There was no question now that he was following her. He was right on her tail, and Reese checked the doors to make sure they were all locked.
If this were New York, she would know where she was going and could head to the police station to file a stalker report. Orcall a friend to meet her. But here, in Chicago, she had no idea where she was and no one she could call.
But Reese had no fear of speed.
She weaved in and out of traffic, a certain thrill racing through her. “Heh, heh, think you can catch me?” she gloated to the rearview mirror.
A beer truck cut her off, causing her to slam on her brakes. The green car was back on her tail.
“Shoot! Okay, maybe you can catch me.” Along with alarm, she felt grudging admiration. Clearly this guy was a professional weirdo, as opposed to your run-of-the-mill weirdo.
“What do I do now?” she wondered out loud, gliding through a stop sign.
“I don’t know, because you’re not following my directions,” came the exasperated voice.
She jumped and threw her hand over her heart as her pulse leapt in fear. Yeesh. The attitude from her phone was getting out of hand.
Reese took another left turn and said, “Someone’s following me! I need you to call the police.”
There was a long silence. “Are you sure?”
“Yes!” What, like she was making it up? Call her what you want, she’d never been paranoid. She knew a lunatic when she saw one.
It was one thing for her mother to be skeptical of her outbursts, but now her damn phone was judging if she was actually in danger or not? Rude.
It was eight o’clock and any minute now Reese knew that daylight would be disappearing and night would cover the city in a shroud of creepy darkness. She would be utterly vulnerable, and annoyance was about to turn to fear if this guy persisted.
“Call the police.”
“I can’t call the police if you don’t stop and park somewhere. They’ll never find you spinning in circles.”
Okay, the attitude wasn’t helping. She would call 911 herself.
Reese slammed on her brakes at a red light and said, “Fine.” She fought the urge to tell off what wasn’t even an actual person.
Maybe it was time to change the voice on her phone to someone more like…well, her mother.
Knuckles rapped on her window.
“Aahh!” She let out an involuntary scream. It was him, the gorgeous guy, who apparently was determined as well as movie star good-looking.
“Go away!” Some people had a really hard time taking a hint.
“No, you’re in the car I was supposed to get. There’s something...”
Reese didn’t wait to hear the rest. She turned right, ignoring the no turn on red sign. She was really starting to freak out. She’d seen a lot of strange things as a journalist, and come to think of it, even stranger things as a single woman trying to date, and every one of them was running through her mind right now.
She cut her thoughts out right there. That wasn’t going to help her get out of this situation alive and intact. This was no trickier than fending off her boss Ralph’s groping hands. The idea was to dodge and weave.
Glancing in the mirror, she saw that the green car was no longer behind her. Her foot eased on the gas, and her shoulders relaxed. Well, see. He had given up.
Much better. She requested updated directions to her hotel. She hoped like hell the paper hadn’t gone cheap on her and gotten her a crummy hotel room. She deserved a freaking feather pillow after this, at the very least.
Without warning, the green car came from nowhere and pulled out in front of her, cutting her off and forcing her to slam on the brakes. Her car skidded as she screamed, and rodeup onto the sidewalk a little. She was reaching for her phone to call the police, someone, anyone, when the man appeared at her window again.
“Listen, I’m sorry to bother you like this. Can we just switch cars, please? I left something in the car you have.”
He sounded normal. He looked normal. But there was nothing normal about nearly running her off the road in pursuit of his forgotten wallet or whatever it was he’d left in the car.