Page 121 of Save Her from Me

“Bullshit.”

His blond eyebrows dove together. “Last night, the explosion across the loch drew me over the water, and I encountered a woman with bobbed hair fleeing the scene with her dog. I guess that’s your arsonist, not me. If you need proof, I’ve got her on camera.”

He tapped his phone. Grimaced.

“When it works.”

I stared, the description eerily familiar.

Earlier, I’d checked my messages to find one from my mother, sent after I’d ignored a call from her yesterday. She’d been sobbing, telling me the parole hearing for TJ had been brought forward to today. I hadn’t listened to the rest.

What were the chances that another bobbed-haired woman had been lurking around here?

Larson grumbled at his phone, and my thoughts swerved in a new direction as another part of his speech registered.

Across the loch.

The village was across the loch from Castle McRae and this house had the snug, cottage-like feel of a village home.

So I was in the village. Not far away at all. But where?

A further memory eked in, and I felt like a fucking idiot.

When Bridgette’s mother had rung Ariel, and I’d intercepted the call, she’d stated that they were on holiday but there was a problem with the doorbell camera at their home. She’d wanted Ariel to go fix it for their peace of mind, but what if it had been shut down so a stranger could come and go as he pleased?

I’d had it in the back of my mind to go check, but it hadn’t been important—the woman and her child weren’t due back for a few more days and other matters had taken over. I wasn’t about to jump to their commands any more than Ariel would, but I wouldn’t leave them unsafe either.

I knew exactly where I was.

All that time, the clue to our hunter’s lair had been under my nose.

But that did nothing when I couldn’t communicate that to anyone or free myself.

I choked out my words. “But ye don’t deny stalking Ariel?”

“If you mean waiting for her to come to me, which is exactly what she’s about to do, guilty. That’s why I needed you. An incentive to get her ass here, considering she’d hidden so well. You were a guess, but a good one. Besties with her brother but somehow absent from your security team this past week. Where could you have been but squirreled away with her?”

My anger curled in my stomach. Adrenaline rushed where I needed to take this man apart. He’d scared her. Forced her into hiding. Then calmly admitted his method.

I was losing my cool, aided by the fact I felt like I’d been hit by a truck.

A sense of desperation came over me.

“I get it,” I spat. “I get that you’re obsessed. Ye have been since meeting Ariel at school, but ye can’t have her. She’ll never be yours.”

Larson tilted his head at me. “That’s a lot of words from a man in handcuffs with no power in this situation.”

The phone he’d been messing with reset in his hand, and he flashed a short smile. He stood, training the lens on me.

“Get ready to say cheese so I can send this to her and bring her in.”

My blood chilled.

Ariel could not come here.

She couldn’t be anywhere near this man.

“Ye can’t have her,” I roared. “She’s mine. Mine to be obsessed with. And she’s obsessed with me as well. I will never give her up.”

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