by A. R. Licht
She shook her head, pressed her palms to the side of her face, “I don’t think so.”
He moved toward her, careful to step over a stack of books that had fallen over, and sat next to her on the edge of the couch and touched her head. He moved her hands aside and pulled her face toward him, forcing her to look at him.
“You can tell me.”
“I don’t even know where to start,” she said, realizing how all of this must look to him.
“At the beginning.”
“How cliche of you,” she said.
“But, it works.”
She took a breath, opened her mouth, as her cell phone dinged. She picked it up off the back of the couch and saw that there was a text message.
She opened it, thinking it would be something from Abby or Brian or her mom. Instead, it was a blocked phone number and they had sent a photograph.
It was of her, on the couch. Phil sitting next to her, her face between his hands.
“No!” Kate said in a shrill voice. She threw the phone away from her as if it were about to grow spikes and inject her with a deadly virus.
“What? What is it?” Phil said, concern for her clouding features. He picked up the phone
which had tumbled to the floor and saw the picture. He looked up toward the angle the picture had been taken from but the curtain was closed. “How?” He said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t stay here anymore, we need to go. I need to get out of here now.”
“Who sent this?”
“I’ll tell you in the car,” she said, spurred to action. She picked up the bag she usually took with her when she had to rush to make the next flight out and started tossing things into it.
By the time she added the laptop to it and zipped it closed, Phil had dressed and was putting on his shoes. “Should we go to my place?”
Kate quickly dressed but left the door open, talking to him through it. “I don’t know if that would be wise.”
She kicked herself for pulling him into this. Once again, she had been selfish and it had
backfired. They are out there watching and now they know just how much Phil means to her.
Chapter 21
Essex, Maryland - April 21st
Phil is staring at something on the wall. His body still, his back to her. It was eerie seeing him like that, almost as if she could reach out and touch his shoulder and he would turn to face her, but there would be something wrong with his face. Like he wasn’t Phil anymore.
Apprehensive, she said, “What’s wrong?”
He put his hand out to an oddly placed light panel next to the window and flipped the switch. Nothing happened. He flipped it up and down, then said, “What does this go to?”
Kate wasn’t sure, she wasn’t even sure if it belonged there. “I don’t know.”
“Has it always been here?”
“I think so... maybe.”
“Do you have a screw driver?”
Kate found a phillips screw driver in the miscellaneous drawer and brought it to him. Phil
unscrewed the plate, pulling it away from the wall. The entire switch came with it. There was no recessed box or a hole in the wall where the wires would attach to it.
“This isn’t a real light switch, Kate. I think this is a fake with a camera in it. I don’t know much about them, but I’ll bet whoever is watching is nearby.”
Kate stared at the thing in his hands, not wanting to touch it. Longing to already be in the car driving away from this place.
“Do you have a stalker problem?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, we should call the police. We shouldn’t leave. I’m here, I’ll protect you.”
She remembered how he had been there for her in the past, back when she'd endured the notes and the repeat phone calls from a guy she had been nice to once and did not comprehend they weren't soul mates. A time before they'd been intimate, and she felt a rush of emotions toward Phil.
But, out loud she said, “No, I don’t know how deep it goes. I want to leave.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ll tell you in the car.”
“You should tell me now.”
Her eyes flicked back to the false light switch he still held, then shook her head. She didn’t know who was listening or watching and what they might do if she explained everything to Phil.
“I shouldn’t tell you at all. I’ll handle this. Why don’t you go home?”
Phil looked hurt. He set the switch down, “Is that what you want?”
No. “Yes.”
His eyes searched hers, “Please don’t push me away. We’ll go, I only wanted to resolve whatever this is so you can feel safe. That thing,” he gestured at the switch, “is only a step toward something worse.”
She agreed, “That’s why you shouldn’t be involved.”
“Too late.”
She held up a finger, walked away, returned with pen and a piece of paper. She wrote, “Please say out loud that you’ll back off. That you’ll just take me to get my car and that you’ll go home.”
He frowned, wrote, “But I’m not going to leave you.”
She wrote, “I don’t want you to, I only need them to think you will.”
“Them?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Promise?”
She nodded.
“Fine,” he said out loud, “I give up. Just let me take you to your car and I’ll go home. I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you really want.”
“Thank you.”
