Infatuated (18 page)

I turned them over, one by one, and nearly dropped them when I saw my own eyes staring back at me. Quickly, I flipped through the rest. Half a dozen were of my face, or different pieces of it, like someone had made a jigsaw puzzle of me.

Me in the bar. Me outside. Me with Maxine at school.

For half a second, I tried convincing myself that Kale had somehow gotten or taken them, but that theory didn’t last more than a second when I saw him in a few of the pictures. The night he brought me my date after work, and one from his party.

“Oh, god.”

My hand trembled as I reached for the phone, my first instinct telling me to call Kale. To call Kale, to have him come over. To have him fix this…somehow.

My brain kicked in and told me to call the cops instead. As much as I liked and trusted Kale, what could he do with a handful of photos?
And what can the cops do with them?
I didn’t have the answer to that, but maybe they could get prints or something from them. Prints, like the ones I just put all over them. I immediately dropped the photos to the floor.

I had 9-1-1 dialed before I stopped myself from hitting
Send
. It wasn’t an emergency, not exactly. I could find a better number. They had non-emergency ones, didn’t they? I called information to get it. When I finally called and got a hold of someone, they promised to send a patrol car over. I paced by the door and cursed myself for potentially wasting their time.

Ten minutes later, there was a knock on my door. I looked through the peephole and saw two uniformed officers—one male and, thankfully, one female.

The female was full of reassuring smiles. Her partner wore a frown. I decided I’d rather talk to the woman than the guy.

“Um, you can come in. Can I get you guys a drink? Water? Soda—”

“We’re good, but thank you. I’m Officer Simms,” the woman said, “and this is my partner, Officer Michaels. You are?”

“Ally Sawyer.”

“And what’s the problem?”

“I found those,” I said, pointing to the pictures, “when I came home.”

Officer Simms picked up the pictures and glanced at them. After a few seconds, she passed them to her partner. “You don’t know who took them?”

I shook my head. “No.” Though I had a damn good idea.

“Who’s the guy in these?”

“My—my friend, Kale. Kale Wilder. But he didn’t take them.”

Officer Simms nodded. “Is anyone giving you trouble? An ex-boyfriend? Someone from school or work?”

“Yeah. I work across the street, at Hanson’s. There’s a customer who comes in and watches me. He—”

“Watches you?” Officer Michaels asked. The tone and expression on his face made it clear what he was thinking:
Irrational female
.

“Look, I came home and found these shoved under my damn door. I’ve been getting prank phone calls for over a month. This guy’s been following me around for even longer than that. I think he took these. He followed me to school yesterday and I saw him with a camera. The one of me outside the college with the redhead? That was yesterday.”

“Have you filed a report on this guy?”

“Not yet. It hasn’t been this bad until now. My friend—Kale—he has a cop friend that suggested I log everything. Everyone knows the guy. He lives around here, shops around here.”

“What’s the customer’s name?”

“Earl. Earl Gallen.”

Recognition flashed in Officer Michael’s eyes. I could have laughed.

“You know who she’s talking about?” Officer Simms asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know him.”

“Can’t you do something?” I dragged a hand through my hair. “Isn’t this stalking, or at the least harassment?”

Instead of answering, the woman cop asked more questions and took notes. Her partner watched me with a steady, unblinking gaze. “We’ll take these in and send someone tomorrow to talk to your neighbors,” Officer Simms said. “Maybe one of them saw who left these.”

“I told you who left them—”

Officer Michaels tapped them. “One of your friends probably took them and left them as a joke.”

“Not my friends,” I said through gritted teeth. None of them would do this.

He shrugged.

“Let me guess, you know Earl or his family, too?” I shook my head. “If you found pictures of your kid, girlfriend, or wife like this, in
your
home, you’d think they were a joke? Even—or maybe especially—from a friend?”

He said nothing, only glared at me before turning away. He went to the door and stepped outside.

“Does anybody in this town not know this guy?”

Quietly, the woman said, “Right now, we don’t have a lot to go on, but I’ll look into it, okay? I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do what I can. If this guy—Earl?—is harassing you, then maybe it’s time to look into getting a restraining order against him.”

“I’ve tried. I can’t
prove
anything, and half the people I talk to know him and think he’s harmless.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think he’s harmless, and I’m not ashamed to say he scares me.”

“Then you need to do something about it. You said he’s been calling and that you’ve been keeping a log of everything? If you have that, and you’ve saved the messages from the calls, that’ll help. Try getting a restraining order. My sister was stalked, so I understand your frustration. Keep trying.”

“I will. Thank you.”

She nodded. “I don’t blame you for being scared—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, either. It’ll make you more watchful, more aware of your surroundings. It sounds like you’ve been doing everything right. Keep at it and keep pushing.”

“Thank you,” I said again.

“Have a good night. We’ll be in touch if we have any questions.” She pulled a card from her jacket. “If you need anything else, just give us a call.”

I watched them walk away, and when they were in their cruiser, shut and locked the door.

Officer Simms said I was doing everything right, but if that was true, how was everything still going wrong?

How was everything getting worse?

CHAPTER 14

A
fter the police left, I wanted to call Kale. I picked up the phone to, over and over, but I didn’t see the point in waking him up, just because I didn’t—couldn’t—sleep. I left every light on, cleaned my apartment top to bottom, and watched TV to drown out all the sounds that had me jumping out of my skin.

When morning finally came, I texted Kale and asked him to give me a call. I called the police station after to try to find out what I had to do about getting a restraining order against Earl, but because we were in a small town and it was the weekend, they said I’d have to wait until Monday.

By the end of the hour call, I still hadn’t heard from Kale. I thought—expected—he’d call me before work, but he didn’t. When I still hadn’t heard from him by a quarter til ten that night, I snuck into the back room at work and called him. It went to voice mail.

