Chapter 10 – The Nightmare Is Only Beginning

Neither of them got much sleep that night, as he had predicted. Lance sat up in the living room watching whatever he could find on television that looked decent. By two in the morning, all the good shows had turned into nothing but cheesy infomercials, until he found a Golden Girls marathon. Addy didn't complain and he was too tired to care what he was watching at that point, so he left it on until it had run its course.

By the time the sun started to come up outside his balcony, she had dozed off on top of him. Feeling his stomach starting to grouse at him, he moved her as carefully as he could. It took several minutes, him stopping each time she would stir and sigh and bury her head deeper into his chest. A few times, he simply stopped to look at her. If she were awake and looked in a mirror, she would tell him that she looked horrible; she had pulled her blonde hair up into a makeshift bun in the middle of the night that was now falling out of place, her mascara was smudged from sleep and tears, his oversized shirt that she was wearing rumpled over her. If she saw herself, she would groan, say how awful she looked, and voice her need for a shower.

But to him, she was still beautiful. It was nice to see her dressed up, but she was equally as beautiful when she wasn't trying to be – and he hated to see her the way she was now.

He hadn't taken it as seriously as he should have. He had told her to ignore them and he had done the same. He'd thought it was Carlos playing a harmless secret admirer's game, trying to win Addy's affections in addition to her friendship.

The poor man probably never saw it coming; never saw what he was falling into.

He reached into the cabinet to grab his cookware, and into the fridge to grab a carton of eggs and the last slices of bacon out of the package. Instead of starting them right away, he reached for the coffee and started the morning pot to brewing. These days, it felt to him like both of them lived on coffee, but he filled a cup quickly as he filled the toaster with slices of bread and started the bacon to sizzling.

He had finished scrambling eggs and was putting them on a plate for himself along with a few strips of bacon and the toast when he heard feet shuffling into the kitchen.

“There's my ray of sunshine,” Lance said, watching a zombie-like Adeline walk into the kitchen. “Feeling any better this morning?”

“No,” she said, her hand rubbing her face and tired eyes. She looked at him again when she noticed he was at the stove. “You're cooking?”

“Boy, you didn't think I could do my laundry at first, now you don't think I can cook,” he said. “What do you think I am?”

Instead of giving a response, she leaned against the counter next to him. Her arms crossed against her chest, she looked down at the linoleum floor. Not even a single witty comment from her mouth about how she didn't think he was capable of doing the simplest things in life for himself.

“Did I wake you up?” he asked, taking another sip of his coffee.

“No, I...” She paused, briefly looking away from him. “...I woke up from a bad dream.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” she said.

Normally, he would have pressed the issue – but this time, he knew better. Instead, he held out the plate in his hand toward her, fully dished with food.

“I made breakfast,” he said. “You should eat something.”

“God, no,” she said, holding out her hand and turning away from the food. “I feel like I'm going to throw up looking at it.”

“Thanks for the compliment, I'm not that bad of a cook,” he said with a smile, setting the plate back down on the counter top. “Addy, seriously, it's time to see a doctor. It's been several weeks; it's not the flu, I was over it in a day. Something's wrong and you need to find out what it is.”

“It's not that bad,” she said.

“Not that bad? Addy, you can hardly eat anymore because your stomach is so upset. When you can eat, you only keep it down half the time. You're so tired; you can sleep ten hours a night and still be exhausted the whole day.”

“Lance, I said it's not that bad!”

Her sudden agitation and the way she raised her voice to him caught him off guard. He had to admit that she was anything but unshakable and could get quite flustered at times – but it was nothing like her to raise her voice to him like she did, seemingly unprovoked.

“I'm sorry,” she said. He could immediately see the guilt and confusion she felt. “Lance, I'm sorry.”

“It's okay,” he responded, turning back to the stove. “If you don't want to eat, you don't have to.”

“It's not about that,” she said. “I...I didn't sleep very well last night.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” he said quietly.

“I saw things,” she said. “In my sleep. In my dreams. Things that I wish I could un-see.”

He glanced over at her. He wished he could change things for her. She had led a traumatic life, once calling herself “damaged”. He wouldn't wish what they had seen on anybody, but she especially shouldn't have had to see what she had the night before. It was one thing to know somebody who died in a violent way – it was a different thing entirely to have to see the scene right in front of your eyes.

“Want to try to stomach some coffee?” he asked in an attempt to change the subject.

“Yeah, sure,” she said with a small shrug of her shoulders.