In the lobby, she checked the mail on their way out, but there was nothing of interest. Except for an invitation to Abby’s baby shower from her mom. She tucked it in the bag and they left the lobby.
The sun had not risen yet, but the pre-dawn sky had a purple tint to it. Fog had crept in since she last was outside, standing on the balcony. She looked toward the back of the building where she’d seen the orange glow of a cigarette butt. Were they still back there waiting?
They made it to Phil’s car and got in. He started the engine, and the lights came on. This felt like she was dreaming it. A wave of exhaustion hit and all she wanted to do was curl up in bed next to him again.
She scanned the parking lot for another car engine running, but they seemed to be the only people awake at this hour. Phil pulled out of the space and maneuvered the car toward the road, Kate watching for the orange glow as they passed the side of the building.
“Where are we headed?” Phil said, stopping at the street.
“Can you just drive for now?”
“You mean just take random streets just for the sake of driving?”
“Please.”
He turned left onto the main road. She kept her eye on the side mirror, watching for someone turning behind them. She looked to the side streets for headlights but didn’t see any. When she checked the side mirror again, a car had appeared behind them. It seemed to hang back just far enough so that when they came to a stop light it would slowly creep up.
“Turn left,” she said.
When the light turned green, Phil signaled and cut into the left turn lane and they changed direction. The car behind continued straight.
“Do you think we’re being followed?” Phil said.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to tell me about your stalker?”
“I don’t even know where to begin, but I’ll do my best. Bear with me if you can, I do have
evidence to back up what I’m about to say, but I need internet access to share it with you and so that part will have to wait.”
“Okay.”
“Promise me you’ll try to have an open mind.”
“Okay, I promise.”
As Phil drove farther and farther out of town, edging toward Baltimore on surface streets, she began with the background of the massacre. She explained how it had been her first national broadcast, that she was nervous to the point she’d wanted
to throw up, and how all of the things that seemed out of place were things she pushed away as being naive.
It wasn’t until her later experiences with real death that she truly began to wonder if something from Alkin were amiss. She laid bare her suspicions, and then shared a description of the video from the email an anonymous sender had given her. She shared her suspicions and speculations that followed after. She brought him up to speed from there, about being fired, about Abby.
“The rest, you know. I’m really sorry I’ve drug you into this, I’ve been so selfish,” she said, still keeping an eye on the side mirror.
“I have to admit, I’m still pretty skeptical about all of this. Granted, you might have picked up a stalker along the way but they might be playing off of your fears by feeding into this hoax thing. Think about it, how intricate such a thing would have to be to make it work. All for one moment? For what purpose? That’s a mighty expensive event just to make a point. And if you’re wrong, can you even begin to imagine how that would make your network look? How insensitive that would be to the victim’s loved ones? I can imagine Jack was concerned about a lawsuit.”
“Do you think I haven’t considered all of these things?” Kate said, hurt that he was immediately against her, his tone of voice like that of a father reasoning with a child. Nothing irked her more than when he did this, and the thought that this might never change made the age difference between them all the more apparent.
“I wasn’t sure if you did. The way it sounds, you have presumed it was a hoax all along.”
“Actually I had a really hard time swallowing the idea, it took me a while to come around. In fact, if it hadn’t been for that rehearsal video I never would have looked deeper into it.”
Phil scoffed, “Now you’re calling it a rehearsal video?”
“I’ve begun to think of it that way, yes.”
“Why?”
“Because there was no urgency. No need to keep quiet, or stay hidden. There were no bodies loaded into the back of the ambulance. Of course I only had a ten second chance to see this, other things may have transpired-“
“So, you're just making assumptions.”
Kate felt irritation drain away any hope she had that he might listen to her as a reasonable sane person.
“I had hoped you might give me the benefit of the doubt, as I said I had a difficult time coming to this conclusion. I have questioned my own motivations and if I am losing my mind. I’m a naturally curious person and I enjoy getting to the root of a problem. To me, I have only just scratched the surface of whatever it was that took place in Alkin, North Carolina. I have explained this three times before, and two out of the three times I was proven right. The third person fired me for trying to get at the truth to break a story about it.”
She reminded him of Abby and what the person had said to her sister in the hopes of relaying it to Kate. Then the break-in, and finally the photograph. “It doesn’t jive with the stalker theory, it goes deeper than that.”
Phil was quiet, the sound of the sections of pavement hollow thuds beneath the tires.
