Hi everyone!! I am so sorry for the long delay with this new update. Thanks everyone for the awesome feedback! It really makes my day when I read it, and encourages me to post more! Hope you enjoy the next part … MAC--
CHAPTER 16
Have you ever felt like you were hearing someone's voice as if from underwater? They sound slow and drawn out, the voice deeper than normal. And… they don't make sense. Any sense. At all. Barrett. Right now. He's not making any sense. I'm not hearing him right. And I feel just like this. Like I'm drowning, I mean. Like his voice is traveling to me from underwater.
And that must be it. I must be drowning or something – only without water, obviously. Because what I think he said he cannot have possibly said.
I feel a hand steady me and look up, seeing a grim-faced Jordan looking down at me.
"You okay?" he asks.
I shake my head, lost for words. I look again at Barrett. He looks upset, which only confirms that something is indeed wrong. Of course I'm not okay!
"Where's my brother?" I hear Jordan ask.
Cooper. Yes. Where is he? Where is Cooper. Where is Cooper? Oh my god…
What if something happened to him? What if he's hurt! Or…
"Honey, they've got Cooper," Barrett had said.
I shake my head. They can't have Cooper. They can have anyone else, but not – wait a minute, they?
"Who are 'they'?" I ask, finally finding my voice. "Last I checked, our man was Tad. And last I checked Tad was only one man."
"Let's go inside," Barrett says quietly.
I open my mouth to argue, but instead move aside. If he wants to talk inside, fine. I just want to know what is going on and where Cooper is… now.
Jordan leads the group into the living room, and Barrett takes a seat.
"Okay, Barrett. Spill it. All of it. What is going on?"
"Well, Tad is definitely the one behind this. He's the ring leader."
"The… ring leader?" I ask. "Of what?"
Barrett sighs, shaking his head in anger. "Let's just call it 'The Heather Wells Anti-Fan Club so to say."
"You can't be serious. There's a fan club devoted to hating me?"
Oh god. Okay, I never pretended my music was like Ella Fitzgerald's. There were songs I sang that I'll admit honesty kind of sucked. But… my god, I wasn't that bad!
"There are only four people in it, but… yeah, they pretty much hate you."
I feel like I'm about to stumble backwards until I feel a solid hand on my shoulder, holding me up. I look over my shoulder and see Jordan. He leads me to a seat and I fall into it.
"Once again, where's my brother? If they want Heather, why exactly did they take him? And if Cooper knew about these guys, how could he let himself get caught? He's not a stupid guy. He's good at what he does…"
Jordan seems honestly upset. Not as upset as me – I mean, he can't be. I can barely see straight, let alone formulate long and coherent sentences. But… he does seem pretty upset.
"Yesterday," Barrett starts, "I was doing some research and came across this encrypted web page."
"Encrypted?" I ask.
"Private, really," Barrett explains.
"Okay," I say. "And this private, encrypted site…" I say, urging him to continue.
"Everything was written in a code that was popular years ago with stalkers of celebrities. There are specific words that signify violent actions, and certain ways of spelling the celebrity's name that would make it so we can't search for the site by usual means. It occurred to me yesterday to try and find something on the internet in this code language, since he was after you years ago, when this code was most popular. And we found this private site, which our hackers managed to – after much work – get into. Well, we could see the last login was yesterday morning, and the webmaster referenced the incident from ten years ago. He said you were right now at this address here, and there was a plan in place to take out security and Cooper's family. There was nothing about harming anyone," he says, noticing my face at that comment. Just the thought that Cooper's family could've been hurt, by merely trying to protect me gives me chills to the core.
"They just wanted to render Cooper and his family helpless so they could get you."
"Though at the time, we didn't know it was a 'they' we were dealing with," the woman who looks kind of like me says.
I look at her, just remembering her presence at all, wondering at her role in all of this.
"I'm Angie," she says, as if reading the questions in my eyes. "I'm an officer, and I pretended to be you," she says. "Sorry we couldn't tell you about the plan," she finishes quietly. "That was all Cooper," she explains.
