23AllieI leaned back against the giant beige couch in the luxurious hotel room in LA that Gage had booked for me. Since Morgan’s stalker hadn’t been caught yet, he’d insisted that it wasn’t safe for me to go back to the condo yet. I hadn’t argued since I didn’t have anywhere else I wanted to be. There was no way in hell I was going back to Vaughn’s place, and I wasn’t in the right mental space to stay with my parents without completely freaking them the fuck out. But with the story Morgan had just told me, it looked like I would be able to return to the condo whenever I wanted. “Are you shitting me?”
“I’m absolutely not shitting you,” she assured me. “Trust me; I had the same reaction as you when Gage relayed all of this to me.”
I shook my head, stunned by how much stranger than fiction the truth had turned out to be in this situation. “I cannot even begin to tell you how insane it is that Kerri freaking Anderson was behind all of this. How did she get caught?”
Morgan leaned forward and set the small container of nuts she’d grabbed from the minibar down on the coffee table in front of us. “When Gage showed me the list of neighbors in his community, I didn’t even blink when I saw her uncle’s name. I had no idea Kerri was living with him until earlier today when the detective assigned to the case canvassed the neighborhood and wound up arresting her. She was so unglued to see the police she outed herself as the perpetrator in under sixty seconds.”
The fact that Kerri outed herself to the cops wasn’t a shock to me, and I found it quite hilarious. “I’ve always said she was a shitty actress. This proves I was right.”
“It does,” Morgan agreed. “And now we also know her true talent involves using a tire iron.”
“A tire iron?” The girl couldn’t even be original in her choice of weapon when she battered Morgan’s car.
Morgan nodded. “Yep.”
“What happens now?” I asked.
I didn’t like how Morgan grimaced because it didn’t bode well for how it all panned out. “Not what I’d originally hoped would, that’s for sure. Her uncle showed up at Gage’s house earlier to ask that we not press charges.”
“Ew. I bet that went over like a lead balloon.” My preference was for Kerri to be locked up for as long as possible after what she did to my bestie, so I could only imagine how Gage felt.
“It did until Officer Wakeland called and filled us in on what, exactly, Kerri thought she would get out of this.”
I frowned, unable to think of anything good that loon might’ve thought would come from all of this. “It doesn’t sound like she was thinking at all.”
“You’d think, but that lunatic always has an angle. She flipped her lid when the police showed up at her uncle's house today. Not because she knew the jig was up, mind you, but because the timing was wrong.” She made air quotes with her fingers to emphasize the word timing. “Apparently, the first night she vandalized my car was a spur of the moment thing, but what came after happened because she wanted to be arrested for it.”
I gasped; my mind was blown by the idea that the spoiled bitch actually wanted to get arrested. “What the hell? Why?”
“I’m glad you’re already sitting down,” she said dryly.
“Oh snap, this ought to be rich.”
“It’s Kerri, so, of course, it’s bonkers. She had it in her head that if she went a little nuts and got caught, the public would rally behind her the way they did with Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes. She had the whole thing planned out, too. She was going to go back to Gage’s and mess my car up for a third time in full view of the cameras next month after she got back from a family vacation to Greece.”
My eyes went wide at her explanation, and my hands flew to my mouth. “Shut up.”
Morgan shook her head. “Hand to God, I’m for real. She wanted—and I quote—a good tan and some new highlights to offset the terrible lighting of a booking photo.”
A tan and highlights? “She knows it’s not a headshot, right?”
She rolled her eyes. “She’s so desperate for publicity that there’s no level to which she won’t stoop to get it.”
“That’s scary as hell, Morgan. I never thought the girl was wrapped all that tight to begin with, but this is next level.”
“It’s like four levels away from next level,” she sighed. “Anyway. Knowing that she wanted to be arrested and charged for the sake of getting some publicity, we’ve decided not to press charges at this time. We’ve both filed for emergency restraining orders, though. Kerri can go to the press with that—it’s inevitable they’ll find out anyway—but Gage and I have no intention of having this play out in court.”