Finally, she said, “If you don’t believe me, that’s your right, but I would hope you would give me some credit.”
“You’re right, and I apologize. I can see this is something you have been dealing with for a while. I do believe that you believe it is a hoax, and I can only guess that time will either prove me a believer or a dissenter.”
“I can accept that, for now,” she said, stung.
“I want to see these videos.”
“Starbucks has free wifi.”
“I’m hungry though.”
“Okay, Joe’s Hammock makes great omelettes and they have wifi.”
“Is that south of Main?”
“About a mile or so, yes.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Chapter 22
Baltimore, North Carolina - April 21st
They sat in a booth, on the same side of the table, and placed their order. Phil downed the first cup of coffee alarmingly fast. Kate realized that the man must be exhausted. He might even be nursing a hangover.
She felt fine, the B-Vitamins and water must have helped, even though she’d taken them late in the game.
The waitress refilled their cups, Kate opened the laptop, connected to the restaurant’s wi-fi connection, and inserted headphones into the jack. It took her some time to sift through the videos until she’d found the right ones. By then, their food had arrived and Phil was talking about a memory he’d had when his father bought him here.
“It was early like this, and dad wanted french toast before we went fishing. I’ll never forget the look he gave me when I ordered pancakes, french toast, hash-browns, eggs, a sausage patty, blueberry waffles, and an orange juice. I think he almost lost his cool, but he let me place the order. When the food came, I ate every last bite of it and the rest of the way to the ocean he kept expecting me to get sick. I never did. To this day he still teases me about it.”
Kate laughed, “Well, you were a growing boy.”
“That’s true. I did grow four inches that summer alone.”
Kate waited until they’d finished their food before she handed him the head phones to let him see what she had seen. She played each video for him, then showed him the photograph and the emails.
“Okay, I can see it now. I don’t like it though, gives me the creeps,” Phil said.
“Same here. I mean, how deep does it go?”
“So there were FBI agents involved and police officers- like the one who got shot. Then the victims and their families...” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“Then you have the woman I saw in California.”
“Yeah, that was weird the way she took off once you pointed it out and didn’t drop it like I’ll bet she hoped you would. What do you think she was doing out there?”
Kate shrugged, “Beats me. The only thing I can think of is that she was in Los Angeles, the location of Hollywood and the movie sets. What if she had been auditioning for something?”
“I can’t see these people wanting to have a public profile though.”
“No, but if they used prosthetics and had enormous acting skills they could potentially do both careers.”
Phil leaned back, setting the headphones on the table and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t like this at all.”
“I’m sorry.”
Phil’s voice became sharp, “Don’t apologize again for bringing me into this. I want to be here. Yes, I’m seriously freaked out because look what they did to Abby and how they broke into your place, but I’ll be alright. Its you I’m worried about. How far will they go to silence you?”
“That’s not a pleasant thought.”
“No.”
Phil put his arm around her, pulling her closer to him. He kissed the top of her head.
She closed her eyes and leaned into him, glad to have him on her side. Glad he took the time to hear her out before discounting her.
The waitress came and took their empty plates, refilled their mugs. Kate said, “So, now what?”
Phil took out his cell phone and made a call. “Hello? Hey, Kaitlyn. Yeah, I’m up early today, hope I didn’t wake you. Well, that’s why I’m calling. I’m going to need a few days off because I’ll be out of the office with a new author with a great lead on a story. Sure, can you have Beckett take care of that for me? Perfect.”
He gave a to-do list for the office before hanging up. Then he said to Kate, “Okay, Boss. I have three days. What do you want to do with them?”
Go back to sleep with you next to me, wake up somewhere tropical and forget this whole thing. “I think the logical thing to do is to go back to Alkin, North Carolina. Back to where it all began.”
Phil nods, “I thought you might say that. Looks like you’re in luck,” he jiggles the keys, “I’ll be your chauffeur.
Chapter 23
Alkin, North Carolina - April 21st
Hurricane Denise i
s all over the airwaves. The storm promises to arrive in a matter of hours, the warnings to leave (if possible) an urgency reflected on the highways heading west. Kate and Phil are one of the few heading east.
“Maybe we should wait,” Phil said, “Go to Alkin after the storm passes.”
“We still have three or four hours, I’ll bet we can be in and out before it hits.”