Page 311 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
Pictures of my bare butt are alreadyall over the internet, thanks to a particularly gripping scene I filmed in which I played a criminal getting strip-searched during prison intake. But I take Nate’s meaning. I pull my pants back up with a sigh. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
He finally reaches me and lifts his iPad, holding it up so I can watch as he taps on the screen. “Just picked this up on the security camera over on the east edge of the property.”
He pulls up a video clip and zooms in. The image is too small for me to make out actual facial features, but there’s clearly a person dressed in heavy camouflage crawling through the underbrush, camera in hand.
I swear under my breath. “Did the cameras out front pick anything up?”
Nate shakes his head. “Nobody has passed by on the main road since you got home.”
“Which means what? They hiked in from the university service road? That road isn’t even on the map.”
“That’s what makes me think it’s someone local. An amateur,” Nate says, “hoping they can sneak a few images and sell them for quick cash.”
“A local? That’s better, at least.” I don’t like the idea of someone sneaking around my property with a camera, but I’d rather it be someone from around here than someone who followed me here from LA. Paparazzi tend to move in packs. If you see one, you’ll eventually see more.
“See the way he’s dressed?” Nate says, pointing at the screen. “That’s pro-level camouflage. And the way he’s moving through the forest—it’s someone who knows the terrain.”
I sigh. “Either way, it’s still trespassing. If we don’t do something now, he may try again. And let other people know how to do the same thing.”
Nate nods. “I’ll call the cops, but I’ll have to bring whoever this is up to the house. I doubt the cops will want to hike in after him.”
“Just make sure you take his camera before you do.”
Nate stalks off, and I turn around to retrieve my shirt.
I managed to escape a lot of things when I moved out of California.
A lot of unnecessary pressure and expectations. A toxic relationship. The constant hounding of the press.
But apparently, no matter how far into the wilderness I go, I’ll never escape the kind of people who will don camo and traipse through the woods just to capture a few pictures.
I’ll never escape myfame.
Chapter Two
Audrey
Three weeks. Three weeksI’ve been searching, and I finally found him.
I’d heard rumors about various sightings.
But I wasn’t going to believe it until I saw for myself.
The implications are huge, after all. Here? In Silver Creek? I suspected it might eventually come to this—all my PhD research indicated it might—but to see actual, physical proof?
My heart squeezes. It’s almost too much.
I inch forward across the loamy forest floor and lift my camera. I’m up on a bit of a ledge, a deep ravine cutting through the mountainside directly in front of me, but the height of my current position makes it easy to see, even at a distance. “Gotcha,” I say as I focus my camera, zooming in to get a clearer picture.
“I’m going to need that camera,” a deep voice says behind me. I jolt, and my finger slams down on the button, sounding the shutter before the camera slips from my hands, landing on the dirt in front of me.
When I look up, the white squirrel just on the other side of the ravine is nowhere to be seen.
I jump to my feet, glaring at the stranger behind me with the heat of a thousand suns.
Figurative suns,my rational, science-minded brain asserts. Because a thousand real suns would char me into nonexistence before I could glare atanyone.
It’s a ridiculous thought, considering the giant, stern-faced stranger standing not ten feet away, but I’ve been with my brain for twenty-nine years now. I’ve learned that sometimes, there’s no reasoning with it.
