Obsessed With You (10 page)

The wooded area between his house
and Cathy’s was about an acre total, but only a third of an acre in
width, he estimated. Aaron followed the perimeter of the woods where
it met the lawn of his property, but he saw no pathway. He was going
to have to just go into the woods and do the best he could, trying to
stay in a semi straight line toward Cathy’s house.

A few yards in, the thickness of
the trees and scrubby brushes and thorny vines that grabbed at his
jeans forced Aaron back to his lawn. There was a little shed behind
the house and Aaron made his way over, hoping like hell there was
something in there to help him. It was dark and dirty in the shed,
which had a dirt floor. When in the hell was he going to realize he
needed a flashlight? The sunlight provided a little light and Aaron
groped around until he located an overhead light with a chain. He
pulled the chain expecting nothing, but a light bulb flashed on.

Various gardening tools hung on
the walls on hooks or leaned rustily against the walls. A hoe
wouldn’t do him any good in those woods. He picked tools up from
the dirt floor and put them back until he found the one item that
could help him: a machete. Aaron wasn’t sure why the previous
owners had the machete, but he was glad they did. He picked it up and
held it to the light. It was rusty but looked like it might work. It
was all he had for that day and he was going to use it.

Aaron considered walking along
the shore until he got near Cathy’s property, then cutting up
through the woods. But that would have been more like half an acre of
woods. It didn’t make sense. He found the place where he had
attempted to go through before and swung the machete side to side.
His backpack of water and snack bars moved across his back as he
swung the blade.

The machete wasn’t sharp, but
it hacked off branches and vines, leaving some dangling at their
cuts. It took a while, but he made a very narrow and very rough path
through the woods. He stopped when he could see Cathy’s house, a
hundred yards or so away from the edge of the woods on her side. Time
to sit down on the woodsy ground and drink some water.

After several deep slugs of
water, Aaron pulled the binoculars out of his backpack. There was one
spot between the scrubby bushes and small trees that he could see
straight through to the cottage. He saw Cathy’s Honda, still with
its Georgia plates, parked in front. That hurt. He was going to buy
Cathy a new car, but when he told her that, she had said, “My car’s
only six years old and is doing fine. I don’t need a new car.”
That was Cathy. She wasn’t into status symbols, and though he could
give them to her, he loved her for that.

Aaron looked through the
binoculars every few minutes for hours, but Cathy never came out the
door. He wanted to see her so much it was killing him. He needed to
see her dark hair and slender figure, just to know she was okay. Just
to feed his broken heart with a glimpse of her. But she never came
out.

The sun began its descent, and
Aaron knew he had to go. He followed the roughened path he had made,
though it was difficult in places in the thick woods. But he finally
emerged onto his own property and made his way to his new house.

Tomorrow, he would have to take
the time to put the utilities in his name and have the cable
connected. He had a feeling his time there would be long and boring.

The frozen dinner of turkey and
dressing was passable. A couple of scotches later, he fell into a
dreamless sleep.

The next morning, the first of
February, Aaron put the utilities in his name through Starlight
Farms. The cable company would come out on Monday, between noon and
two, so he would have to be there. In the meantime, he had some
watching to do. It was Saturday and surely he would see some activity
around the place.

He was smart enough to take a big
bag of chips with him on his second day out. After he settled himself
on his spot, he looked through the binoculars. Cathy’s car wasn’t
there. She didn’t drive up through the daylight hours, and when it
began to get dark, Aaron made his way back through the woods. This
watching thing was not working out.

On Sunday morning, Aaron drove
back to Wal-Mart and bought three flashlights, one of them heavy
duty. He got plenty of batteries to last for quite a while. He
replenished his food supply and bought a couple of bottles of wine
and a six-pack of beer.

He managed to get through the
woods by ten, but Cathy’s car wasn’t there—again. Or maybe she
had been gone all night. He couldn’t bear that thought.

Aaron dedicated himself to
staying as long as it took for Cathy to come home, even if he had to
spend the night out there. The sun went down, but he sat in his spot.
It was getting colder and he wrapped his arms around himself. At one
point, he dozed off, and when he woke up at eleven that night, her
car wasn’t there.

The woods were dark and eerie,
but Aaron wasn’t afraid. He’d grown up in the outdoors, the
woods. But he wasn’t really prepared to spend the night in the
woods. He had not planned things well at all.

Cathy’s porch light shone down,
lighting the area in front of the house. He had a choice. He could
stay there in the woods all night or he could go back through the
path with his flashlight. Or—and this thought just came to him—he
could emerge onto Cathy’s side and walk to the bay and make his way
back to his house along the shore. That was the simplest thing to do.
Cathy wasn’t there to see her stalker.

So he crept out of the woods onto
Cathy’s property. It was a quick walk through her yard to the bay.
He ran along the shoreline until he saw his house, then cut up
through his yard. Aaron was definitely beginning to think he was
coming unhinged.

When he woke up on Monday, he was
still feeling unhinged. He had called Cathy, texted Cathy, but she
had never responded to him. Maybe it was time to try again. It had
been over three months since he’d seen her. She might have softened
toward him.

So he called her. The phone rang
four times before her voice mail message asked him to leave a
message. He was startled to hear her voice again after so long. Had
he known how sweet her voice was when he had her?

Aaron hit End Call when the voice
mail ended. He didn’t know what to say to her without sounding
crazy and desperate. He decided on a text instead.

“
Cat, I just want to make sure
you’re okay. Would you be willing to talk to me? I miss you.”

