No one tells you when your life is at risk how time somehow defies all limits and moves both slower than counting every tiny piece of sand in hourglass and faster than driving over one hundred and fifty on the highway speeding towards a solid wall with cut brakes. That’s how Caroline felt as she found herself in another run in with her stalker. She’d made a mistake coming into this building alone, she’d underestimated just how much her stalker would be involved. Did he follow her here? Was it the perfect opportunity? It was all just more unanswered questions that ran through her mind as he pressed more and more pressure to her neck, her breathing as she tried to wiggle from his grasp as he used both his hands to subdue the tiny blonde until her feet no longer were on the shiny tile floor of this public restroom.
She just had to hold on long enough for Abel to enter the building. He would never leave her defenseless, she knew he’d been waiting for her to either return to the vehicle or call, and if she was lucky, Alexander, her stalker, would truly believe that Abel was waiting at another location listening in, so that he’d be able to surprise the man.
Caroline was trying to assess the situation, she knew he probably didn’t have a gun on him due to the way his pants were too tight and the sleeves of his white button up rolled up. So, if he was planning on ending her life right here and now, it would be something else. It’d have to be more manual than that. He’d have to do it with his bare hands, and something told her he’d delight in the fact. She tried to cough, her eyes watering from the pressure and her head spinning. She’d only got out one small “let me go” before the door was kicked open and in walked her husband in a way that’d she’d never really seen him before aside from acting in his music videos.
Her stalker sighed, she couldn’t help but notice the annoyance in his voice. She wondered what he was thinking, what game was he playing? It wasn’t until the click of the gun that he slowly lowered Caroline back to her feet, her heels making a slight click when they hit, it felt loud with how quiet the bathroom was despite being filled with four people. Caroline’s mind was racing, she was sure that he wouldn’t fight back, not in public, not like this. He was too worried about his reputation and that’s when it hit her. He was trying to make her seem more and more crazy, that Abel hurt her, or that she’d been another Hollywood starlet who lost her way. He was going to kill her, and either make it seem like some kind of suicide, maybe with drugs or maybe blame Abel. She knew that if Abel did anything to him at this time, it was just fuel to the fire of the narrative he was creating.
Alexander had raised his hands and took a step back from her, and as Caroline started catching her breath, she made a choice. She took a step to the side, just barely, so that she could look at her husband. And for a second, his arm stretched out and his finger on the trigger, she wanted him to do it. She wanted all of this to be over. She wanted to watch him fall to the ground and take his last breath because he’d taken hers for the last time. She wanted to move on from this, she wanted him to shoot him. She wanted to beg him to. She wanted to look him in the eyes and nod, tell him to end this nightmare for the both of them.
It didn’t take her long to shake her head and let that thought fly out the door like her purse did earlier. She knew that he didn’t have anything to live for, and took his life? It just gave Abel a jail sentence and Alexander satisfaction from beyond the grave that Caroline was all alone and Abel had paid the price for taking what he was so sure was made for him. So, instead of begging him to shoot, she looked at him. Her big brown eyes wide, eyeliner smeared from her eyes watering from the pain of not being able to breath. “Abel.” she said softly, her tiny voice echoing in the room. “Baby.” she said again, another step to the side, just enough to break him out of the intense conversation in only the way she knew how. “I wanna go home.” she whispered, her pleading letting Jordan walk from behind Abel towards her stalker.
Jordan put his hand on Alexander’s neck, gripping hard enough to leave marks of his fingers decorated along his neck. He looked at her as if to say “it’s only fair” because even though Jordan and Caroline fought, she was the little sister he never had and he loved Caroline. “Come on, Norman Bates, leave the pretty married girl alone and go back to f***ing your dead mom in the basement of a hotel, you f***ing psycho who’s lucky that your head isn’t decorating the pretty married girls nightstand.” he said, making sure he walked out.
They were able to go home, Caroline was quiet, forcing Abel to sit in the backseat with her. She forced him to hold her hand and tell her that it was all going to be okay. She was tired, but she wanted to see if she had found anything that might be of use since she’d almost gotten hurt again. Abel was worried about her injuries but opted for an at home doctor visit instead of forcing her to go to the hospital. It was amazing the things she could get done from their bedroom when money wasn’t an issue.
He’d set her up in bed with her favorite blankets, and all the animals in the bed. He was worried about her bruising googling ways to cover it up, worried that people would assume he hurt her and also she figured that it hurt him to look at it. That he felt that he’d failed in her safety but that wasn’t the truth, he’d saved her life. That’s what she’d told him when she kissed him, “you saved me.” she promised, begging with her big brown eyes to believe her.
She was sitting with ice on her neck, and IV in her arm and she was going through all the papers. Abel only allowed her to do so if she did so from bed, and he even casually put on Gilmore Girls on the large tv that she could see from bed. She figured it was to get her to rest, maybe to even sleep instead of obsessing over these files, but Caroline was motivated. She wanted to figure out if it had been worth it, if her begging to go alone hadn’t been a mistake, if they could find some piece of evidence that made sense.
It wasn’t until she was scrolling through bank statements that she noticed wire transfers sent to the same photographer over and over again, and it was enough to make her blood run cold. It was enough that Caroline grabbed her phone without even thinking. Caroline knew that name. She knew it very well. It was the same name as Birdie’s psycho ex boyfriend that had been doing nothing but running insane narratives in the media along with being almost as crazy as her stalker. He’d been paying him for months, maybe even years but she didn’t have statements to go back that far.
She quickly unlocked her phone and called her best friend, holding her phone with one hand and the paper with the other. It didn’t take her long to answer, she knew that she’d been hurt and was probably worried sick. “Birdie.” she said softly, her tone quiet and scared as she skipped answering the frantic “are you okay” questions and the “why didn’t you call me sooner?” and of course, the one she’d been waiting for, “have you lost your f***ing mind?” but she just repeated her best friend's name again, “Birdie.” she whispered again. “I need you to listen to me.” she said, pausing with a sigh. “I stole the bank statements for that LLC that bought the house near us, the one belonging to crazy pants. And I’m going through them, and I don’t know how to tell you this….but Will’s name is on here. Wire transfers for months and a decent amount of money.” she said, studying the numbers on the sheet of printer paper she was looking at. “760” she said softly, it was their little code. It meant that they were serious. They weren’t kidding. It was the name of the club that they’d met in so many years ago. It was a distress signal if needed, they’d say it if they needed to get away from someone. And now, it seemed that they needed to get away from two someone’s. “Can you and Harry come here? Abel won’t let me fly, but you need to see this…”
