A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(28)

She didn’t have a family to depend on or turn to—she only had herself. Even though she was alone, deep down inside she was still the same person. If her father called her and told her he missed her and wanted her to come home, she would have dropped out of school to go back home. Regardless of how many miles she put between them, he was still her father. And he was still a tool that could be used against her.

In the middle of July, Annabelle found herself sitting on a bench outside of the Arts and Sciences building doing some advanced research for her senior project. She was one of a handful of students who lived in campus housing year-round. Some of the professors usually felt sorry for the students that had nowhere to go during the summer months and gave them class syllabuses and outlines a few weeks early just to give them something to do on the quiet campus during the summer.

She was busy reading a study from Stanford about the impact of new technology on still photography and didn’t notice the man who sat down beside her.

He studied her for several long minutes, admiring the fact that she was so engrossed in her reading she hadn't even acknowledged his presence with a glance, a shift of her body, or a change in her breathing.

Everything he'd learned about her intrigued him. She'd be good at this job, maybe even one of the best. Now all he had to do was use his power of persuasion and she'd be his.

“Annabelle Elizabeth Parker, born April 25, 1981, daughter to Joe and Annie Parker,” the man spoke after a few minutes of silence.

Annabelle’s head jerked up at the first sound of his voice, and her fear at the knowledge he possessed made her skin crawl. Parker didn't think he looked like a crazy stalker; he looked like a professor. He appeared to be in his mid-forties. He had on khakis, a blue and white checkered button-down, and well-worn Oxfords on his feet. All he was missing was the tweed jacket with leather on the elbows. The thought made Parker laugh to herself. She figured maybe he was one of her new teachers this year and someone from Admissions had pointed her out. She calmed her racing heart with that thought.

“Do I know you?” she asked politely, just in case he really was one of her professors. She figured there was no sense pissing him off before the first day of class.

“No, but I know you,” he said conspiratorially with a wink.

Annabelle was raised by a cop; she grew up surrounded by other cops. She was taught at a young age not to trust or talk to strangers. This man looked at her like he knew everything about her. He studied her like he was looking for the hidden meaning of life. It left her feeling uneasy and just a little bit on edge.

She started nervously gathering her books and stuffing them into her backpack that rested on the ground by her feet, keeping her head down to avoid looking the man in the eyes. Annabelle quickly stood up and flung the pack over one of her shoulders.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have some friends I’m supposed to meet,” she told him as she started to back away.

“Your mother died from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia when you were seventeen years old," the man said, easing his arm to the back of the bench. "She was diagnosed a year earlier, and for your entire senior year of high school, you sat by her bedside and watched her die. She and your father were high school sweethearts and were married for eighteen years, three months and nineteen days the day she died."

The fake, polite smile Annabelle had previously plastered on her face quickly died.

"You spent eight months trying to nurse your father back to the land of the living, or should I say, out of the bottom of the bottle—to no avail. On an average, for those eight months, he drank twenty-five ounces of whiskey every single day. Now, it’s closer to thirty-five. But you wouldn’t know that since the last time you spoke to your father was the day you left for college, almost three years ago, the day he told you for the hundredth time how much he hated the sight of you. Only that time he called you by your mother’s name and you smacked him across the face.”

Annabelle’s blood had long since run cold as she stood there listening to a complete stranger tick off intimate facts about her life. She stood a few feet away from him, unable to move, clutching the strap of her backpack hanging from her shoulder so tight her knuckles turned white.

He sat calmly on the bench with his ankle propped up on the opposite knee, studying his cuticles.

“You have acquaintances, not friends. No one knows that your father is an alcoholic and you look so much like your mother you could have been twins. You have affairs, not love. There isn’t a man out there who could make you believe in happily ever after considering what you’ve witnessed with your father. You’ve slept with a total of four men and none of them know your middle name or the name of the town you grew up in which was Manchester Township, Michigan, by the way. Population: four-thousand-one-hundred-and-two.”

The rage and the embarrassment Annabelle felt made her want to lash out at this man.

“Who in the hell do you think you are? I’m calling the police, you psychotic f*ck.”

She turned, about to make a run for it, knowing a blue campus security phone was exactly one block away.

“You just filled out an application for a student loan totaling twenty-three thousand dollars, which is currently in the process of being denied by the Financial Aid department. You have exactly two thousand and thirty six dollars in your bank account, the sum total of all that is left of your mother’s life insurance policy. The bottom line, Annabelle Parker, you can’t afford to finish college.”