He sent the message before he
could change his mind. Then he crept through the woods. He wouldn’t
have much time that day since the cable people were coming between
noon and two. When he settled in, he saw that Cathy’s car was there
again, but he never saw her.

The rest of his afternoon was
spent waiting on the cable company. They didn’t arrive until
four-thirty, which pissed him off mightily. But they hooked him up.
He was going to need the distraction. He kept checking his phone all
day, hoping to hear from Cathy. She would see the missed call from
him and she would see the text.

But Cathy never responded. If
Cathy had texted him back, then he might have started some kind of
dialogue with her. He might have eventually been able to talk to her.
But her non-response forced Aaron to continue his watching, and he
was beginning to feel a little crazy about that. He fell asleep, even
more broken-hearted than he had been when he woke up that morning.

Chapter
Eleven

If only he could talk to Cathy
again. But Aaron felt that unless he had positive proof he had been
set up, she wouldn’t have anything to do with him. If he had that
proof, he would go right up to her door and tell her.

But what about his leaving her on
a crucial day to go play golf with a client? How was he going to get
past that? He wasn’t sure, but he believed that if the question of
his fidelity were removed from the table, that he could deal with
that one. If Cathy loved him—and he believed she did or he wouldn’t
be stalking her—then they could work through that.

He called Randy, angry that he
hadn’t heard from him in nearly a week.

“
I was just about to call you,”
Randy said. “I’ve tracked down every one of your girlfriends now.
Two have married and divorced and three more are living out of the
country.”

Randy went down the list of
names, all fifteen of them, and told Aaron their status.

“
Here’s the thing,” Randy
said. “It could be any one of these women, if they were so
inclined. I don’t know a way to pin it on any of ‘em. I think
this is going to hinge on the tie.”

“
I don’t see why knowing
where she got the tie helps us,” Aaron said.

“
Nope, probably not,” Randy
said with a sigh. “We need to connect the tie with someone who
knows about your peculiarities. Then we’ll have our answer.”

Neither man spoke for a moment.
Randy finally broke the silence with a question.

“
Have you ever had a one-night
stand that maybe you’ve forgotten about?”

“
I don’t do
one-night-stands,” Aaron said indignantly.

“
Just wondering,” Randy said.
“But I think we need to work backwards. Who knew about the tie and
who also has seen you naked? Aside from your fiancé, of course.”

It was all so highly embarrassing
to Aaron, to discuss his nakedness with a detective.

“
I’ll keep thinking,” Aaron
said before he hung up the phone.

He packed his backpack with water
and snacks and headed through the woods. He just needed to see Cathy.
If he could see her, he might feel a little less insane.

He was wrong about that.

Aaron settled into his watching
spot and focused the binoculars on Cathy’s house. Her car was
there, which was somehow reassuring to him. He watched for hours,
standing up and moving around periodically to stretch his legs. He
was doing just that when he heard a car moving up to Cathy’s house.

He grabbed the binoculars. A
white truck with ladders in the back stopped beside Cathy’s car.
Aaron moved the binoculars to the side of the truck, where he saw red
lettering. Stevens’ Painters. He tried to memorize the phone
number.

A lanky man got out of the truck
and headed toward the steps.

And then there she was, on the
porch. An overwhelming feeling of love washed over him. Cathy was
laughing, which sent Aaron’s adrenaline rushing through his veins.
Her hair was longer and she was dressed in jeans and a sweater. She
crooked her arm through the man’s and they went into the house.

Was Cathy dating the man? That
thought sent his mind into tailspins. Every jealous bone in his body
knocked on his heart. He sat there a while longer in a frantic state,
until the man came out again, less than an hour later. Cathy waved
goodbye to him from the porch. Relief spread through him then. She
had not kissed him goodbye—at least not in his presence.

Aaron had had enough for one day.
He was spent with the emotions that had coursed through him that
afternoon. A thorny vine grabbed him as he hurried through the woods.
He tore his leg away, ripping his jeans. He just needed to get home
and get a drink.

*************************

Aaron checked for Stevens’
Painters on Google the next morning. He found them in the Yellow
Pages. He needed to be able to say that.

“
I need to talk to someone
about painting my house,” Aaron said to the man who answered the
phone.

“
That would be me,” the man
said. “I do the painting.”

Was this the same person Aaron
had seen at Cathy’s house? He had no way of knowing so he just went
headlong into his speech.

“
My name is Richard Smith,”
he said. “I’ve bought the . . . .” He faltered trying to
remember the names of the people he had bought the house from.

“
Well, I can’t remember their
name now. But I’ve bought a Victorian on the bay that has a
turret.”

“
That must be the Loughlin
place,” the man said. “I know the house. It’s been empty for a
few years.”

“
Yes, and it’s in bad need of
painting inside and out,” Aaron said. “Could you come over and
give me an estimate?”

“
I sure could. How about this
afternoon around three? My name is Neil Stevens, by the way.”

“
Three would work fine, Mr.
Stevens,” Aaron said.

“
You can call me Neil. See you
this afternoon.”

Aaron couldn’t concentrate on
anything after he ended the call with Neil. He heated up a can of
soup and ate it with crackers. He really did need to get back to his
trading to keep the money flowing, but that required more mental
energy than he had. There was nothing else to do but go to his spying
station. It had become his focus, his target, and he was beginning to
feel creepy about it.

He loaded his backpack and
navigated his way down the path. Cathy’s car was there, and he
settled in for a long and boring watch. But it wasn’t boring. He
saw Cathy emerge from the side of her house and head toward the bay.
Her dark hair swung as she walked down to the pier, and then all the
way down its length. She stood at the end, looking out over the bay.