Follow Me(83)

I took a deep breath and glanced down at my notes. On the table beside my legal pad, my phone screen lit up, Audrey’s name visible. Messages started appearing on the screen, one after another. I tried to ignore them, tried to focus on my notes, but the word “help” caught my eye.

“Catherine,” Bill hissed at me. “You’re up.”

I lifted my gaze sharply, reminding myself of the import of what I was about to do, but my concentration was shot. I couldn’t stop thinking about that “help.” Did Audrey need me? Did this have something to do with the noises she claimed she’d heard in my apartment? I had assumed they were Max, depositing his flowers or whatever he had decided to do, but what if it wasn’t? What if Audrey was in trouble?

The argument I’d exhaustively practiced left me; it simply vanished from my head. I felt Bill’s eyes burning holes through the back of my suit jacket, no doubt wondering why he had entrusted something so important to such an awkward loser.

Cat got your tongue? Emily Snow taunted.

I opened my mouth and forced out words. They weren’t the words I’d planned to say, and my voice was thin and tremulous, like that of a child rather than a competent professional. More than once, the judge had to ask me to speak up. When I flubbed a case holding and the judge interrupted to correct me, I knew it was over. I wanted to melt into the worn carpet. It took every ounce of fortitude I had to finish the argument. As I returned to my seat, I looked to Connor for sympathy, but he couldn’t even meet my eyes.

And the worst part was that when I checked my phone and read Audrey’s text messages, they were just something about not being able to sleep and needing to talk about Max.

Goddamn Audrey.

She was my savior and my executioner. Without her, I never would have gotten along in the sorority, never would have had any friends or any fun. But without her, I might have succeeded today. If she hadn’t distracted me at the last minute . . . She knew how important this trial was to me. She knew, and still she texted me with this self-obsessed nonsense. I didn’t know why I was surprised. Audrey had always thought about herself first and foremost.

She would never change. So I had to.





CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX





AUDREY


I was exhausted. After last night’s scare, I hadn’t slept well, and had claimed a migraine headache so I could leave work early and spend several more hours unsuccessfully scouring the internet for amateur paparazzi photos of myself. I sent Cat another text, begging her to call so I could talk this through, and then opened a bottle of wine I found in her kitchen. I drank one glass of the velvety cab before pouring a refill and carrying it upstairs to the bathroom. I drew a warm bath, sprinkled in some lavender bath salts I pilfered from her cabinet, and then eased into the claw-foot bathtub, exhaling audibly as I leaned my head against the gentle slope.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax, but all I could think about were those damn photographs. I’d been unable to re-create Max’s reverse image search, and I couldn’t decide whether that should reassure me or not. On the one hand, it was a relief to not find any creepy stalker pictures of me on the internet. On the other hand, where the hell had they come from? If I couldn’t find them in a concentrated search, how could Max have innocently stumbled upon them? Either he did a much more intensive dive into my online footprint than he wanted to admit, or he was lying about their origin.

Beneath the warm water, my skin prickled in gooseflesh, and I gulped at the wine and returned to the question that had been nagging me ever since I first saw them. What if Max took those photos? It was so hard to believe that someone who looked at me as sweetly, as tenderly as Max did could be the one stalking me. But was that any harder to believe than his story about how he’d found them and enlisted the help of some superhacker?

I knew I was too emotionally invested in this and needed someone to help me think rationally. I needed Cat. Impatiently, I glanced to the floor for my phone—surely Cat would return my text messages soon—and realized I’d left it downstairs.

I was debating getting out of the tub to fetch it when I heard the unmistakable sound of a door closing. My spine went rigid and my mind imagined a hundred different horrible scenarios—most of which involved my meeting a bloody end at the hands of my stalker, Rosalind-style—before I realized who it must be: Cat. She must have seen my messages and realized how much I needed her. I relaxed. Thank God for Cat.

“Cat?” I called.

She didn’t shout hello, but I could hear her moving through the apartment downstairs.

“Cat?” I tried again. “I’m up here!”

Footsteps sounded on the spiral staircase, and pitch-black fear oozed through my veins as I realized they were too heavy to be Cat’s. You’re wrong, I told myself. It has to be Cat. You locked the front door. The footsteps continued, each footfall sounding heavier and less like Cat than the last, until they came to a halt outside the bathroom door.

I was paralyzed, afraid to even blink. There was no more movement in the hall, but I could hear breathing—no, panting. Someone was panting outside that door. The wine turned unpleasantly in my stomach. Whoever was in the apartment was now between me and the only exit.

Get out of the bathtub, my mind screamed at me. That door is going to open in five seconds and you are going to go the way of Janet Leigh in Psycho if you don’t get out of the bathtub right fucking now.