Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 81317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
And despite his nastiness, he was not the deterrent I had hoped he would be, though I did feel mildly better at having him around.
But he still showed up night after night.
And it was equal parts ridiculous and terrifying. Because, really, how cliché was it to have a stalker? It was the stuff of cheesy daytime TV shows or, alternately, low-budget primetime crime shows with some somber-toned narrator and God-awful reenactments by what could only be described as F-rate actors.
I always watched them with a detached kind of entertainment.
Somehow, I shrugged my shoulder over the warnings they always gave about how one in every six women will be stalked in their lifetime in varying degrees; certain that I was one of the five.
I was not the kind of woman who would get stalked.
Stalkers liked young, stupidly pretty, extroverted women who smiled at them in the grocery store or went on one disastrous online date with.
I was closing in on thirty; I was pretty enough, but not spectacular; I was reclusive by nature, and had a resting bitch face that would shrink a man's balls from one-hundred yards.
I should have been safe.
But there I was, instead, night after night, watching a man outside my windows. Sometimes he just stood there, being a creeper. Other times, he had a camera. Then, as he got more comfortable with the incredibly slow response rate of the lovely NBPD when I called on him, he decided to start jerking off while standing there, coming all over the ground or, when he was being particularly disgusting, his hand, then smearing it all over my windows.
He was always gone by the time the cops showed up, disappeared into the woods or down the street where he could have ducked into Chaz's bar, or She's Bean Around, a local coffeeshop, or any other place that might have been open.
And the cops started thinking I was yanking their chain or out of my mind and their response time got even slower until, one night, they didn't show up until over an hour after my call. It was about then that I stopped bothering to call at all.
They couldn't help me.
And, to be perfectly honest, I couldn't afford to pay to have private security. Also, thanks to a mortgage that was killing me, I couldn't move either. The only reason I got the house in the first place was that it was, well, a shithole, and I had the requisite twenty-percent to put down. But that twenty-percent completely strapped me, and soon after moving in, I lost my decently-paying job as an esthetician when the salon went under. Given that there were no other job openings in that particular field anywhere within thirty miles, I took a job as a waxer. Yes, waxer. I was all up in lady bits all day. The hours sucked; it was awkward as hell, and I had precious little money left over after paying bills.
You would find me situated quite reluctantly between a rock and a freaking hard place.
I did the best I could, but it was proving not to be enough.
He had gotten bolder.
The staring and picture taking and jerking off had escalated to notes under the door with sexual advances that had undertones of increasing violence.
The first note was innocent enough - albeit creepy given the circumstances. You're so beautiful. I love when you look at me.
Back away from him when I noticed his face in my window was more like it.
But the one from last week had been enough to make my stomach drop.
I'm going to hold you down and fuck you until you scream.
Not exactly a love note, that.
Then, finally, just a few nights ago, he started banging on windows when I was asleep at night or trying to get in the front or back doors. The back door, five locks aside, also had the refrigerator butted up against it. At night, I moved the bookshelf in front of the front door as well. But he was a big guy; if he could get past the locks, I very much doubted my fridge or Ikea bookshelf could keep him out.
But this morning, I woke up and I knew.
I wasn't superstitious or anything like that. In fact, I had never had what was commonly referred to as a "gut instinct" before that moment.
But I knew.
He was going to get in tonight, and it was going to escalate.
Desperate for someone, anyone who could help me, I searched around online for anyone in Navesink Bank for any type of security or hired muscle that I could beg to help me... on some kind of payment plan.
That was when I came across his name.
Quinton Baird.
It was a pretentious name.
His website matched.
Apparently, he "fixed" things. He was a "fixer." Whatever the hell that meant.
But I was desperate, and my situation was absolutely in need of some "fixing."