I nod, closing my eyes slowly. Of course it was all Cooper. Cooper keeps me in the dark every day of his life and says it's for my own protection. It's his story. It's always his story. And now…
… now what? I have no idea where he is.
"Tell me what happened to him. Please," I demand. Plead.
"When Cooper learned about Tad's plan, he freaked out," Angie explains. "He read through the paperwork, seeing that Tad was planning to begin his pre-attack stakeout at a deli up the street today. This morning. He figured that Tad would probably take any opportunity to grab you without having to go through the trouble of getting around the Cartwright's security, and if you were at that deli, he would probably try to get you there instead. Only… well, as you can imagine, the idea of bringing you to the deli was completely out of the question to Cooper. He wouldn't even consider it. And… he's always thought I look just a little bit like you. So… he enlisted me into this mission."
"Then what?" I ask, taking a steadying breath.
"Honey," Barrett says, "you have to know that we had no idea there were three more of them. There was only one IP address on this site, and one username. From our footage of the Mall of America thing years back, and from the letters you've received recently, what happened at Fitness World, the phone call you received… it all points to one man, one stalker. We weren't prepared for three extra people to be involved. Today, about three minutes after they got Cooper, our main hacker calls us and tells us he thinks this guy isn't working alone. Horrible timing. If only that call came ten minutes earlier! Anyway, that was when the hacker found the reference on the site to the Heather Wells Must Die Club."
"Are you serious?" I ask. Calling it my Anti-Fan Club before was definitely much nicer and less dramatic. "The name of their club is actually The Heather Wells Must Die Club?" I ask, my voice sounding like a squeak. I mean, honestly… what did I ever do to piss these four people off so much? I just sang in a skirt! Lots of girls sing in skirts! I sang well, I sang hard, I didn't bother anyone, I just sang in a freakin' skirt! "Why are they doing this?" I ask, bursting.
"I don't know," Barrett says honestly. "Anyway, the idea of a club of people hating you was something we just hadn't considered. So we weren't ready when they attacked."
I swallow hard. I don't like that word. Attack.
Cooper was… attacked?
Oh god.
"What does that mean?"
"Cooper and I were standing at the deli," Angie starts, "chatting, trying to be casual, pretending I was you. Tad was there. Cooper saw him notice us out of the corner of his eye. He never looked at him. But he said the code words we'd worked out so I knew. Our goal was to get him outside. Make him follow us to our car. Normally, that would've been fine! He would've tried to grab me – well, you – as you got into the car. It's how stupid people and amateur stalkers work. And that is what we honestly thought we were dealing with. My partner, Jerry," she says, indicating the man sitting relatively close to her, "was there with another officer, ready for it. Cooper was ready for it. Barrett was keeping watch from the top of a nearby building."
She sighs and looks at me. "We didn't expect anything to go wrong."
"So… what happened?" I ask, growing impatient. I mean, come on – we are talking about Cooper's safety here, and no one seems to want to talk about what happened. Of course, I'm starting to think the absolute worst! I'm thinking guns, knives, brute force. My stomach is in knots.
"They weren't stupid. They knew I wasn't you immediately, even though I kept my head low and didn't make eye contact with that Tad guy. They must have switched their plan right then and there, I guess. We walked outside, and he followed us. We thought we had him and started toward the parking lot, where Jerry and the others were. And that's when they all came after Cooper. They didn't care about me, and I tried to help him, Heather, I did. It all happened really fast. They pushed me aside, flung me against a wall, really, got my gun, and held him up and beat on him pretty badly. Just as our guys were coming to help, they threw him in the back of this white van that was right there outside the deli, and drove away."
I let out a low breath, closing my eyes, picturing it all. Cooper being attacked blindly – held up by one man while others pounded on him… on his beautiful face. His beautiful body. I could picture it. That beautiful body folding forward to protect himself, but Cooper… he was helpless.
"What do we do?" I ask in a whisper, my voice shaking. "How can we help him? Where did they take him?"
"We don't know, honey," Barrett says, taking one of my hands and squeezing it with his own calloused hands.
