Page 76 of Somebody's Watching Me
“I’m willing to bet you’re smarter.”
“Oh, I am.”
In the background, a rhythmic metallic chugging played in repetition. A train. He was near a train.
“Can I ask you something, Jamison?” The background noise grew louder for a split second, but then cut off entirely. “What do you want out of life?”
Too busy listening for more clues to his whereabouts, she wasn’t sure if she heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”
“What do you want out of life?”
“I’m not about to sit here and discuss my life goals with you.”
“Afraid they might align too much with mine?”
A soft groan came through, and Jamison smiled. “You’re hurt.”
“The ex is an above average marksman,” Michael grunted as he strained to move about more. “I’ll have to keep that in mind the next time we meet.”
She listened as he situated himself. The metal clanging had been a train. She was sure of it. That meant he was in a building near the tracks.
“You want to belong to someone.”
Her brows snapped together. “What?”
“More than anything, you want to feel like you belong to someone. A family connection that’s just yours.”
“Um, I already have several family connections if you haven’t noticed.”
“Yeah, but none of them, not even your sister, are truly yours.”
Rising from her desk, she paced the room, thinking this had gone on long enough. Surely the phone had collected enough information for Rowan to pull data from the call.
“Annabeth and Abe aren’t your siblings,” Michael went on. “And even though Samuel and Selah are yours by blood, they’re so much older you’ve never really connected with them, no matter how often your father tried to force it with those family vacations.”
“That’s not true.”
“And your precious Evie is a liar. How long did she keep her love for Samuel a secret?”
“My brother and sister are married.”
“Yeah, and how fucked up is that?”
For her to have those thoughts was one thing, but an outsider? Hell, no. “I get why they hid it. I didn’t exactly handle the big reveal very well.”
“You handled it better than most, but that doesn’t change the fact that she lied to you. Evie was the only real thing that was solely yours, and Samuel took her from you.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“What about Simone?” he pressed further. “She’s not your mother and doesn’t even pretend to be. When you left for Texas, was she upset? Did she shed tears to see her baby go off in the world without her?”
The drumming of her heart stuttered, not wanting to let what he was saying penetrate. “She was excited.”
“Excited for you toleave.“ He laughed low in his throat. “All she’s ever done was use you and your sister to get her sick revenge on your father for sending Toby and CeCe away.”
“That’s not true!”
“Did you know she saw a psychiatrist?” he asked. “I read the reports. I know what she said in those sessions. Hell, I’ll send them to you right now.”
