Guarded

24

The room was deadly silent and all eyes turned to stare at me. I shrank in my seat and was thankful for Harry’s hand which I now had in a death grip.

“This is your doing!” James Lemoyne shouted, pointing at me.

“My baby was killed because of you!” Avril whimpered and began crying. Her husband gave Harry the most chilling look before he took his wife out of the room. I saw them through the window, Avril collapsing against her husband before the detective closed the blinds. “Officer Dover, can you take them into my office?”

I was speechless, not knowing what to say. I felt wracked with guilt.

“It’s not your fault, Miss Archer,” Detective Heywood said softly.

I nodded, doing my best to hold in the tears. “Harry, you need to tell him,” I said.

My Aunt looked just as confused as I did when he pulled out his phone and showed the detective the picture of him with Carissa. But when he explained the stalker tendencies and the restraining order from Kendall Jenner and overload of stalking on the internet it all seemed to make sense.

“Thank you for that, I really think it’ll help the case and give us a more solid background to finding this woman. I’ll have my detectives pull up the case from Ms. Jenner and we’ll review the case with her and see if there are any connections with any other celebrity stalking cases. Most of the time, these fans just have a deluded sense of reality but they can sometimes get out of hand. This woman is clearly unstable and we are going to do everything we can to catch her and put her away for a long time. I’ll be in contact with you over the weekend.” He stood up and showed us the door.

“Detective? What is the connection between Cost and me and Harry and Carissa?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

“I don’t know, honestly. I think he just got in the way, to be frank. It’s a good thing the paparazzi was there though or else they wouldn’t have caught the car driving away from the house. I’ll have to investigate further to see why they were there to begin with. I’m sorry, but that’s all the information I can really give right now. Thank you for your coorperation so far.”

We all left and drove back to my house in silent. Harry made a few phone calls when we arrived back at my house and my Aunt fixed some salads for us while I showered and changed. I came downstairs dressed in shorts and in Harry’s grey hoodie. It smelled like him, minty and clean. And it felt safe.

“I’m going to have to head back tomorrow morning, Annaleise,” he said, coming into the kitchen. He had changed back into his dark jeans and donned a grey long-sleeved Henley he had picked up at the store earlier. He sat down and helped himself to some of the salad. I moved the leafy greens around in the bowl in front of me.

“What time?” I asked.

“I have a flight booked for 10:30, love, I’m sorry.”

“Harry, I understand. It’s okay,” I said softly still playing with my food.