Read Online Follow Her Home by Steph Cha - Free Book Online

he tiptoed toward his victim. He caught up to the tall redhead and, with a sudden fast-forward flourish, looped him from behind, kicked out the backs of his knees to get him to bend down to where he could pull up on the belt, and yanked hard and steady while the soon-to-be corpse kicked the concrete beneath him. Midstrangle, the killer saw my car pull up in front of Lori’s house, watched as I watched her to her door, watched as I almost left, watched as I watched the BMW, watched as I lurked solo in the dark street, poking into other people’s business. Maybe his eyes, gleaming and bloodshot in the velvet warmth of the night, were fixed on me as he felt the body in his arms fill with death as with so much cement. Maybe he was watching, worrying, and missed the moment when his victim made the binary leap from 1 to 0. I closed my eyes and watched him watch me as he dropped the body and crept, sliding as if he had no feet, across the street. His hand disappeared into a deep pocket and came out holding a heavy flashlight. Maybe when he caught up to me and brought the weapon down on the back of my head, he wielded it with a wrist stiffened by resentment that my interference had deprived him of his victim’s crossover moment.
    Then what? He must have gone through my purse at some point, gotten my keys, and lugged the body to my trunk. Why? So it wasn’t his problem anymore? No—a corpse in my trunk wouldn’t make me the murderer, not in a competent policeman’s eye. It had to be a message, a drastic way of saying, This is what I can do.
    I pulled back the shower curtain, grabbed the towel, and gave myself a rough, quick pat-dry before stepping out of the misted warmth and onto the sterile linoleum floor. I swept to my closet to swap the towel for a navy thong and a loose gray V-neck, dressing with Olympic speed. By the time I grabbed my MacBook and plopped back onto the couch, the drenched ends of my hair had left dark wet splotches on the front of my T-shirt. I opened up the laptop and woke it up by hitting the space bar. It gave a brief whirring groan and was at my service. I entered my password and opened a Web browser.
    I would have to count on my computer being secure. It was one thing to put a wire on a phone, and quite another to monitor e-mail on a password-protected laptop. I clamped my teeth together and hoped I was right.
    I opened a new message and addressed it to [email protected]. It was just past eight thirty in the morning, and I estimated the chances of Luke being awake as fifty-fifty, solely because of what had happened during the night. I added [email protected] to the recipient list. I needed to reach Luke, and I wanted Diego’s advice.
    I typed: “Hi guys, I’m in a pretty urgent situation right now, and I want to talk to you in person. Diego—I know you’re up. Could you call Luke for me and make sure he’s getting this? Can we meet up as soon as possible? I’m ready to leave my apartment whenever. I don’t have a phone.”
    I thought about e-mailing my mom and found I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spoken to her. We were never officially out of touch, but I could go about my days and realize I hadn’t heard from my family in months. For now, I would do what I could to keep my mess out of their lives.
    I decided to start getting ready. I had to leave the building, and I didn’t want Luke and Diego to be seen coming in. I found a black padded bra in the folds of my unmade bed and put it on under my T-shirt, feeding the straps through the armholes and hooking it in the back. I pulled open the bottom drawer of my dresser and found a pair of denim shorts and threw those on. When I sat back on the couch, there was a message from Diego in my in-box. “Come over whenever you want. I’m not getting through to Luke right now but I’ll try again in a few minutes. Is everything okay?”
    I closed my laptop and got