Page 141 of Stalkers Anonymous

He’s not done with me, I’m sure of that. Unfortunately for him, I’m also not done with him. Lars Winters is about to learn that I bite back. Really fucking hard.

It’s been a full forty-eight hours since the Stalkers Anonymous meeting at Jessica’s house, and Cole hasn’t left me the entire time. Which has actually been amazing, because I’m still healing and he’s a phenomenal caregiver.

No surprise there.

Things are still weird between us, and he’s been sleeping on my couch… But it’s nice to have him around again. He makes it easy—too easy?—to forget just how much he spiraled.

I sent a message to Lars’s phone yesterday afternoon from a burner Austen gave me, with a script Jessica helped me write. The whole thing was crafted to play to Lars’s ego: I’ve been thinking about everything, I haven’t been fair to you, I should have heard you out before I made things worse with the police. Maybe we could talk somewhere private. Just us. Somewhere nobody else has to be involved this time.

I read it three times before I hit send. It only took him seven minutes to respond that he’d be there, and that I’d better come alone.

So now here I am, getting ready to use myself as bait to lure a predator into a trap. No one will hear him screaming out here, and there will be no one to answer his petrified pleas when I have him where I want him, scared and vulnerable. Broken and bleeding.

Cole and I are standing on a concrete path that runs beneath an old train bridge, a hundred feet south of the running trail, in a part of Fort Collins where the pavement disappears and the wide-open prairie starts. The train bridge is above us, on tall concrete piers that sink down into the dirt. There’s a footbridge between two of those piers, bordered on either side by a dried creek bed full of rocks and rotting branches.

The only light comes from the moon high above. Everyone else is staged in the shadows around us, waiting for Lars to show up.

“I’ll be in position before he gets here.” Cole’s voice is low and steady. He’s dressed in all black and has gloves on. Honestly, it’s kind of hot seeing him all dressed up like this, even given what we’re about to do. “Twenty yards behind you. You won’t see me, but I’ll be right there with you. If anything goes wrong that we can’t see or hear, you say Chewy. We’ve got you.”

I nod nervously, swallowing hard. “Chewy. Got it.”

My heart is racing, and my palms are sweating. I can’t stop watching the dark path ahead, waiting for him to appear before he’s supposed to.

“If you change your mind in the next ten minutes, you just say you’re done and we’ll come get you. We can be gone before he ever gets here.”

“I won’t change my mind,” I say, more to convince myself than him.

Fuck. This is a bad idea, isn’t it? Who in their right mind voluntarily agrees to this?

“I know.” He takes my hands, warming them in his. There’s a look in his eyes I’ve never seen before, and I’m just about to ask him about it when he says, “I love you, Hailey. Everything is going to be okay. Tomorrow, you’ll wake up and it’ll be a new day with new problems, but Lars Winters won’t be one of them.”

My lips part in shock, and after a few seconds of not being able to form words, I do the only thing that feels right, because fuck it, I need him right now.

Fisting his shirt between my hands, I pull him down to my level and crash my lips to his. He’s frozen for a second but quickly catches up, slipping one hand around the small of my back while the other grips my cheek and jaw, giving him better access to my mouth. The kiss is hungry and desperate, like we’ve been starved for each other. I open for him when his tongue sweeps across my lower lip, and he doesn’t hesitate to devour me.

I’ve spent every night since our fight dreaming what it would be like to taste him again, and now we’re here. Everything, good and bad and worse, has led us to this raw, messy, beautiful moment.

“I love you, too,” I whisper when we finally force ourselves to break away, both of us panting. “We’re going to talk about this later.”

“Okay.” His voice is barely audible. “I’ll be right behind you.”

He presses a soft kiss to my forehead and slips into the shadows behind me as I step onto the footbridge.

I stand with my hands in the pockets of my jacket, my breath clouding in front of me as I wait. I don’t dare look around for the others. I have to act like I’m alone.

Based on our game plan, I know Grant’s up on the train bridge itself, lying flat with two cameras and a long lens. He’s been up there since eight, when the last train passed. Austen is in the van down the access road, with eyes on every angle through Grant’s various feeds. Zach is somewhere in the dark, doing whatever it is Zach does. I’ve stopped trying to figure that out because he’s too mysterious, and really, I’m not sure I want to know. Tyler’s in his van a few hundred yards out on the access road, waiting for the green light to roll in once it’s done. Jessica is twenty feet to my left, behind the closest concrete pier.

I stand there for what feels like forever, but is actually only two or three minutes, before I hear footsteps.

A figure resolves at the north end of the path, walking up from the running trail. Hood up, hands in his pockets.

It’s him.

I knew it would be him, but it still makes everything in me want to jump straight into fight-or-flight mode, with flight being the more attractive option. My pulse thunders in my ears. I want to run.

But I don’t. I refuse. I will not cower to this man.

He crosses onto the footbridge and pushes his hood down. He’s smiling. Because of course he’s fucking smiling. He’s too cocky to think I’d be brave enough to set him up.