Page 129 of Stalkers Anonymous

“What are you—”

They push right past me without waiting for an invitation. Tyler is first through the door. He stops in the middle of my living room and looks around at the walls. The string. The pushpins. The printouts. The maps and endless photos.

He turns back to me, his face scrunched into what I can only interpret as judgment.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, nodding. “That’s about what I figured.”

Jessica steps beside him and puts her hands on her hips, looking at one specific wall. The wall where I’ve pinned a full-size photo of Lars in the center, with red string radiating out from it to every known address and associate I’ve been able to confirm. She turns to me.

“Cole,” she says, in the calmest voice I have ever heard come out of her mouth. “Please sit down.”

“What is this—”

“Sit down, Cole.”

Every instinct hardwired into my brain tells me to stand and fight, to find out why the fuck they’ve barged into my apartment uninvited, but there’s a small voice in the back of my brain telling me this’ll go a lot faster if I shut the fuck up and listen. So I do.

The five of them arrange themselves around my living room like they’ve done this before. Tyler falls into the armchair across from me. Jessica makes room for herself on the coffee table directly in front of me, blocking my line of sight to the wall. Grant is standing by the window, scanning the street. Austen leans in the doorway with his laptop bag over his shoulder, and Zach is against the wall by the kitchen, arms folded.

“What did you tell Tyler?” Jessica asks once everyone is settled.

“Uhh…” I raise an eyebrow, looking to Tyler for answers, but he provides none. “I told him I needed three days.”

“You told him you and Hailey were on speaking terms again and you needed time to process.”

I’m unsure what she’s getting at, but I answer anyway. “Yes.”

“Were you lying?”

A sliver of the truth will get me through this. It always has with this group. “About Hailey? No.”

“About the rest of it.”

I open my mouth, then clamp it shut. What does she want me to say? And how the fuck does she know there’s more to the story?

Jessica’s eyes move slowly around my apartment again, analyzing everything. The wall. The whiteboard. The empty coffee cups. Her eyes eventually come back to mine.

“Cole,” she says. “We need to talk.”

I lean back on the couch uncomfortably. “About?”

She and Tyler exchange a look. A long one, and whatever passes between them only confuses me more. Why are they looking at each other like that?

Tyler silently nods at her, once, and Jessica turns back to me.

“About what kind of group you’re actually in,” she says.

Chapter Thirty-Two: Cole

“I’m not sure I follow.” I scan my living room and realize this looks a hell of a lot like an intervention, which makes me instantly sit up straighter.

Jessica breaks the awkward silence first. “IBSG is a real group, Cole. The things we do and talk about with Tracey are all real. None of that is a front.”

“Okay, so… What else is there?” I ask.

“There’s more to it than the meetings. So much more.”

“Check-ins. Buddy system. Accountability. I know, okay? I—”