

The random accidents came next. Someone bumping into me so that I fell off the curb and was nearly run over by a taxi. Someone trying to jostle me so that I’d fall onto the subway tracks, but thank God two women grabbed me and kept me upright in time.

I was increasingly terrified to be alone or go out at night because I swore I could pick up the sound of footsteps behind me. I heard someone trying to hack through the electronic lock of my hotel room door, only to realize I had one of those inside security bolts they couldn’t get past. Any time I ordered takeout, the seals on the food had been tampered with, indicating someone had opened them and then tried to replace them again. My car was run off the road, almost off a bridge, and instead I crashed into a ditch and narrowly avoided hitting a tree.

Someone was after me.

I tried calling the police to report the incidents, but there was no evidence of any actual crime being committed against me, and it was all circumstantial. My mom told me that I was being hysterical after Richard’s suicide. My friends said I needed a break and that it might be guilt since I’d asked for a separation only a few months before he killed himself.

But I knew the truth. Richard had been murdered, and whoever had gotten to him thought I had what they wanted, so now they were after me.

There were definitely moments I wanted to give up and just flee the country. But Richard had called me in his last moments. He’d tried to tell me something before someone had ended his life. I wasn’tinlove with him, but I cared about him and he’d trusted me. I owed it to him to find out what was going on, and to find what information he’d tried to give me.

It was clear that it was no longer safe for me to stay at the hotel, either. I was in danger, and until I found out who was after me and why, I had to find a way to disappear for a while.

Since I needed to be untraceable, I pulled everything out of my bank account. It wasn’t a lot. Richard had been the one with the purse strings, and I had to admit that I’d let him pay for too much for me, to the point that I’d grown dependent on him. So, I pawned my jewelry, including my engagement ring, and then I tried to lay low in a new cheap motel on the outskirts of the city.

Through it all, I tried to find answers. I tried to call people Richard knew or worked with, but I was stonewalled. People truly didn’t know anything, or they were lying to me, and it was impossible for me to tell which was which.

I decided it was time I went to a professional company to end this fear and uncertainty hanging over my life, and to hopefully discover who was terrorizing me, and why.

I was sitting on a bus, halfway back to the city, when that prickling feeling on the back of my neck happened again. My stomach churned, and I instinctively knew that I was being followed. I scrambled for a way anyone could’ve found me, but it wasn’t until my phone chimed with a text from my mother that I realized what an idiot I’d been.

I hadn’t ditched my phone.

I had my location services off, I had deleted a few apps, and I hadn’t told anyone where I was staying. But somehow they must have used my number to track me.

In a panic, I got off the bus earlier than my original stop. I threw my phone into the first trash can I came across and began my race to my planned destination: Elite Protection and Consulting. They came highly recommended by various people Richard had worked with, who were the kind of high-profile people who needed to worry about things like their lives and their money.

By the time I arrived, after running most of the way in sheer terror, I was a hot mess. I knew I had blisters on my feet from my heels, I was breathing heavily and sweating in the most unladylike manner, and my skin felt hot and sticky.

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