"Before they drove off, they told me that I knew the only way to get him back," Angie says, shaking her head.
"Well, great," I say. "What's that?"
She stares at me intently and then looks at her partner, Jerry, and then at Barrett.
"You," Barrett says. "We all know that. You're who he wants. He knows how much you care about Cooper. He's got bait now."
"Well, fine, turn me over to him. Do whatever you have to do, just get Cooper back safely," I say, standing up. "So, how do we get in touch with him?"
"Heather, don't be ridiculous," Jordan says. "We are not handing you over to a psycho stalker."
"He's right," Barrett says. "We can't turn you over to him. We know what he wants to do to you, honey. You know. And you know that Cooper would kill us if we did it to save him."
"But it's okay that he got himself hurt and captured to save me, right?" I ask through bleary eyes.
Barrett stares at the floor, like he's looking for his patience, or wishing he was somewhere else.
"Do you have another plan?" I ask.
"Not just yet," he admits.
"Then why are you even here?"
"To make sure they didn't make good on their original plan to incapacitate security and get you. You're in danger right now. And… we had to tell you what happened. We figured you'd notice if Cooper never came back."
At that thought, tears spring to my eyes and suddenly I'm angry. I'm seething mad. "Well thank you so much for stopping by! You came all the way over here to tell me that Cooper is in danger. That he's hurt. That he's been captured. And that there's nothing being done about it? That you're just here to protect me? I appreciate the visit, but I need a plan! And I thought that you were the police! You're supposed to have plans when emergencies arise."
I stand up and move so that I'm in front of Barrett. He looks up at me and I stare into his eyes, my gaze pleading.
"Use me."
"What?" he asks.
"We can't just let them hurt Cooper. We can do something. He wants me. So use me. We know we're dealing with a group of them now. We can get him back if we just work together. I won't get hurt. And… I cannot just sit here and do nothing. This case is about me. And I'm sick of sitting by while everyone else tries to solve it. With or without you, I'm going to figure out a way to help Cooper," I say. "It would just be a hell of a lot easier with you."
Barrett sighs and shakes his head. "How did I know you were going to be like this?"
"You can't say no to me. You just can't." I speak quietly and surely. But mostly, I speak with love – and I think that's what gets through to him.
"He's going to kill me if anything happens—"
"Nothing will happen to me."
"Heather," Jordan says, and I turn to look at him. "You can't do this. You know it'll kill him if something happens to you – especially if you're trying to help him."
I shrug. "Then your brother is a big hypocrite. And I fully intend to tell him that, as soon as this is all over."
Jordan stands and walks toward me. "How can I help?"
An hour later, I'm in my room, practically naked, while Angie wires me.
"You know, I've known Cooper for a few years now," she says, nonchalantly, as she works.
I eye her suspiciously, wondering what she's getting at. If she's just another girl interested in Cooper, about to ask me if I think he'll go for her or something, I'll scream.
"I've seen him date different girls. Jerry and I have doubled with him before," she explains.
"Oh! You're dating your partner?" I ask.
She nods. "Makes work difficult, let me tell you. We spend most of our time worrying about each other."
I smile, moved by the look on her face as she merely speaks about Jerry. You can just see the love.
"Anyway, Cooper's always seemed so detached from girls. He's always seemed either uninterested in who he's dating, or preoccupied with work or friends. I have never seen him on a date where he didn't look at her like…" she trails off, thoughtfully, shaking her head.
"… like what?" I finally ask.
"Like he was wishing she was someone else. And now I think I get it."
"Oh," I say lamely, because, well, I don't get it. What she's saying, I mean. I have no idea where her ramblings about Cooper's love life are going.
"Today, when we were going through the plan again, and I was asking more questions about the threats that have been made to you and trying to get up to speed, I saw it all."
"All what?"
"All the emotions that have ever been missing from him before. They were all there, plus a few extras. And times about a thousand. I can see it clearly."
"See what clearly?" I ask. Because she's so not being clear right now.
