Page 52 of Hunt

“That’s some messed up shit there,” I half laughed at his terrible story telling. “How do you know she wasn’t meeting me?”

“I didn’t know. That’s why I followed her. Anyway,” he exhaled and wiped his forehead again with his sleeve. “I kept the phone with the bug in it. Let me,” he slowly stood up again, “get it and I’ll show you.”

“No. I’ll follow you up, so you don’t think about escaping,” I challenged him as he glanced up when the front door opened and closed.

I bet he thought he could slip away or ask for help from our roommate, who just walked in. Nope. Not with me here. Either we sort this out now, or we sort it out later.

He ran up the stairs, uncomfortable with me on his tail. Any sudden move or silent communication with roommates, I’ll be on him like a shot. I gave him a warning when I knocked his tooth out and yet he still fucked me over by touching Riley. The prick had better have a good excuse this time because my patience was running out.

We came to his bedroom, and he sauntered inside and grabbed a phone lying on his desk in three separate parts. I stood at the doorway so no one could enter, and he couldn’t exit.

“Is that her phone?” I grabbed the dark purple cover and peered closely at it. I’d seen her phone several times, and it looked like hers.

“Yes. You can see the bug there,” he pointed out the tiny device slotted into the back of the phone. “I disarmed it by drowning it in water, so I have no idea who put it there and who she was recording the conversation for.”

“So, you haven’t had anyone knocking on your door wanting their device back?” I asked him.

He shrugged his shoulders. “No. Not yet.”

“You’re still alive, so it can’t be that bad,” I argued, struggling with this piece of information. I didn’t want to believe she was spying on us when we were spying on her. That’s a fucked up thought, but when I break it all down it didn’t make her look innocent by any means. I told her I was out of town, yet she went to the basement knowing I wouldn’t be there. She had a bug in her phone, and according to Shaun, she was recording their conversation.

“You still haven’t told me how her phone broke?” I asked again.

He cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. “She dropped it, and the cover flew off the back of the phone when it smashed on the floor, and that’s when I noticed the bug.”

I didn’t entirely believe him, but I couldn’t deny the evidence that this was her phone and that it was a bug. Whether or not she was recording the conversation with Shaun remained to be seen.

“Did she say why she went down there in the first place?” I asked him.

“She said she was looking for you,” he replied dryly.

That was a lie.Herlie.

“Did you see her record you?” I asked, still struggling with piecing it together.

“Yeah, I noticed the phone was on while she held it in her hand, and I thought she was calling someone at first,” he reflected.

She was calling Ronan. I knew that much because he went down there to find her, worried that something terrible had happened. But it looked like she was playing all of us.

Suppressing my frustration, I pressed on, “Why would she want to record a conversation with you? Why you? What did she ask that raised your suspicion?”

She swallowed nervously, and Adam’s apple bobbled in his throat. “She asked where you were. We didn’t get to a point where we were talking about anything.”

I frowned as that didn’t make sense. She was allegedly recording a conversation, yet there was no conversation. Yeah, that didn’t add up. “Anything you want to tell me? Anything else that happened that you might’ve forgotten to tell me about? How about you tell me how she accessed the basement in the first place?”

His face burned red as he flicked about in his empty skull as if he were trying to think of a reason.

“It was supposed to be locked, so how did she get in?” I pressed again because he wasn’t giving me an answer.

“Someone must’ve left it open or something,” he answered vaguely. “I don’t know.”

“Anything else you want to tell me?” I questioned because I still believe that he was trying to fuck her.

Riley wouldn’t tell me the truth because she’d be terrified that I’d do something drastic about it. So I understood why she’s keeping quiet about some details, but keeping quiet about other information made no sense.

I collected Riley’s phone and turned my back to leave, then stalled and looked back at him, who seemed relieved I was going. “If I find out that you tried to fuck her-”

“I didn’t. I swear I didn’t,” he asserted.

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