Gracie's Dilemna
Chapter 1 – Stalked
Grace Williams loves to run, loves the slap of her sneakers on the pavement, but today – her sixteenth birthday – her heart's just not in it, and so after only one lap around the park she slows her pace, ready to call it quits.
I need to call Will.
She stops then, a pretty girl wearing short, faded cut-offs and a white bikini top, her long black hair pulled back into a messy ponytail and her sun-browned skin shiny with sweat, and then her breath catches on a ragged, very un-Gracie-like sob.
"Crybaby," she mutters, angrily freeing her tangled hair from its scrunchie and shaking it loose. Then she extricates her phone from the tight pocket of her shorts and dials the familiar number.
Will answers on the second ring. "Gracie, that you?"
"I'm not pregnant," she informs him, then hangs up, then realizes that she'd never let on that she might be.
With another disgusted shake of her head and another muttered oath, Grace shoves her phone back into her pocket, leans down to tighten her laces, and starts on the long walk home. She never notices the familiar car idling across the street, or the man slouched behind the wheel staring at her with hungry eyes.
Stan Edwards watches, somewhat bored, while his stepdaughter makes a short call on her cell, then his gaze sharpens as she bends to re-tie her sneakers. But after an all-too-brief glimpse of what her skimpy top wants to show him, her glossy hair falls forward like a veil, brushing the ground and blocking his view.
Well, hell.
He shifts the car into Drive and pulls from the curb, wondering what his darling Gracie will have to say for herself when he throws the crumpled-up EPT box – and what it says about her - in her face.
"The bitch is mine," Stan says aloud, hearing the girl in his mind, begging for his silence, and imagining what she might do to secure it.
The thought makes him smile, and he presses his foot down on the gas.