How Many Stalkers Can One Girl Have
“There!” Mona exclaims, having wrapped a peacock print scarf so that it covers the worst of the bruise on Hanna’s forehead. “Gorgeous, with an air of stylish mystery.”
“I should start my own magazine,” Hanna suggests, flipping through an old issue of Vogue. “Have articles like, ‘Ten Cute Outfits That Won’t Show Bloodstains!’ and ‘Does this Head Wound Make Me Look Fat?’”
“I know you’re joking,” Mona tells her, “but I would totally subscribe.”
There’s a knock on the doorframe, and they both turn to see Caleb standing there with an uncertain look on his face.
“I’ll just give you two some privacy,” Mona offers, hopping off the bed. “I’ll go find your mom, or at least some new magazines.” She brushes past Caleb with a withering look. “I’ll be back in ten. If you lose her again, I swear they will never find your body.” She adjusts her purse strap and waves brightly. “Have fun!”
Caleb pulls a chair over to Hanna’s bedside and tentatively puts his hand over hers. Hanna stares at his long thin fingers dwarfing her own, then gently moves her hand away, folding it under the thin hospital blanket.
He looks stricken, like he’s been slapped. But he doesn’t protest.
“I found something,” he announces, pulling the iPad from the loft out of his bag. “I didn’t think it could wait.”
“If it’s that important,” Hanna replies, “we should call the others. We should get Spencer.”
“Spencer,” Caleb says, running a hand through his hair, “Isn’t speaking to me.”
“I’m sorry,” Hanna says. “I shouldn’t have dumped all that on you.”
“Don’t apologize,” Caleb replies. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I never should have taken off like that, I left my phone behind because I wanted to hurt you. But I spent the next week hoping you were going to show up and surprise me after all.”
“I couldn’t,” Hanna says. “I had to be in Miami.”
“I’m not having this fight again,” Caleb says, rubbing his temples. “But after last night, what you said, all that running back in the rain -”
“I wanted to feel like everything could have been different,” Hanna explains. “Everything! Like, my life could have been something else - something that wouldn’t have ended with me as the worm on a fish hook.”
“It can be different,” Caleb insists, taking her hand again. “Hanna, we can be different. We can do better this time. If I had still been there when you got back to the apartment -”
“We would have had make up sex and then spent a miserable three weeks in Europe, with me trying to organize a runway show from a different time zone and arguing because you wanted to go to the third art museum of the day and I wanted to hit the shops. I ran through the rain because I loved you, and I didn’t want to lose you. But you and I were on borrowed time. We just couldn’t admit it.”
“But last night - you said you never stopped loving me!”
“I know,” Hanna nods. “I just - I wanted to feel something besides scared out of my mind, okay? And I do love you! But love wasn’t enough to stop us from growing apart.”
“None of that matters now,” Caleb says, a pleading note in his voice. “We were happy once. We can be happy again!”
“After this is over?” Hanna asks. “Back in New York? You would be my escort to a white party without spending the whole night camped out on a bar stool looking constipated?”
“No, but I could wait for you at home. I could stay up late reading. Have a large pizza with extra cheese waiting on the table when you got home, because there’s only ever fancy snails on toothpicks for food at those things.”
Hanna chuckles, and squeezes his hand before letting go. “And if I’m talking to my friends about the difference between the kind of bag you want in Ibiza and the kind of bag you want in Paris, you wouldn’t roll your eyes? You wouldn’t call my coworkers the wrong names on purpose?”
“Those people, Hanna - they’re all so self-important. They act like everything they do is life and death. And it’s not. It’s frivolous and shallow. But if it’s what you want to do with your life - then I can tolerate them. If I have to.”
“I don’t want you to tolerate me,” Hanna says, sadly. “Or my world. I want to share my life with someone, not just my bed.”
“Are you going to marry Jordan?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
“I was happy. When Spencer told me about the two of you. I thought, at least he’s -”
“Caleb,” Hanna interrupts. “Please. I don’t want this to get ugly.”
His face reddens, but he nods. “Spencer’s never going to speak to me again, is she?”
“Well,” Hanna says, “next time I go missing, you can look for me in that shallow grave next to the Hastings azaleas. I’d totally deserve it, too.”
“She told me she loved me yesterday.”
Hanna is silent, as the weight of his words sink in. When she does speak again, her voice is wobbly with tears.
