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

up again. I unclasped my clutch and emptied its contents into a roomy black leather shoulder bag. I glanced at the block of sharpened knives on my counter, but I knew I couldn’t wield a blade outside the kitchen. Instead, I scanned the room for something heavy and breakable, and settled on a thick, black ceramic ashtray. I put that in my bag. Its weight was reassuring. I put on my flip-flops, left my studio, and locked the door behind me.
    I could have asked Diego to call the police. They may not have gotten my villain without a description, but they would have kept him away from me and taken a body off my hands. Still, I ruled out involving the law just yet. The likelihood that this man would commit violence against my family before I could get the police to protect them and track him down was very small, but greater than zero. If I had Diego call the police, he would know, and if he was a murderer, he was also part madman.
    He would know because after he hung up the phone, there was nothing for him to do but watch for my next move. He would see the police pull into my garage because he would be lying in wait nearby. If I was right, I could see how crazy he was for myself, just by setting foot outside.

 
    Five
    A man in a smart blue suit and polished brown oxfords leaned on the corner of the 850’s closed trunk, his feet crossed jauntily at the ankles, relaxed as a lizard on a rock. He held one of his elbows in a cupped hand and examined his fingernails, a sculpted interpretation of nonchalance. It might have passed but for the subject’s middling height, which forced him to keep his heels tense on the ground to maintain his noncommittal perch on the car. His glazed gold-and-chestnut hair parted right at the 30/70 line of a short forehead, falling into a tall, swept-back shell around his head, the gel-crusted crest of which you could bounce a ball on. His cool eyes, black or green or both, like the chitinous shell of a housefly, were downcast as he continued looking for grime and snagged cuticles. They held a devilish gleam that wasn’t uncharming, and he had a nose that could cut glass. He looked up with a slow, exaggerated raise of the chin, a lopsided smile, and an affected widening of the eyes that spread across his face as he heard my stomping footsteps. If he’d had a hat, he would’ve tipped it, no doubt.
    I stopped when his eyes met mine, and the slap of my rubber-soled foot on concrete boomed brassily around us. “You look exactly like you sound.”
    â€œThank you.” He pushed off the car with a backward thrust of his tailbone and his feet touched the ground with a soft pat.
    My throat felt dusty and my voice was on the verge of cracking. “Are you going to kill me?”
    â€œI would like to avoid it if possible.”
    â€œYou could have killed me last night.”
    He shrugged and tilted his head to look at his fingernails.
    â€œWho are you?”
    â€œYou can call me Humphrey.”
    â€œDo you have a last name?”
    He smiled. “Bogart.”
    I scanned the parking lot but Bogart and I were alone. It worried me that he showed himself, what it would mean for it not to matter that I could identify him. With my assailant before me, the ashtray in my purse felt stupid, pointless, a minute’s reach away. “What do you want me to do?”
    â€œI want you to come with me.”
    â€œWhere?”
    He shook his head.
    I tried to stall. “Who is that in my trunk?”
    â€œThat’s none of your concern, Miss Song.”
    â€œDid you kill him?”
    â€œTsk-tsk.”
    I looked at the ground and perked up at the sound of a door opening. A girl around my age came through it, a neighbor going to her car. It was a brief window, but it was there and it had a witness.
    â€œI won’t go with you,” I said with volume, and I took my car key out of my purse. I stepped quickly to my Volvo’s door and unlocked it.
    Suddenly there