“We need to talk, Kale. It’s important. I’m not the girl who goes all hysterical female on guys for not calling her back—though it would have been nice—and I’m not going to keep calling you until you answer, but—”

His phone cut me off. “Damn it!” I called back. “Stupid phone,” I muttered. “I’ll get to the point, then. When I got home last night, I found pictures inside my door. You were in them too and I thought you should know. Take care.”

By the time I hung up, I was pissed. Pissed that he hadn’t called back, pissed that he hadn’t texted. Pissed that Earl followed me around and watched me at work. Pissed that Earl was leaving pictures of me in my apartment now.

Basically, I was just pissed at everything, and at the moment, Kale topped the list. I knew a big part of it had nothing to do with him, that I was focusing on my anger for him because it was easier than dealing everything else on my mind. But…there were reasons, weren’t there? Valid ones. I was still pissed he hadn’t told me about the calls and notes. I was pissed because he wasn’t calling me back.

I was pissed he wasn’t here to hold me when I wanted that more than anything else.

Shoving my phone in my pocket, I went back out to the bar. I had on my Do-Not-Engage face that usually kept people (guys) from hitting on me. It worked on everyone, except Blondie who seemed to have forgotten seeing me at Rob’s party. I had a feeling he wouldn’t get a clue until it clobbered him. The way I was feeling, I’d probably be that clue.

“C’mon.” He shot me a drunk, lop-sided smile. “One drink.”

“I’m. Working,” I said for the fifth time.

“Why’re you such a bitch?”

“Because those are the pants I wore today.”

With his hands on the bar, he lifted himself up, as if trying to see the pants I had on. “I don’t get it.”

“It means,” a low voice drawled dangerously, “she’s not interested.”

Kale.

I almost smiled, but then I remembered I was pissed and kept my face impassive.

“All you had to say was you had a boyfriend,” Blondie muttered, sounding offended and sullen at the same time.

“I don’t,” I said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kale’s fist clench. I realized my words, how they must have sounded, and sighed. I hadn’t meant it like that. “Kale—”

Blondie shook his head. “Know what? Too high maintenance for me.”

I shook my head as he strolled away. And then I frowned when Kale did the same thing.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered.

“You’ve got a way with them, girl,” Laura said from behind me, laughing.

Yeah, I had a way with them all right. Attract the ones I don’t want and push away the ones I did.

The only bright side to my night was the fact that I had less than fifteen minutes until my shift ended and I could go home. And when I got there, I was opening the cheap bottle of vodka I’d bought earlier for Screwdrivers. If a girl couldn’t drown her sorrows when she was getting harassed by creeps and scaring off the non-creeps, when could she?

When my shift was over, I half expected—okay, hoped—to find Kale waiting outside. He wasn’t.

“Whatever.” I didn’t need a guy in my life right now, anyway. Not with some creep around.

Within ten minutes, I was home, my shoes were by the door, and I had poured myself a Screwdriver that was ninety percent vodka and ten percent OJ. I downed it in under a minute. I made another one and went to change clothes. I was halfway through my second drink—after forgoing the OJ altogether now—when someone knocked on my door.

I half-stumbled over to it, dimly thinking I should have eaten something first, and then peeked out of the peep hole. Anger and annoyance had me yanking the door open a little too hard. I ended up falling back on my ass and my cup went flying across the floor. “Fuck!”

Kale helped me to my feet and looked at me. “Are you drunk? You’ve only been off work twenty damn minutes, Ally.”

“Not drunk.” Not yet. “Slightly buzzed.” Not enough.

He shook his head at me. “And here I thought you weren’t a cheap drunk. What are you drinking, anyway?”

My eyes narrowed. “Vokda. Vodaka. Damn it. Vodka. I hate that word!” I had trouble getting it right entirely sober.

Without a word, he went to the kitchen and opened the fridge himself. I kicked my door shut as he pulled out both the pint of vodka and the orange juice bottle. “Shit. Did you forget it’s supposed to be more OJ than vodka?”

I lifted a shoulder in a shrug and then glanced at the cup I’d spilled. All that wasted goodness. Frowning, I went to the kitchen to get another drink. Kale pulled the bottle back when I reached for it. “Give me my drink.”

“Think you’ve had enough, babe.”

“I don’t think so.” I made a grab for the bottle. Kale, whose balance was obviously not impaired, dodged out of the way easily. “Damn it. This is my apartment and that’s my vodaka—vodka.”

“We need to talk.”

“Any conversation that begins with those words,” I started, attempting—and failing—to grab the bottle again, “is a conversation that can wait.” Never mind that I had used those exact words myself less than an hour ago.

I reached for the vodka again and lost my balance tripping over my own foot. Kale abandoned the bottle on the table to catch me. As soon as I was safe from falling, I ducked out of his arms and grabbed the bottle.

He shook his head. “You’re sneaky, even drunk.”

He sounded annoyed and impressed at the same time, so I decided to focus on the impressed half and grinned.

“Sit down so we can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk. I want to drink.”

“Ally…”

I leaned against the counter for support, pissed that my arms were shaking. “The last couple of days have not been the greatest. Between you and Earl, I just don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to think about anything.”

“And drinking’s going to help?”

“Without finishing the whole bottle? No.” I couldn’t see where my cup went, so I shrugged, twisted off the lid, and chugged a mouthful straight from the bottle. I winced slightly at the taste. “But for tonight, it beats being alone. It beats everything else.”

And he was ruining my buzz. He wasn’t supposed to be here. No one was.

I took another drink.

Kale grabbed the bottle from my hands and was pouring it down the drain before I could stop him.