Page 165 of Hayden's Stalker

I have no way to stop him, so I take a bite of the toast. It’s cold and tasteless, with a thin spreading of peanut butter on it. Whenever I clear my mouth, Daniel shoves the toast back into it before I can speak, force-feeding me four pieces of bread.

As I swallow the final bite, he stands from where he’s been sitting next to me and says, “There. You’re fed.”

He stands and turns to leave the room without saying anything more. He still hasn’t told me much about Tati, and I think about the way he spoke to Sarah before she left.

“Wait! Please just tell me what you did to Tati. I need to know she’ll be okay. I love her like you love Sarah. Surely, you understand what it’s like to be worried about someone you love that much.”

He halts at the door, then turns and looks at me. “I didn’t want anyone to get killed, and I was worried about that, but Sarah assured me that Tati wouldn’t even taste the drug in her drink. She’d just pass out and wake up with a bad headache. Sarah got the drug for me. Something trazepam it’s called. Flumitrazepam maybe.”

He turns again to open the door, and I can’t help but ask again, “Why are you doing this?”

“I told you. She loves me, and I’d do anything for her.” He closes the door and walks away after giving his unsatisfactory answer.

I didn’t even get a chance to try and convince him to untie me. It doesn’t take long for me to come up with an excuse for it, though, because my bladder calls for release, and I get Daniel’s attention from where he’s sitting in an armchair at the side of the room, guarding me.

“What do you want?” He glares at me.

“I need the bathroom,” I tell him.

He looks pissed, but he picks up the gun from a table next to him and points it at me. “Tryanything,and I will fucking shoot you. Do you understand?”

A chill runs through me because a small part of me wants him to do it, and that scares me. The thought of being given the sweet release of death rather than being forced to spend another second in Sarah’s presence is nice. I push the dark thoughts away, though, because I can’t give in to them. Not when Tati is out there looking for me.

This thought brings me some comfort as Daniel unties me and escorts me to the bathroom. I hold it tight in my heart, the knowledge that even with me in this situation, the woman I love is out there somewhere, and she will find me. I just need to stay alive until she can do that.

I’m too scared he might actually shoot me to try and escape, so I decide to try and get more information out of him instead.

As he’s walking me back to the room again, I ask Daniel casually, “How long have you been with Sarah?”

“We met in February,” he says as he shoves the gun into my back.

Interesting.

“This year? Just before the tour started?”

He nods and opens the door to the room to let me in because he tied my hands behind my back as soon as I was done in the bathroom. “Yeah. I was at a bar with some friends and saw the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. We’ve been together ever since.”

“But you’ve been on the tour. Has she been following the tour?” I’m honestly curious about this and how they managed it.

“She’s not fucking dumb,” he spits at me as he indicates into the room with the gun. “It was too dangerous for her to be on the tour. We used burner phones.”

“But you helped her kidnap me.” I stop halfway to the bed and turn to look at him. “Why? I don’t get it.”

“What the fuck are you not getting? I’ve told you. Because I love her, and she loves me.”

I can’t even fathom the mental gymnastics he’s doing to make this make sense because she was busy telling me how much she was in love with me earlier.

“If she loves you so much, why does she want to be with me?” I ask.

Daniel’s jaw tightens, and his eyes glimmer with malice as he strides toward me. I don’t know what I expect, maybe for him to stop in front of me and yell at me, but he doesn’t. When he gets a few feet from me, he raises his right leg and kicks me square in the stomach.

I’m winded, and pain ricochets through me, and I stumble back a few steps toward the bed. “Fuck!”

“You’re lucky Sarah wants you alive, asshole.” Daniel points the gun at me and cocks it. “Get on the bed in five seconds, or I’ll tell her I accidentally shot you.”

My blood runs cold, and I’m certain that he’s serious. I back onto the bed, staring into the barrel of his gun and wondering if this is the last thing I’ll ever see. My heart pounds in my chest,and even when I’m lying back on the bed, Daniel keeps the gun pointed at me with a strange look on his face. I conjure up an image of Tati in my head to ‘look’ at, replacing the reality of the situation so that if he pulls the trigger, I’ll die thinking of her.

I can’t breathe properly until Daniel finally lowers the gun and walks toward me. I lie frozen in place as he ties me back up to the bed. Never in a million years would I have imagined that this bed would feel like a safe space for me. Once I’m tied up, though, Daniel returns to his chair, and the gun is set down again.

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