Never Doubt Me: Judge Me Not #2(34)

I’m floored. “Why not?”

She takes a deep breath. Cassie’s not crying anymore, but she still sounds upset.

“What if I go to the cops and it makes things worse?” she begins. “Paul is obviously mad I ruined his marriage to my mom. Besides, I’ve seen those crime shows. He didn’t do anything illegal. It’s just my word against his. If I tell the police what happened, maybe they’ll question him, yeah, but they can’t do anything, not really. There’s no proof he did anything wrong. And what if my telling the police makes that psycho even angrier? Then what? I’m scared, Kay, for myself and for my mom.”

Cassie has a point. It’s her word against Paul’s. Surely, he’ll deny he was anywhere near her. Needless to say, I’m officially lost here.

While I’m trying to think of an effective solution where there appears to be none, Cassie throws out that she needs to call Will and tell him all that has happened.

Calling Will is a very bad idea.

“Please don’t do that, Cassie,” I plead. “Will can’t do anything from here. Please, just talk to your mom. She can file a restraining order based on how Paul has been harassing you. And ask her to talk to your uncle. He can keep an eye on you and your mom, right?”

“I guess,” Cassie mutters.

“So you’ll hold off, for now,” I qualify, “on telling Will?”

Cassie promises she won’t call her boyfriend, but I have a bad feeling she’s just saying what she knows I want to hear.

“I gotta go,” Cassie says softly, and then she ends the call.

I immediately text Chase: Are you still over at the school? I think we may have a problem.

I gather my things and lock up the office. But by the time I reach the parking lot, I still haven’t heard back from Chase. My Neon is the only car in the lot, so I assume that he’s left work early as planned and that he’s either on his way home or already at the house.

But then again, maybe Chase is somewhere else entirely. I mean, why else would he not reply to my text? Maybe something turned up, something unexpected. It’d have to be important, though, for him to skip going home to check on Will and his new friend, Jared.

“Shit,” I mutter to myself.

Cassie could be calling Will at this very moment, getting him all worked up. And here I am, with no idea where Chase might be.

I try to call him before I leave the lot, but his phone goes straight to voicemail.

Still, I leave a message detailing Cassie’s call. “Maybe I’m panicking over nothing. I mean, maybe you’re home, after all,” I say hopefully. “I’m heading there now.”

When I reach the house, I pray Chase’s truck is in the driveway. But it’s not.

Chase definitely left work early, so where in the hell did he go?

As I park in my usual spot near the garage, I notice there’s a shiny black sports car parked around the side of the house. It’s a really nice car—a Jaguar. Will’s friend Jared’s car, I assume. It’s not funny, but I have to laugh. Chase thinks Cassie has what he terms a “too-nice-for-a-kid car.” Wait till he sees this flashy thing.

Unbelievable.

Shaking my head at the blatant display of wealth, I walk past Jared’s Jag and let myself in the house through the back door. When I step into the kitchen, I am greeted by a tall, gangly kid with a mop of messy dark hair.

“Hey,” he says from where he’s seated at the table, his long legs kicked out in front of him.

He’s alone in the kitchen; there’s no sign of Will.

“Hi,” I reply, making my way to the table, “you must be Jared.”

“Yeah,” he slowly replies, glancing up at me. “Who are you?”

“I’m Kay.” I smile. “I live in the apartment next door.”

His face lights up with realization. “Oh, yeah, you must be Will’s brother’s girlfriend.”

“That would be me,” I confirm as I glance around. “By the way, is Will around?”

Jared frowns and I know before he speaks that Cassie has called. Sure enough, he says, “Uh, Will’s girlfriend called, like, ten minutes ago. I could hear her crying. She was upset about something, so Will went upstairs to talk to her.”

“Damn,” I curse.

“Is something wrong?” he asks.

He seems like a nice enough kid, so I tell him the truth. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

As it turns out, things are indeed wrong—very, very wrong.

Will returns to the kitchen just as I finish speaking. His stressed-out expression, not to mention the way his lips are pressed together in a straight line, tell me all I need to know. Cassie has definitely told him about Paul. And just as I feared, Cassie sharing the unpleasant stalker-stepdad update with her overprotective boyfriend has set off a chain of events, the likes of which I soon discover I have absolutely no control over.

Where the hell is Chase? I think when Will starts freaking out.

He paces the kitchen floor like a caged animal, muttering things like, “I need to get the f*ck out of here. I should be in Vegas. Cassie needs me. She can’t handle this shit on her own. That motherf*cker is one sick dude. He needs to be f*cking put down.”

The whole time Will is ranting, Jared sits quietly at the table, staring down at his hands, his face obscured by his mop of hair.