The Stalker

Chapter 1-1

Chapter One

Did anyone else slip out of bed in the morning planning to kill someone?

As Alison stared at the list of names in her journal, she underlined Belinda Lee’s again in red, picturing her perfect smile, perfect body. Belinda wrapped every guy around her finger, and every one of them had believed everything she’d said. She’d thrown Alison under the bus with lies and more lies to save her own skin.

It seemed her entire life had been a series of people believing she was an easy target, a scapegoat who would never fight back.

Her pen hovered over the page again. She had to remind herself that Cassie Arnold—scratch that, Cassie Baker—shouldn’t be on the list. She crossed out her name and then circled the two columns, which contained the names of everyone who had hurt her with lies and stories, targeting her just because of who she was: someone who could never fit in.

But Cassie had never done that. Her only crime had been falling in love with Brady.

There was a knock at her bedroom door, and she closed the red hardcover book and shoved it in her bedside table just as the door opened. There was her dad, Ryan. She wondered whether she would still feel like she did now, as if life was against her, if she’d been raised by him instead of Wren, a man who’d loved her but hated her mother.

He had been twisted, sick—likely why she was the freak she struggled not to be today.

“You could wait until I say to come in, you know,” she told him, wondering if sarcasm and nastiness dripped from her voice.

Her dad raised a brow, and then there was a tug at his lips. Of course, he was fighting some amusement at her expense. “Then you’d never answer,” he said. “Figured you were either sleeping or ignoring the world. I see it’s the latter. Everything okay, kiddo?”

There it was, the fatherly concern she had to remind herself was normal. He lingered in the doorway, his hand on the frame, dressed in his ranger uniform, already packing his gun.

“Fine,” she said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Oh, maybe the fact that she was still stuck in her misery since seeing Belinda Lee just the day before. She had walked into the Bluebird, the bustling restaurant Alison had worked her ass off at for the past year, doing all the s**t jobs to try to get the coveted evening waitress position, where the tips were high and the hourly pay was a dollar more. Belinda had walked in and landed the job after just five minutes with the manager. It had been just one more kick to the head.

“I thought you and I could snag breakfast together this morning and talk and catch up,” Ryan said. “Your mom is across the street with Charlotte. The two of them are working on Marcus’s campaign.”

Right, her uncle was running to keep his job as sheriff. It seemed her dad was ready to poke his nose into her business.

“I’m not really hungry,” she said. “I have work.” In six hours.

Her dad angled his head and stared at her with those deep O’Connell blue eyes. He seemed at times to know what she was thinking and feeling. But maybe that was just her imagination. He didn’t move or look away, though.

“Pretty sure you work the dinner shift,” he said. “It was a big deal last week when you no longer had to work the breakfast and lunch crowd for a pittance, as you put it, of tips. You’re in the big leagues now. Or has something changed? Are you back working the early shift?” He crossed his arms as he leaned against the doorframe with seemingly no intention of walking away.

She tried to figure out what to say. She didn’t much like being caught in a lie, and she wished her grandma were around to talk to and just make her feel better. But she was just someone else who had left her.

“Fine,” Alison said. “But I’m not ready to eat breakfast. It’s too early.”

“Nonsense,” Ryan said. “Get dressed. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” He gestured toward her as he took a step past the doorway. She knew she was frowning, but he didn’t seem to notice. “We haven’t had much time to talk, and it’s time to check in, since you haven’t been around for family night this week. If left to your own devices and given space, you’d continue to be stuck in your head, miserable, gathering enough rope to hang yourself, as I can see from your face now.” He glanced to his watch and then back to her. “Say, ten minutes, downstairs. I’ll warm the truck.”

“What? Wait, you mean we’re going out?” Now she was sitting straight up, alarm tightening her chest. She was wearing a baggy nightshirt on her messy bed, and her image in the dresser mirror revealed bed hair and unwashed makeup from the night before.

“Yeah, breakfast out,” he said. “You have time. We’ll talk, catch up, and you can tell me everything that’s going on in that head of yours. Namely, you can explain why I’m hearing second-hand that you applied for an apartment rental at the Carlyle and didn’t bother saying anything to your mom and me. So come on, get up, and clean up and get dressed. You have ten minutes. See you downstairs.” Then her dad tapped the door frame and was gone, walking away.

She listened to the creak on the stairs, a sinking feeling in her stomach as she said, under her breath, “Shit.”

“Yeah, I heard that,” Ryan called out. “Ten minutes, Alison. Get your butt in gear.”

She wondered now how much more he was listening to when she thought he wasn’t. As she climbed from bed, she was stuck on one question: How had he found out about her applying to rent an apartment? She hadn’t told anyone when she spotted the for-rent sign, called the number, and filled out an application that didn’t include her parents’ names for references, yet he seemed to know even though she had yet to hear back from the building manager about whether her application had been approved.

Right, just one more person who was messing with her.