That has me smiling and laughing to myself as I sit back and look at the clock. It’s after nine, but I really want to see her right now.
ME: It’ll be a lot of short notices from me, so I hope you’re the kind of girl who can be readily available… Hopefully that sounds better aloud.
LANA: It sounds… Yeah, no. It doesn’t sound good, but I get what you mean. Yes to dinner. :) I hope to leave with more than an awkward wave this time.
I fist pump the air, then look up to see a few curious eyes on me through my open office door. Feeling like a fourteen-year-old jackass, I message her again.
ME: I won’t walk away with just a wave this time. Who knows when I’ll see you again, or if you’ll continue to deal with my shitty schedule.
LANA: My schedule is pretty shitty too.
ME: Is it wrong that I’m tempted to ask where you live so I can subtly swing by tonight with the excuse I was in the neighborhood and thought I saw someone too close to your house?
LANA: Is it wrong that I hope you’ll break some rules, find my address, and do just that?
Groaning, I glance at the time, then at my computer screen. Deciding to totally abuse my privileges, I do look up her address. But that’s all I research. Grabbing my phone, I pull up my GPS, grab my ‘go bag’ from the office, and jog down to my car.
Since it’s wishful thinking and incredibly presumptuous to bring a bag, I toss it in the back, hoping she doesn’t notice it and realize I’m expecting a lot more than I should be. Obviously I’ll leave as soon as I get there if she wants me to, but I’m really hoping she doesn’t want me to leave.
Because Lana Myers has been in my head since the day I met her, and it’d be nice if someone noticed I was missing.
Chapter 8
To know the secrets of life, we must first become aware of their existence.
—Albert Einstein
LANA
I stare at my last text and the empty space below it, because he never messages back. Seriously, I suck at flirting.
Groaning, I get up, flicking a gaze over at the monitor on the wall. Tyler walks around in front of the camera in just his boxers, smirking as he texts someone. My secondary phone dings right on cue, and I look down and read the messages he’s sending to a girl named Denise.
TYLER: What’re you wearing? I’m thinking of you.
I roll my eyes, hoping Denise tells him to fuck himself. But she doesn’t.
It’s hard to watch them live their lives for a month. I have to watch them loving the freedom they stole from me. The freedom they stole from us.
Tyler is the first one who is married, and apparently having an affair. I’ve been saving him for closer to last, but right now, I can’t afford to go home and sprint through so many. And sprint is an accurate depiction of how that time will go, considering it’ll be too easy to get caught if I try to space it out as I do now.
Jake assured me the feds are investigating our hometown. It was only a matter of time before they linked the kills and made the connection. I’d hoped to have more time before they got on my trail, hence the reason I started the kills outside of town.
It’s not like they’ll link any of it to me, of course. Lana Myers doesn’t exist in that town. Never has.
Victoria Evans died ten years ago. I look nothing like her anymore. They made sure of that. My eyes flick to the small mirror on the wall beside me. Without any makeup, you can see a few faint scars.
I spent a lot of money to help make sure there were as few scars as possible. Victoria Evans was a poor girl from Delaney Grove, but Kennedy Carlyle was an heiress who died in a car accident the same night my death certificate was signed. She was so mangled and unrecognizable that Jake had no problem shifting the info around in the computers.
Kennedy might have died that night, but the stranger I never met saved my life.
I went in as Victoria, left as Kennedy, took on her rich, orphan life, and ‘legally’ changed her name to Lana Myers to avoid anyone from her past finding me out.
It was the easiest way to build a fund to support us and to change my identity. Jake didn’t get good at more inventive forms of identity changes until the past couple of years.
It took a while to see my scars on my face as marks of survival instead of brutal reminders of that night. The scars on other parts of my body didn’t heal as cleanly. But the scars on my soul took the longest to deal with.
They say everyone has their own healing process.