Page 58 of Waitress at the Shadow Ridge Inn
“Not like this,” she said gravely. “He’s got pictures of you. Personal information. A list of the places you’ve been over the past year.”
Okay, thatwasweird.
“How did you get a look at his laptop? Please tell me you didn’t sneak into his office.”
“No. I’ve been sleeping with him. A lot. We’re practically living together.”
“Wait. You andAaron?” I asked in disbelief.
“Yes, me and Aaron. We started seeing each other and things progressed rather quickly.”
“I guess,” I murmured. I grabbed one of the Baileys and sucked it down. “That’s … unexpected.”
Her lips curled, but it could in no way be described as a smile. “You think he’s out of my league? That I’m not good enough for him?”
“What? No, of course not. It’s just …”
How could I explain without making it seem as if that was exactly what I thought? Aaron was professional and smooth in a Wall Street kind of way, and Angie was more of a Jersey shore kind of girl. I didn’t mean that in a bad way, just in athese two things don’t go togethersort of way.
“Just what?”
“He doesn’t seem like your type,” I finally managed. “Weren’t you the one who used to say he probably only unclenched his butt cheeks long enough to take a … well, you know.”
For a moment, she seemed amused by that. “I did say that, didn’t I? Well, let’s just say, people aren’t always who we think they are.”
“Fair enough. Okay, tell me. Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
She sighed. “I was working late one night, and so was he. You’d called earlier that day, and I was having a hard time, you know? If I stayed at work, I didn’t have to go back to an empty apartment or think about how I’d let you down. If I hadn’t jumped to the wrong conclusion the night of Henry’s party, you wouldn’t have walked alone to your car that night, and you wouldn’t have been taken by that psycho.”
I waved my hand in a dismissive gesture. “I know you never meant for anything bad to happen, Ang. I don’t blame you. I never did.”
She frowned and nodded, but couldn’t seem to look me in the eye. “Anyway, Aaron walked me to my car, and we ended up going for coffee. He’s a good listener. Coffee became dinner. He came back to my place, and, well …” She paused, letting me fill in the blanks. “He’s nothing like I thought he was. There’s a lot of passion hidden under that zipped-up professional mask he wears.”
Her face took on a dreamy look, which I recognized as the same one I saw in the mirror after spending the night with Steve. I nodded encouragingly.
“Things were going great. Then, these last few weeks, something changed. He seemed distracted. I thought … I thought maybe he was cheating on me. So, when he was in the shower, I swiped his phone and uploaded the contents to my laptop. Then, I started going through his call list.
“There was one number he’d called several times. I assumed it was a woman, but it wasn’t. It was a PI. I found texts, too, that mentioned files the investigator had emailed to him. So, when Aaron was at the gym, I hacked his laptop.” She sniffed and sipped her coffee.
“So, let me get this straight. Aaron Carrington hired a PI to find me?”
Angie nodded.
“Butwhy?” Nothing about the über-proper upper manager suggested deranged stalker.
“Because he’s sick, Casey. Here. I knew you wouldn’t believe me, so I took these.”
Angie reached into her pocket and extracted her phone, pulled up her picture gallery, and handed the device to me. I swiped through screenshot after screenshot. I saw pictures of me at the office, my apartment, the grocery store, office parties. Online articles from the paper about my “accident.”
My horror grew with each one. When I reached the one of a digital map with location pins of everywhere I’d been in the last year, I felt as if I was going to throw up. The spot with the biggest location tag was Shadow Ridge.
“I thought he loved me,” Angie said quietly. “But now, I think the only reason he was with me was to get to you.”
I dropped my hand and stared at the fireplace, my mind frantically assembling the pieces of a terrifying puzzle.
“Say something,” Angie said.
“Honestly, I don’t know what to say. I need a minute to wrap my mind around this.”
