Page 56 of Gage (Love Under the Lights 1)

“Whoa,” she breathed out, her eyes going wide in shock. “He thinks it might be one of your neighbors?”

I caught her up on my conversation with the detective and Brax and grabbed the pad of paper I’d been using off my desk. “I jotted down the names of everyone I could think of, but you know how Hollywood is. People don’t advertise where they live for the most part, and this neighborhood is huge. I’m probably missing a ton of names.”

Morgan scanned the list and shook her head. “Nothing jumps out at me, but maybe we should drive around and scope out your neighbors to see if we can figure out who else needs to be added?”

I didn’t have a better suggestion, so I agreed, “Sure.”

“I’ll be ready in a jiffy. I just need to run upstairs and change my shoes, first.”

Right after she rushed off, my phone rang. “We didn’t even make it a mile away from your house when we got our first solid lead in your case,” Detective Wakeland announced before I had the chance to say hello.

“How good of a lead?” I asked.

“The kind that means I just got to slap some cuffs on a crazy bitch because she went bonkers when we knocked on her door to ask some questions.”

By the time he gave me the rundown on what’d happened, I had a huge grin on my face. I had just disconnected the call when Morgan came back downstairs. “We should’ve scoped out your neighbors sooner if it makes you smile like that.”

“It’s not that.” I picked her up and swung her around in a circle. “They found your stalker, beautiful. And you’re never going to believe who it was.”Twenty-SevenMorgan“Are you shitting me?”

“I’m absolutely not shitting you,” I assured my best friend. “Trust me; I had the same reaction you’re having when Gage relayed all of this to me.”

Allie shook her head in disbelief. “I cannot even begin to tell you how insane it is that Kerri freaking Anderson was behind all of this. How did she get caught?”

Shifting forward on the giant beige couch we were seated on in Allie’s hotel room, I set the container of mixed nuts I’d gotten from the minibar down. I wanted to munch on something, but twenty-two dollars for a small container of nuts wasn’t going to fly.

“When Gage showed me the list of neighbors in his community, I didn’t even blink when I saw her uncle’s name,” I said. “I had no idea Kerri was living with him until earlier today when the detective assigned to the case canvassed the neighborhood and wound up arresting her. She was so unglued to see the police she outed herself as the perpetrator in under sixty seconds.”

“I’ve always said she was a shitty actress,” Allie snickered. “This proves I was right.”

“It does. And now we also know her true talent involves using a tire iron.”

“A tire iron?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“What happens now?” Allie asked.

I grimaced. “Not what I’d originally hoped would, that’s for sure. Her uncle showed up at Gage’s house earlier to ask that we not press charges.”

“Ew. I bet that went over like a lead balloon.”

“It did until Officer Wakeland called and filled us in on what, exactly, Kerri thought she would get out of this.”

Allie frowned. “It doesn’t sound like she was thinking at all.”

“You’d think,” I said, my tone snarky, “but that lunatic always has an angle. She flipped her lid when the police showed up at her uncle's house today. Not because she knew the jig was up, mind you, but because the timing was wrong.”

I made air quotes with my fingers to emphasize the word timing.

“Apparently, the first night she vandalized my car was a spur of the moment thing, but what came after happened because she wanted to be arrested for it.”

Allie gasped. “What the hell? Why?”

“I’m glad you’re already sitting down,” I said dryly.

“Oh snap, this ought to be rich.”

“It’s Kerri, so, of course, it’s bonkers. She had it in her head that if she went a little nuts and got caught, the public would rally behind her the way they did with Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes. She had the whole thing planned out, too. She was going to go back to Gage’s and mess my car up for a third time in full view of the cameras next month after she got back from a family vacation to Greece.”

Allie’s eyes went wide, and her hands flew to her mouth. “Shut up,” she squeaked.

I shook my head. “Hand to God, I’m for real. She wanted— and I quote— a good tan and some new highlights to offset the terrible lighting of a booking photo.”

“She knows it’s not a headshot, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “She’s so desperate for publicity that there’s no level to which she won’t stoop to get it.”

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