Page 36 of Distress Signal

And called and called and called.

The first five times, it rang through to her messaging system.

On the sixth try, it had gone straight to voicemail, like someone had turned it off, which coincided with the loss of her location in Find My Friends.

I hated snooping. Lainey and I didn’t have secrets, but going through her computer felt…icky, made my skin crawl. Like she’d burst into the room any moment, catch me red-handed, and start screaming.

The police would do all of this, but I didn’t want there to be any surprises for myself. I wanted to be sure I knew everything there was to know.

Starting with her most recent journal, which I stuffed into my purse, untouched. I wasn’t ready to go there yet, but I knew I didn’t want the police to have whatever was written on its pages before me. The rest were back home in Tennessee, and I’d hand over the ones from the last seven years as soon as I got back there.

Deep in my bones, I knew without a doubt her creepy ass stalker was behind this.

Her messages didn’t yield anything I hadn’t already known, and I breathed a sigh of relief. There was our text thread, going back so far I gave up after a few minutes of scrolling. Some correspondence with clients, messages with friends and distant relatives.

Interspersed among all of those were several threads from varying numbers, none of which were saved under any sort of contact information.

That would’ve been too difficult when they changed so often.

Messages from her stalker.

UNKNOWN

I miss you.

I had fun with you.

Come back and let’s do it again.

Those were the first three, sent not long after we’d returned to Tennessee, and they’d all been fairly innocent at first. Unlike me, who had chosen not to share any personal information beyond my first name with Finn that night seven years ago, Lainey was more…trusting and had clearly given the creep she hooked up with her number.

I remembered when the first few came in.

“It’s fiiiiiine,” she said in a sing-song voice. “He’s harmless.”

Famous last words, I thought.

Things quickly took a turn when Lainey never responded.

UNKNOWN

You will be mine.

I will find you.

We’ll be together forever.

UNKNOWN

See you soon.

The last message had come over six months ago, but I found myself shocked by its tone. Lainey had claimed he’d left her alone after that, which, I could tell from my perusal of her messages, wasn’t a lie.

But she’d never shared the contents of the final message, or how ominous it came across.

We thought he was gone, that, after over six years of no response from Lainey, of her constantly blocking his numbers and social profiles—though that did little good—he’d finally given up and moved on.

Clearly, that hadn’t been the case.