“Find it. His password is milkman. Go to his photos. Then call me when it’s done.”
“I don’t want to see his—”
The line disconnected. I smacked the steering wheel, uttering a swear. What was I supposed to do now? Clearly, Patricia wasn’t going to open the door if I showed up at her home. With my luck, a neighbor would see me dump him in his yard and report my license tag number.
Crap. This night kept getting better and better.
I pulled off the toll road into a corporate center parking lot and put the van in park. Lifting my armrest, I climbed into the back of the van, trying not to impale Harris Mickler with my heels. The state would like to present Exhibit A for the prosecution, the defendant’s right Louis Vuitton knockoff, also known as the murder weapon, Your Honor. I choked out a laugh, wondering how Julian would defend me from that as I squeezed into the space between my children’s car seats and fished around in Harris’s jacket pocket for his phone. The screen was locked. I cringed as I typed in his password.
My finger hovered over the icon for his photos. Knowing what I knew of Harris Mickler, what awaited in that app at best would not be pleasant, and at worst could be potentially scarring. Or at least vomit-inducing. Against my better judgment, I tapped it anyway. A handful of files with the usual titles: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Screenshots, Camera … Private.
Peeking through one eye, I tapped the last one, surprised when it wasn’t a collection of really gross porn. Instead, I found a collection of numbered folders. Thirteen of them. All labeled with names: SARAH, LORNA, JENNIFER, AIMEE, MARA, JEANETTE …
I opened the first folder and scrolled through the contents, slowly at first, pulling the screen closer to make sense of the images as Harris snored shallowly beside me. As far as I could tell, it was a series of candid shots of a woman, captured from odd angles, as if they’d been surreptitiously taken. A blond woman in line at a coffee shop. The same woman getting into her car. Another shot of her pushing a grocery cart through a parking lot, this one revealing a clear shot of her face. I recognized her. She was the same woman I’d just doused with tomato juice in the bar.
Harris Mickler was a stalker.
If it was just the once, maybe I would understand, but there have been others. So many others.
I closed that folder and opened the next one. My breath caught in my throat.
These photos started just like the others, with dozens of surreptitious pictures. But the photos in these other twelve files gave way to more disturbing ones: posed images of Harris with these women, seemingly on a date, same as he had been tonight. Then those same women in various staged poses—naked, eyes closed, expressions slack as he touched and kissed and violated them, their glittering custom wedding bands always carefully captured in the frame.
I swallowed back bile, scrolling through countless images of these other twelve women he’d stalked and then dated over the last thirty-six months, all of them slightly similar in appearance and build, sickened by the realization he’d probably drugged and raped them all. The final image in each woman’s folder was a horrifyingly intimate photo with a message pasted in text over top.
Do exactly as I said, and be discreet, or I’ll show these pictures to your husband and tell him what you’ve done.
I felt sick as the puzzle pieces slammed into place. He was blackmailing them. Blackmailing them to ensure their silence. Harris was preying on married women with children. Women with successful, rich husbands who had the means, social standing, and resources to completely ruin their lives. He had purposefully taken misleading photos, suggesting he’d been dating his victims, that the sex was consensual. When in fact, Harris was a twisted, sick predator who apparently preferred his victims passed out in the back of his car.
I sagged against the bench seat and stared at Harris’s phone. Then at Patricia’s note. Patricia was right. I didn’t know where I was taking him, but there was no way I was returning this monster to Patricia Mickler’s home.
CHAPTER 8
It was nearly ten o’clock when I jerked to a stop in my driveway.
And I still hadn’t figured out what to do with Harris Mickler.
I sat in the van, engine idling, knuckles white on the steering wheel as the garage door lifted on its track. The headlights reflected off the pegboard as I pulled inside, casting eerie shadows over the interior of my garage.
This was not okay.
The unconscious kraken on the floor of my minivan was not okay.
I should call Georgia and tell her everything. She would know what to do. And she probably wouldn’t let anyone put me in jail because then she’d be stuck watching my kids indefinitely.