Page 16 of The Chase
He and Kev—they’d had big dreams. Number one was just getting out of Barratt County, and away from all the shit people knew about them back then.
Now…hell, none of them in this shithole town even recognized him at all. They’d forgotten him.
Well, he recognizedthem.Those fucking Hillers—not like they’d changed all that much.
He remembered them, all right. Walking around with all that fucking money, lording it over the people like him and Kev. Taking them in to do theircivic dutyto the less fortunate. Bullshit. They’d just liked having the power over boys like them. Yeah, Dwayne and Kev had had a roof over their heads. All they’d had to do was share a bathroom and help around the ranch. Treat the Hiller kids—all younger than them except those fucker George and Gene—withrespect.And that was it.
He hated people like that. Thought they were better because of their bank account.
He sat there in his booth in the diner, probably smelling like other people’s garbage, while everyone in the room talked about some attack at the hospital. Who the hell cared?
This small town was always gossip. He didn’t even know why he’d come back here. Except…he didn’t really know anywhere else. And he and Kev…they’d had money put back. In that old cabin up on the corner of the Hiller Ranch. He’d already been up there, grabbed it. Damn, they’d been stupid. Thought six hundred bucks was a lot of money. It wasn’t nothing.
Wouldn’t even buy him three weeks of rent around this place now. Not like he could afford that fancy complex just outside of town. And it was getting close now. He was one paycheck away from being on the streets. The landlord had already given him one warning. Another, and he was out.
He was sitting there stirring his coffee—he hated that shit, but the diner gave it out for free tocity workers—when he heard the waitress talking to the cook about what had happened at the hospital to thatGenny Hiller.
Hiller. He listened.
It always came back to theHillers.
If it hadn’t been for Max and Gayle Hiller, Kevin would be alive—and Dwayne wouldn’t be living like this.
It was all the Hillers.
Fuck them all.
They’d get what was coming to them someday.
He just had to wait.
For now…the girl. There was so much he wanted to do to her now.
12
Her apartmentjust feltcreepynow.
Sheknewsomeone had been inside her home. The dark footprint right in the middle of her bedroom rug, fresh mud, was absolute proof of it. No male had been in her bedroom in months. The last in there had a size 4youthfoot and called her Auntie Greer. That print was far, far too big to be Calvin’s.
And it definitely wasn’t hers, either.
She called the police and asked for them to send a deputy. Jeremy showed up a few minutes later. But what he could tell her wasn’t exactly reassuring. Nothing had been disturbed; nothing had been taken. For all they knew, someone from the apartment complex could have been in her apartment and the notice that should have been on her doorknob had just blown away.
It just didn’t feel like that. She knew it didn’t.
Her supervisor Waverly’s words from the day before stuck out. Waverly had been stalked by two different men in the past—because of the job they did. She was always talking about how to keep themselves safe. Waverly was talking about enrolling in a self-defense or martial arts class in Finley Creek when shehad time. Which…Waverly was a total workaholic. Greer had her doubts that would ever happen.
Waverly was always talking aboutbalance,too. Totally ironic, in Greer’s opinion. But Waverly’s experiences had been real.
And…it just felt creepy here now.
She just stood in her bed and looked at it. Imagining having her little baby in this place. The bedrooms were both so small. There really wouldn’t be much play area in the baby’s room. Her living area, either.
Her suite at the ranch was larger. And there was a guest room right across the hall, with its own bathroom. It could be turned into an adorable nursery for Greer’s baby. Until Greer was ready to buy a house. And she wouldn’t have to bepregnantandalone.She’d have her brothers there with her. And Genny.
She’d also never walk into her home and find that someone hadbeen there.In her space.
She’d probably always be nervous about her own personal safety—how could she not? She had been only nine when she learned someone wasn’t ever fully safe anywhere. That was a lesson she would never forget, no matter how much therapy she’d had a child and teen. That was just a life lesson she’d internalized.
