Page 17 of Guarded from Treachery

“Of course.” A sliver of guilt wedges deep. It’s just what I was afraid of; poor Isla jumping at shadows and sudden noises, afraid her attacker would come after her again. “It’s understandable to be concerned.”

“That’s what I told myself,” she replies. “When I thought I saw someone following me, I tried to brush it off as a figment of my imagination. Or when I noticed the man in dark clothes lurking around my apartment at night, I tried to convince myself he was just passing by. Or he was a new neighbor I hadn’t met yet.”

I lean forward. “You thought someone was following you?”

“Yes.” Isla’s gaze holds mine. “For the first couple of days after the attack in the parking lot, I thought I saw a car following me home from work. But when I’d turn into my apartment complex, it would keep going. And then once when I stopped to get groceries, the same car followed me from the store all the way home.”

She pauses. “I know how it sounds. Like a coincidence. But I just had this ominous feeling. In my gut. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” I agree. “I’ve had plenty of gut feelings before. And usually, they’re not wrong.”

Her shoulders sag. “When I said that to the police, they looked at me like I was insane. And then they told me they couldn’t waste their time on silly hunches. That they deal with facts and not feelings. But Iknowthat. I was just trying to explain how it started.”

My jaw clenches. What kind of asshole cops would say that to a woman who’s clearly scared? Who’s come to them for help?

“I didn’t go to the police until…” Isla pauses as she thinks. “Four days after what happened in the parking lot. I had installed a new security camera outside my apartment, kind of tucked out of sight above the front door. I woke up to the motion sensor going off, and when I looked at the camera, I saw a man trying to pick the lock.”

Shit.

My inner alarm bells are jangling again.

Trying not to show my concern, I keep my tone even as I ask, “So you went to the police after that?”

“I called 911,” she answers. “But by the time the police arrived, the guy was gone. And somehow…” Another shudder runs through her body. “When I went to show them the security footage, it was gone. Justgone. I saw him, Matt. I wasn’t imagining things.”

Her voice is pitching up as she talks, and there’s a watery sheen to her eyes. My hand twitches towards hers, instinct demanding I comfort her, but I hold myself back. Instead, I scribble some notes on my tablet, reminders to look at her security camera and see about the possibility of it being hacked.

“I’m sure you weren’t,” I assure her. “But I can look into it. Check your archived footage, see if anything got deleted.”

Gratitude fills her eyes as she looks at me. “You don’t think I was imagining things?”

“No, I don’t. If you say you saw a man at your door, I believe you.”

Isla gives me a shaky smile. “Then you’re the first one.” She pauses. “Well, my best friend Rory does. But she’s in Vermont, and she can’t really—” Another pause. “Anyway. Once the police saw there was nothing on the security camera, and then they realized I had been attacked not long before… they just wrote it off as paranoia.”

She leans over to grab her glass and takes a sip before continuing, “But after that, I kept having that same awful feeling. And things kept happening. The motion sensors would go off, but there was nothing on the cameras. I’d look outside and see a car parked right in front of my apartment, with the headlights off, just idling.”

“And you went to the police again?”

“I did.” Her hand trembles as she puts her glass back down on the coffee table, the glass clattering against the ceramic coaster beneath it. “After everything gotreallybad.”

Reallybad? Worse than being followed and someone trying to break into her apartment, possibly hacking her security system to do so?

Although. Just seeing what Jade, Lucy, and Sarah went through, I know the terrible truth of just how bad things can get.

Isla lifts her chin as she meets my gaze, almost as if she’s bracing for inevitable rejection. “This is the part… I know it’s going to sound like I’m making it up. But I’m not.”

“I don’t think that.”

“You might.” It’s flat. Almost despairing. She takes another deep breath. “Five days ago, a man tried to grab me when I was coming home from work. It was late, and I was… distracted. I’d been trying to be careful. Never walking alone, parking close to the entrance, stuff like that, you know?”

“I do know,” I reply gently, though my chest is tight with anxiety. She was almost taken? Outside her apartment? And for some insane reason, the police didn’t believe her?

“I was walking from my car to the apartment. It was dark; I was later than usual because I’d stopped at the store. And then this man… he just came out of nowhere. Grabbed my arm. And he had this fabric in his hand. I didn’t think then, but maybe it was drugged? I don’t know.”

Through a gritted jaw, I ask, “And what happened then?”

A grimly satisfied smile lifts her lips. “I used my pepper spray. And the little horn I keep on my keychain. I don’t think he was expecting me to fight back. But the noise and the spray gave me a chance to escape.”

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