Chapter 13: The Stalker Story

Nobody on the lawn moved.

Kendra's tears had never stopped. She just turned them, like a lamp, toward the phone.

"I didn't want to say it in front of everyone," she told the camera. "He found me. He's always found me."

"Kendra," Gabe said.

"He bought a house across from my best friends." Her voice broke on friends. "Do you know how that feels?"

"He bought it two months ago," I said. "You moved into mine five weeks ago."

Colby swung round to me. "Stay out of this."

"It's my lawn, Colby."

I held up my phone.

"Her code opened my empty house ten times before any of you moved in. She picked the house, and then she picked the window."

"Colby asked me to measure," Kendra said.

"I did not," said Colby.

He said it slowly, and it surprised him.

Kendra's face didn't change, but her hand did. It closed on the edge of her cream sleeve.

Brent came down the walk with his chest out. "I don't care whose code it was. That man put her in the hospital."

"Which hospital?" Gabe asked.

Brent opened his mouth and shut it again.

A siren whooped once at the end of the block.

The woman with the stroller was waving two police officers across the grass.

Somebody had called before the first insult was thrown.

The younger officer took Kendra by the elbow and walked her toward the curb. The older one stopped in front of Gabe.

"Sir. Ma'am. Who lives where?"

I told him. Then I put my phone in his hand and let him scroll.

He read the lock log.

He read the first page of the decree, with the petitioner's name on it and the date.

He looked at the photographs of Gabe's porch, shot from my bedroom window, and he went back to them twice.

"Who took these?" he asked.

"She did," I said. "From my bedroom. While I was holding the ladder."

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