Once you start down this pathway, you can’t stop it.
“Grandmother, please tell me that you found a way to stop it.”
But he knew that she’d spent a lifetime avoiding people because of these visions. Sometimes she was a huge help, but she paid a high price, a penalty that he didn’t want to pay. She’d been ostracized and hated, terrified by so many. She lived the life of a hermit, tormented more and more as time went on by visions that she had less and less control over. He remembered seeing her in her last few days, where the visions were just pouring out of her.
She carried a recorder, keeping track, yet not keeping track at all. He frowned at that, for the first time remembering her recorder. What had happened to it? Maybe she had thrown it out. Maybe when the house had been cleaned out, nobody had seen the value in it and had tossed it. Or maybe somebody had been afraid of what it held and made sure to destroy it.
He stood here, taking several deep gulps of breath, and, when the pain finally eased back and when he could breathe normally and when the pain in his chest wasn’t quite so gripping, he slowly turned toward his vehicle.
Chapter 12
Kate placed hercell phone down quietly on the desk, staring at it still.
Rodney walked over and said, “You keep looking at your phone these days.”
“I need to access the traffic cams on the Lions Gate Bridge,” she said abruptly.
“Another jumper?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, trying not to say too much because she didn’t want to explain. Simon was already tormented by this. The last thing she needed was others weighing in on his potential inability to handle this stress. Or his bizarre messages. Particularly after what had already happened to his friend David. On that note, she checked her watch, remembering that Louisa had asked for the laptop back. She hadn’t bugged the Computer Forensics guys and gals for more, but she had asked, and the least she could do was try to get it back for her.
As she waited for access to the traffic cams, she contacted her computer nerds. As soon as the phone was answered, Stoop said, “Yes, I’m done with the laptop.”
“Perfect. Anything on that license plate?”
“Yes, we’re working on it,” he said. “The video isn’t 100 percent clear, so we’re trying to clean it up.”
“Good enough,” she said. “That’s progress.”
“Hey, we’ll take any progress we can get at the moment.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m still working on that whole suicide thing too.”
“I can’t imagine that’s even feasible,” he said, “but I get why you don’t want to let it go.”
“What about those chats and emails?”
“We’re still working on that one.”
“Okay. I’ll check with Andy, since he’s our decoy account on the chats.”
“Yeah, and make sure he doesn’t commit suicide under some of the pressure from these guys.”
“Are they that convincing?”
“It’s kinda weird,” he said. “I’ve been monitoring a bunch of the chats. So far, it’s mostly supportive, but then you get those little passive-aggressive digs, like ‘You’re just too scared,’ or ‘You know the world will be happier without you’ and that sort of thing. And then that odd follow-up with, ‘Hey, I was just kidding’ or something of the like.”
“Yeah, yet they aren’t kidding at all.”
“Well, that’s the thing, right? I mean, you get these kinds of assholes all the time, and they’re everywhere. You just don’t expect to see them on a chat like this.”
“But then why not?” she said quietly. “When you think about it, assholes are on every loop. Look at every one of the big sites where you can comment on any subject, and you’ll find trolls.”
“Trolls, trolls, and more trolls,” he said. “I was just hoping on a site like this that they would be more supportive.”
“But, at first glance, they probably are, aren’t they?”
“Yes, exactly. Supportive and teasing and mocking, all at the same time.”