Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 154595 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154595 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
“Tell us what’s going on, Maeve,” Isaiah said quietly.
“Wait, shouldn’t we get Eric here?” Immy asked. “To check her over?”
“I’m fine.”
None of them looked like they believed her.
“I’ll call him,” Jenner said.
Just as he left the room, a phone started ringing. Immy looked at it. “I’m sorry. It’s Cat.”
“It’s all right,” Maeve reassured her.
Immy answered the call. “Hey, Cat, I’m putting you on speaker.”
“Where is she? What the fuck happened?” Cat demanded. “I go for one facial and the world goes to shit.”
“Nothing has gone to shit, Cat. I’m fine,” she said tiredly. “Wait, where’s Squish?”
Oh my God! How had she forgotten Squish? If anything happened to him, then she was going to die.
“Didn’t someone get him out of the truck?” Sampson asked.
“I think he’s downstairs,” Isaiah said.
“I’ll get him,” Abe offered, slipping out. He returned quickly, giving the toy to her.
She hugged him tight with a sigh. Thank goodness.
“Maeve! Immy, turn me around,” Cat demanded.
Immy turned her phone with an apologetic grimace. Cat glared down from the screen at her. Then she gasped, sounding upset.
“Maeve, oh my God! What happened? Alejandro! Alejandro! Come here!”
“What? What is it?” Alejandro asked off-camera, sounding frantic.
“Maeve está herido! Necesito que mates a alguien!”
“What? What the fuck!” Alejandro’s face appeared on the screen. “How did you get hurt? And who am I killing?”
Cat was speaking rapidly in Spanish in the background. So fast that Maeve couldn’t keep up. This is why she hadn’t wanted her to know . . . at least not until later, once the bruise wasn’t so bad.
“How bad is my face?” she whispered to Immy as Alejandro tried to calm Cat down.
“Pretty bad,” Immy told her.
Great. She wished she’d had time to put on some make-up.
“Eric will be here soon,” Jenner said, entering the room again. “That Cat?”
“Yes, it is me,” Cat said, her accent pronounced. “Someone needs to tell me what happened. Now.”
“Yes, we’d all like to know what happened,” Sampson added.
With a sigh, she held Squish tight. “All right. It started with a bunch of roses. There was no note and I thought . . . well, I thought they were meant for someone else, not me. Then I kept getting this feeling of being watched. But I know that I can be paranoid so I tried to ignore it. Then the bunch of violets arrived. There was a note with them that said,
Roses are red. Violets are blue.
There is no one as pretty as you.
I mean, that was a compliment of sorts. I freaked out a bit, but I didn’t think it was a threat.”
“You should have called as soon as you started to feel someone watching you,” Alejandro said disapprovingly.
“Keep going, Maeve,” Jenner encouraged.
Maeve scratched at her cheek nervously. If Gray was here then he’d gently grasp her hand and pull it away. Then he’d try to settle her down. In typical Gray fashion, he’d probably tell her to stop.
Lord, she missed him.
It had only been a few days, but it was an ache in her belly.
“Maeve? You all right?” Abe asked, watching her carefully.
She gave him an anemic smile. “Um, where was I? Oh, the violets. Right. I still thought maybe it was harmless or that they weren’t for me. Nothing else happened for a while, then I got an envelope under my door. In it were photos of me that someone had taken. They’d drawn hearts around my face. One of them . . . one of them was even of me inside the place I was living. I don’t know how they did that as I was on the third floor.”
Alejandro said something in Spanish, sounding upset. Sampson looked like he was about to explode. Immy had tears in her eyes.
“Do you have the images?” Isaiah asked urgently.
“No,” she replied. “There was a note too.”
“What did it say?” Jenner asked, looking ill.
Immy was shaking so hard that she nearly dropped her phone. Reaching over, Maeve took it from her.
“Um, it said, shoot.”
“It’s all right, Maeve,” Jenner told her. “Deep breath in, let it out slowly. Just tell us what you remember. No pressure.”
It felt like a lot of pressure, but she had to try and remember.
“Okay, it said,
Little birdie, it’s time to play
Will you flap your wings and fly away?
Shh, don’t tell anyone
It will ruin all the fun
And I won’t be happy with you,
I’ve been watching you, it’s all I do,
Little birdie, I’m coming for you . . .”
She swallowed heavily against the nausea in her gut.
“Motherfucker,” Sampson said. “I take it you don’t have the note.”
“No. I packed them in my backpack. I left immediately, but when I was returning the key under the door of the building manager’s apartment, someone attacked me. It had to have been my stalker. He called me Little Birdie, and said how he was disappointed that I’d decided to run.”