“When we were in ninth grade, my parents were fighting all the time. Huge shouting matches that would go on all night long. I was falling asleep in all my classes, ignoring most of my homework. We had this project to do for history, we were supposed to make a stupid diorama of what life was like in Pennsylvania for the Iroquois. So I blew it off, I didn’t do it. And when I walked into class empty-handed, Mr. Hennis said ‘Ms. Marin, if you don’t have a diorama, you will fail this class. What do you think your parents will say about that?’ And I - I just burst into tears. Until I heard Spencer pipe up and say that my project was already on display over by the windows. While I was sobbing, she grabbed a sticker and copied my handwriting and put it on her totally perfect and elaborate diorama that she’d been working on for weeks. She got a zero on that project, and I got an A+. I scraped by with a C- for the class, but Spencer’s grade fell all the way down to a B+. Her parents grounded her for two months. She almost blew her chance at being valedictorian.”
“She’s my best friend. She loved you. And I ruined it for her.” She blinks hard. “You should go.”
“Wait,” Caleb says. “I really did have something important to show you. I wasn’t lying about that, I just got distracted.”
“What is it?” Hanna asks curiously, wiping her eyes.
“Lucas has been keeping tabs on you. Close tabs.”
“Like he’s following my Instagram?”
“Like he’s following your every move. He must have known something was up when you asked him to be your fake alibi. I don’t know what his intentions were, but since he told us to check the iPad, I think he was probably trying to protect you. Except it backfired.”
“By putting him smack in the line of fire.”
“No,” Caleb says, shaking his head. “It looks like he got hacked. When ‘A’ got into the system to try and charbroil Aria, it looks like they accessed all of his other data, too. Everything that you said. Every plan that you made. They may have cloned his device, even, so that they could still listen in after he tried to reset the system. That’s probably how they knew that you were going to be in that motel room.”
“This sounds like a very stalkery form of protection,” Hanna opines, folding her arms across her chest. “He was listening to everything that happened in the loft? Everything?”
“We’d have to ask him, I guess,” Caleb shrugs. “I tried to get in to see him before I came here, but it’s ICU, they wouldn’t let anyone in except family.”
“I guess I’ll wait for him to get better before I kill him,” Hanna mutters ominously.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t shady,” Caleb argues. “But it might help us. He had a bunch of cameras on the church last night. He must have known something was going down.”
“So we have a picture of ‘A’? Dragging the mannequin inside?”
“Not exactly,” Caleb says, pulling up a video that looks to have been taken by a drone. “See the shadow in the belltower there? The dummy must have been in place ahead of time. It’s hard to say, but I’m guessing that when ‘A’ went down the bell rope, the motion of the bell sent the mannequin tumbling to the ground.”
“So who put it there? Who stuffed my phone in its pocket?”
“I’m not sure,” Caleb admits. “The cameras don’t catch anyone who looks out of place until after Lucas goes in.” He freezes the video as a black sedan speeds into view.
“Do you recognize this car?”
“No,” Hanna says. “Are you saying ‘A’ uses Uber?”
“This car has been following you, Hanna. For days. Lucas has video of it following you all over town. Every time you left the loft, practically. You never noticed it?”
Hanna frowns. “No. But doesn’t that mean it was probably whoever Lucas hired to watch me? How many stalkers can one girl have?”
“Whoever it is, they’re not with Lucas,” Caleb says grimly.
“How do you know?”
Caleb starts to play the video again. “Because they’re the ones who shot him.”
Hanna watches armed men burst out of the sedan, entering the church from the back moments before Spencer’s car screeches to a halt out front. Caleb freezes it as the mannequin starts to fall from the tower, switching to slow motion as the flashes of gunfire light up the windows.
Hanna sees Toby calling it in, pulling his gun and heading to the front door. Three men in suits burst out the rear of the church in a dead run seconds before he and Spencer go in.
“Wait a minute,” Hanna orders, sitting up. “Can you play that back again? Right when they’re getting in the car?”
Caleb replays the video, slowing it down even further and zooming in.
Hanna asks him to freeze it on a shot of the driver, sticking his gun back in his holster as he flings the car door open. Her face goes white.
“What is it?” Caleb asks. “Have you seen this guy before? Do you recognize him?”
“I’ve seen him hundreds of times,” Hanna says, horrified. “That’s Jordan’s driver.”