Liar (Madison Kate #2)(60)

Then I gagged for real. I flipped it over, and sure enough, there was my stalker's distinctive handwriting. Liar, liar, pants on fire.

My gaze shot up to Kody's, and he shook his head slowly. "I didn't know," he told me, his voice edging on panic. Except his fear didn’t have anything to do with my stalker somehow catching us fucking on the kitchen island. No, his clear green eyes were locked on mine, pleading with me to believe him. He was worried that I would shut him out over this. That I might think he’d set me up, somehow.

"Of course you fucking didn't," Archer growled, snatching the picture from my hand and scowling down at it. I didn't try to hide it because it wasn't anything he hadn't seen firsthand. Still, this was the second time my stalker had documented me having sex, and I was starting to feel decidedly paranoid.

Archer looked up from the picture and scanned the kitchen until he spotted what he was looking for. "Mother fucker," he spat, slapping the photo down on the counter and striding across the kitchen to the perimeter-alarm sensor. In a smooth motion he boosted himself up onto the counter, then ripped the sensor clean out of the wall—totally oblivious or uncaring of the electrical sparks that flew—then hurled it at the floor. Jumping back off the counter, he landed one sneaker clean on top of the sensor, crushing it into a useless pile of broken plastic, metal, and electrical wiring.

My jaw had fallen open in shock. "How...?"

Archer wasn't paying attention to me, though. His phone was already out in his hand, and he was searching for something. "I'm getting a security overhaul," he announced. "Go and get Steele, fill him in. We need to sweep the entire place for more cameras."

"Got it," Kody replied, starting to leave the kitchen.

"Wait!" I shouted, pausing Kody halfway to the door. "Stop. Steele needs to sleep; just leave him. This is nothing new. Let's just... handle it calmly, okay?" I shared my stern glare between the two of them, and they both frowned back at me, Kody with concern and Archer with confusion.

Keeping my breathing as calm and even as I could manage, I shoved my fear and anxiety aside in favor of a clear head.

"Archer, call your security people and get to the bottom of this. Kody..." I glanced down at the dead bird and grimaced. "Call the cops. We need to report this."

"Madison Kate—" Archer started to argue, but I cut him off with a sharp look.

"Do what I fucking tell you, D'Ath. I want to see those other deliveries, too," I announced. "Kody said you'd received more mail that no one felt the need to share with me."

Archer shot a death glare at his friend, but Kody just met his stare and shrugged. "She should have known," Kody told him. "Keeping secrets is only going to bite us all in the ass later. Clearly, someone else agrees." He indicated to the bloody photograph, accusing him—or me—of being a liar.

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from jumping all over them about what other secrets they were keeping from me. But it would get me exactly nowhere, especially given the way Archer's jaw clenched so hard he looked like he might crack a tooth. Better to keep the focus on task.

"Go," I snapped at the big guy, "you know what you need to do." Then I turned my attention back to Kody. "You too."

He frowned back at me, all concern. "What about you, MK?"

I sucked in a deep breath, then gagged slightly when the faint tang of dead animal touched my nostrils. "I'm going to wash my hands," I told him with a tight smile. "Then I'll meet you in my father's office. I need to catch up on all the other letters before the police get here."

Kody reached out for me, but I dodged out of his reach and hurried out of the kitchen. I needed to wash my hands more than I needed to breathe, and I couldn't stand the thought of him touching me until that was done. I'd only touched the bird and the photo briefly, but it was like my stalker's taint was creeping over my skin. I needed it gone.

Sadly, though, no amount of soap and scrubbing could remove the marks left on my mind.

My stalker was escalating, and that fear, that constant feeling of eyes on me, was going to take something a whole lot stronger than soap to be washed clean.





23





It was well into the evening when the cops and security company left the house, by which time I'd pretty much given up on any last-minute studying for my exams. How the fuck could I concentrate on my university work when I had a stalker delivering dead animals in boxes and taking pictures of me having sex inside my private residence?

As if that wasn't bad enough, I'd had to deal with prudish, judgmental bullshit from the cop who interviewed me, like he was totally disgusted that I'd been fucking Kody in the kitchen. Because I totally asked for my stalker to take pictures? Asshole.

All the photographs the boys had hidden from me were nothing in comparison to the dead bird package. Just images of me coming and going from school with each of the guys, but every one of them had Liar scrawled over the back of them. So either my stalker was accusing me of being a liar or saying all three of them were. I'd bet my entire trust fund on the latter.

I’d had a small spark of hope early on when someone had mentioned checking security feeds for whoever had delivered the packages—because of course there were cameras over the entrance gates. But it had been quickly squashed. My stalker was somehow smart enough to have ensured the camera angles had all been changed or the feeds wiped blank exactly at the right times to cover his gruesome delivery.