As he reached across the counter for a mug and started pouring her cup, she grabbed the closest reflective object – the chrome toaster – and reluctantly looked at her image in it.

“Ugh,” she groaned. “Look at me. I look awful. I need a shower.”

Lance laughed, and she looked away from her reflection to look at him.

“What's so funny?”

“Nothing.” He turned to look at her, holding the mug of coffee out to her which she gladly took from him. “Addy, don't ever change. I love you exactly the way you are.”

“Um, okay – I think,” she said.

She took her mug to the table and sat down next to him as he sat his breakfast in front of him. She tried not to watch as he ate; actually, she could feel her stomach starting to protest against her not eating with a light rumbling, but the sight of the fluffy eggs and greasy bacon made her stomach twirl.

“I'm worried about the party on Friday,” she said, blowing on the hot coffee with her lips before taking her first sip.

“The engagement party?” he asked after swallowing a forkful of scrambled eggs. “Why?”

“Well, I'm worried about how this is going to affect it. Maybe we should call everybody and cancel.”

“I don't see why we would do that.”

“Lance, it's a formal party,” she said. “Do you want our guests traipsing through this apartment building when this has happened?”

“It didn't happen in our apartment,” he said. “Everything happened downstairs in the lobby. What's the big deal?”

“The big deal is that our guests, our best friends, are going to walk through the lobby dressed in their best and the first thing they're going to see is a taped-off office where a man was killed. Not only a man – a security guard. Who will want to come to our engagement party to have fun knowing what just happened here?”

“Addy, our friends will understand,” he said. “They know we didn't intend for this to happen. Besides, the office is locked up and not being used until the police clear it from being a crime scene. Our guests will never have to see anything. You're worrying for nothing, baby.”

“I think it would be better to cancel the whole thing and reschedule it for next month, so the air can clear a little, that's all.”

“If it were up to you we'd cancel our whole lives and reschedule them for next month.”

Her head popped up to look at him.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” he said, looking down at his plate before putting another fork of eggs into his mouth. “I said nothing. Look, let's keep the party the way it is unless we absolutely have to cancel, okay? We've spent so much time planning it and our friends are looking forward to it – you remember that Justin and JC are flying in all the way from Los Angeles to come in and you'll have to pick them up from the airport on Friday afternoon, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, setting her mug back down on the table and shoving it away from her as she scooted her seat out and stood up. “I remember, and I'll be there to pick them up. Fine, we'll keep the party the way it is. You know, Lance, I'm going to go lay back down. Don't bother me.”

“Addy--”

Picking up on her angry tone, he reached out in an attempt to grab her arm before she walked away from the table, but she maneuvered so that she was out of his reach.

“Come on, Ad, I'm sorry.”

Watching her walk out of the kitchen and disappear into the living room, he rolled his eyes at himself.

“I should have my foot surgically stuck in my mouth,” he said to the silence. “It'd save me the time of doing it myself.”

She laid down in the comfort of their bed, but she couldn't sleep. An hour or so had passed, but she still had the dreams in her head, in addition to the anger that she felt now.

Her concerns were valid, at least to her. They had planned a formal party because they had never celebrated their engagement, and it was the first time they would be getting all their friends together at the same time. They had wanted it to be special, something they would remember forever and look back on as one of the best celebrations they ever had next to their wedding.

She didn't want her guests to remember the party only because there was a murderer on the loose around their apartment building.

“Addy?”

Her thoughts were interrupted by him peeking into the door. She lifted her head from the pillow to look at him.

“I know you hate me and told me not to bother you, but--” He lifted a hand to show her a yellow mailing envelope in his hand. “--someone left this by our door. It's addressed to you.”

“Did you order something?”

“No, I figured it was something you had ordered.”

As he reached her side of the bed, she pushed the covers off and sat up, tearing into the yellow envelope as soon as he handed it to her.

“I didn't order anything,” she said quietly as the flap opened and she pulled out a folded white paper.

I hope you'll forgive me, my love. He threatened to come between us.

She felt sick to her stomach as she sat the paper off to her side on the bed, feeling something hard and plastic inside the envelope. She turned it upside-down and as soon as the plastic ID card fell out onto the bed, the haunting face of her security guard friend stared back at her.

“Lance...”

“Don't touch it,” he said. “I'm calling the cops.”

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Within the next hour, the apartment was crawling with police. She sat on the couch, curling her arms up against her couch wrapped within a button-up sweater, hoping she wouldn't throw up.

