Page 50 of Secret Stalker

“Mom woke me up, as she often did. I’ve never been much of an early riser. But it was my birthday, and a Saturday, and she knew I didn’t want to miss a single minute. We had a lot of plans.”

“We who?”

“We, Mom and me. And then...you and me.” She cleared her throat. “We were supposed to meet later.”

He hesitated for just a moment, then said, “Go on.”

She described the day of shopping with her mom, going to a nail salon to get matching manicures and splurging on pedicures, too, at the last minute. Her mom was a retired schoolteacher, having had Bex late in life as a surprise baby. So she had a lot of free time, but not a lot of money. But she’d promised Bex an eighteenth birthday to remember and had saved all year for it. Nothing was too good for her Bexey.

She plucked at the fabric of her pants. “I’d forgotten that nickname until now.”

He put his arm around her, pulling her close. “I’m so sorry about your mom.”

She blinked back the moisture in her eyes. “Thank you. I’m glad you were there for her. She...spoke about you a lot. She loved you very much.”

He squeezed her shoulders. “Do you need to take a break?”

“No.” She wiped her eyes. “I want to get this over with.” It took a minute to get her bearings. Then she began telling him about the rest of her day with her mom. Buying matching purses at one of the little stores in town that had handcrafted items Bex always thought were way better than anything she’d ever seen in any fashion magazines. Lunch at her favorite restaurant, a seafood chain the next town over.

“That was pretty much it. I spent my daylight hours with Mom. Oh, she also made homemade strawberry cheesecake and we stuffed ourselves with a piece of that when we got home. Then she gave me a kiss, we hugged, and she gave me her car keys so I could go see you.”

“You left the house around what time?”

“Seven thirty, give or take. I drove straight to the barn at the edge of the Caldwell property, just a stone’s throw from where your daddy’s land began. You were already there.”

His fingers idly rubbed her shoulder through her blouse, but he didn’t say anything.

She sniffed, wiped her eyes again. “It was the most romantic evening we’d ever had. You thought of everything. You had fresh hay strewn all over the floor with soft blankets and pillows. Lanterns cast a soft glow.”

He let out a puff of laughter. “We’re lucky we didn’t roast alive with all that flammable fuel. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You were thinking that you wanted my eighteenth birthday to be perfect. And it was. And so was your proposal. I’m so sorry that I ruined everything, Max.”

His arm dropped from around her shoulders and he made a few notes on his pad, as if she hadn’t just mentioned the moment when she’d destroyed their future. But she could tell from the lines of tension on his forehead that he wasn’t as immune to the memories as he pretended.

“We left at the same time,” he said. “You in your mom’s car, me hoofing it across the field to go home. That was about nine thirty. I had to get up early the next day so my dad could help me rebuild the carburetor in the old junker we were restoring together. But you didn’t go straight home, did you? You were seen later that evening in town. With Bobby.”

She stiffened beside him. “I wasn’t with Bobby. I was never willingly with Bobby. Ever.”

He tilted her chin up. “You don’t have to tell me that. I knew firsthand how obsessed he was with you, that he wouldn’t leave you alone. I fought more than one fight with him and his father’s hired hands out at the farm trying to get him to leave you alone. So don’t get all upset like you think I’m implying something when I’m not. He was a sick stalker. Period. But because of the crappy laws, there wasn’t anything Thornton could do until Bobby actually crossed the line and hurt you. It sucks, it really does. But that’s how it was back then.”

She blinked against the burn of unshed tears and let out a shaky breath. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, Bex. Let’s just try to stop doing things that hurt each other and get through this, okay?”

“Okay.” She settled back against the couch. A burst of lightning lit up the darkening sky. The water behind the house was so choppy now that it reminded her of the rapids in the creek that ran behind the Caldwell property, gouging deep cliffs thirty feet and higher, hidden from the Caldwell mansion by a copse of thick trees. Cliffs she and Max and a group of other teens had climbed a dozen times on dares, until the farmhands that doubled as Robert Caldwell’s security men had chased them off with guns one night.

They’d all been fools and were lucky to be alive. She had never understood why old man Caldwell felt he needed all those thugs around him. But maybe that kind of paranoia came with being wealthy. Then again, he did have a spate of vandalism one year, some neighborhood kids spray painting his barns with sexually explicit cartoons. It was funny until he produced footage from some hidden cameras on the property and was able to get those kids thrown into juvie for their crimes. So maybe he wasn’t so paranoid after all. Maybe he was the smart one.

“Go on,” Max encouraged. “You left the barn at nine thirty. Then what happened?”

“When I went into the house—”

“You went directly home?”

“Yes.”

“What time was it when you got there?”

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