They had asked her more questions than she had answers for – did she see who delivered the package with the ID tag? Did she have any enemies? Did she know the murder victim personally?

“I'm sorry, Ms. James.” The man in front of her had introduced himself as Detective Joe Abrams, the lead investigator in the murder case. “I know this is taking a while and it's been hard for you. I only have a few more questions for you.”

The detective looked to be Hispanic and in his mid-30s to her, with a receding hair line and the typical pressed business-like suit, wearing too much cologne. Lance was too busy being interrogated himself by Abrams' partner in a separate corner of the room, so he hadn't been able to lend any support.

“You say you've been receiving threatening notes like this,” the detective said. “How long have you been getting them?”

“Three weeks, maybe a little more?” she said with a shrug.

“How many were there before this one?”

“Two – wait, no, three,” she said. “I got the first one in the apartment while Lance was gone, he got the second and threw it in the trash, and the third was left in the mailbox.”

“Have you had any falling-outs with anybody before this started happening?”

“Not really. I don't have a lot of friends. Most of the friends I have are mutual between myself and Lance.”

“What about your ex-husband?” he asked.

“What about him?” she asked. “I mean, we had our problems, but he lives all the way across the country.”

“We should check out all avenues, Ms. James,” he said, writing everything down in his tiny notebook. “What about any of his exes?”

“He has an ex-fiancee, Mackenzie Montgomery,” she said. “She's kind of...different, but I don't know if she's capable of doing something like this.”

“What about any of his fans?” he asked. “Has anybody come up to him for an autograph lately, maybe acted weird and it stuck out in your mind?”

She smiled. “It's been ten years, detective. His fanbase these days is generally too busy changing diapers and shuffling kids to soccer practice. They don't have time anymore to hide under room service carts and chase tour buses.”

He never looked up from his notebook, but smiled, his shoulders shuffling up and down in a quiet chuckle.

“You've got me there, Ms. James.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lance nod and shake the hand of the detective he was talking to before walking over to them. He sat down on the couch next to her silently, gently grabbing her hand in his.

“Well,” the detective continued before shutting his notebook and sticking it inside his jacket, “I think I have all that I need for right now. As it stands now, the two cases look like they're related, so we'll add all of this to our investigation and follow up on the leads we have to see where they go. I might have to come back or call you into my office for more information, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. If either of you receive any more of these, or think of any other leads that we may have missed today, please call my office as soon as possible.”

He stood up from his seat and flipped a business card out in front of him, which Lance took and briefly looked at.

“I'm sorry that you had to go through this, Ms. James,” he said, holding his hand out to her.

She put her hand into his, letting him guide her into a partial handshake.

“Thank you, detective.”

“Mr. Bass,” he said, turning to Lance and holding his hand out to shake it. “Thank you for your cooperation today. We'll treat this with as much privacy as possible, so it doesn't become a circus for the two of you.”

“We appreciate that,” Lance said, giving the detective a firm handshake. “Let me walk you guys out.”

She leaned back into the couch and wrapped the sweater tighter around her torso, fighting back tears as the detectives and Lance walked away from her towards the door. Sleep-deprived and feeling sicker than she had in several days, she closed her eyes and let the tears fall freely down her cheeks.

In less than a month, her life had gone from normal and happy to chaotic and an emotional wreck, and she couldn't pinpoint at what point it had actually changed. Her head was swimming with possibilities of who could be stalking them, and despite the fact that there were a few people in her life that had become less than desirable to be around the past year, she couldn't think of anyone who might stoop low enough to stalk her and murder an innocent man.

The idea alone that she was being stalked was enough to throw her into panic. If it was someone in her life that knew her well enough to know her every movement and daily routine, it was somebody that she had interacted with on more than one occasion. There was only a handful of people in her life that she could say were close enough to know her that well – who could she trust?

“This is a nightmare,” she said when she felt the couch cushion sink next to her and his arm wrap around her. “When will it end?”

She opened her eyes to look at him, but he only looked back at her, at a loss for an answer.

“Whoever is sending these to me – they're the one who killed him,” she said. “He was a good man. He had a family, he had friends, people who loved him. What did he do to deserve this? What did I do to deserve this?”

“You didn't do anything,” he said. All he could do was rub his hand over her back. “They have all of the notes and they have the ID now. Surely it has prints or something, some kind of evidence. Whoever sent it – they'll get them. It's their job. This will end soon. It has to.”

The only response she had was to shut her eyes and let more tears fall as he moved her towards him, letting her lean into him. She could only hope that he was right.