She laughs, finishing up her handiwork in an area that is kind of personal; a place that I hoped Cooper would be the next person to explore.
"You two are blind, I swear," she says. "Okay, all set here." She stands up and looks at me. "Get dressed and we'll be downstairs for when it's time to make the phone call."
"Right," I say, beginning to get nervous again. Because after the phone call, the action begins.
Angie leaves and I grab my cell phone, wanting to make one quick phone call before I join the group.
I dial a number I know so well – better than my own. I hear his voice, deep and sexy as ever, though it's his business tone and he's telling me and a thousand others to leave him a message. It's not exactly personal. But it is Cooper's voice. And for now, that is all that matters.
Beep.
"Coop, hi," I say. "It's me. I'm, uh… god, I don't know what to say. Are you okay? Are you hurt? How could you just go off and get yourself captured and hurt like that? And why did you have to leave me behind, with no clue about what you were up to? Huh, I guess I do know what to say. Coop… I don't know what's going to happen next, but… I am going to try to help you. I need to try. Because… you matter to me. More than anything. More than anyone. Cooper, I… I l-love you," I stammer, nervously. "And I know I shouldn't. I know that you don't really feel that way about me. But I can't help it that I feel that way. I love you so much, and right now you're in danger, so I'm coming after you, and I'm going to try. And if something happens to me, and you're wondering why I did it, why I put myself in danger for you, hopefully you'll hear this and know why. It's because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't try everything in the world to help you. I hope to see you soon, and for us both to be okay. And I hope that when this is all over, I can kiss you. And not as part of some ruse, either."
Oh god, I'm totally rambling. I'm not even sure what I'm saying anymore. How do you delete these things and re-record?
"I, um… I love you, Coop. Please be okay," I finish in a low voice, and hang up quickly, before I can ramble any more.
I dress quickly and head downstairs, where many people are waiting for me so we can get this show on the road.
I sit down at the kitchen table, next to Barrett, and when he nods, I grab my phone and call another cell phone number that I'm familiar with. Only this one belongs to a man that makes me skin curl right now.
"Heather," he says, when he answers. His voice sounds like acid.
"Tad," I say, nervously, my voice quivering.
"I was wondering when you would call," he says. His voice is not distorted like it was the night he made that phone call to my cell phone. It's like he doesn't care anymore about disguising himself. It's like any sanity he had when I first met him is gone, and he's completely unhinged now.
"Where's Cooper?" I ask, even though Barrett had asked me not to bring Cooper's name up right away.
"He's in a bit of pain, but he's right here. Heather… he's not who I want. You know that, baby."
"Is he okay?" I ask slowly, petrified of his answer.
"I'm sure he's been better," he says.
"Let him go, Tad. He's done nothing to you, and you're right… he's not who you want. So just let him walk away. Safely," I add.
"And why would I do that?" he asks, seeming genuinely baffled.
"To be nice?" I ask. "Because it would mean a lot to me," I add. "You know, your girlfriend."
"We're still dating?" he asks, sounding suspicious and confused.
"Um, well, I didn't break up with you. Did you break up with me?"
"No," he says. "But… you haven't called me in nearly a week."
"Bad communication skills," I explain, trying to work his apparent insanity to my advantage. "My bad."
"So we're still dating," he says, like he's thinking about this. "I don't believe it."
"I can't exactly prove it to you right now," I say.
"Prove it! Yes! That's what I want. If you can come over here and prove it, I'll let your boy here go."
I can barely breathe.
"How do I even know he's okay?" I manage to get out.
I hear a rumbling, a few strange noises, and moaning.
"Say hi to my girlfriend," Tad says. "She's on her way to come and see me."
"No…"
I swallow, recognizing Cooper's voice at once.
"She's going to prove her love to me. I think if she does that, I'll let you go. But I think I'll hold onto you until she can get here."
"No… Heather, no. Don't do it."
My stomach is in knots. He sounds out of it. Not near-death or anything, just… out of it.
"Is he okay?" I ask, gripping the phone so tightly, my hands feel numb.
"He's just got a little head wound. That's all. But he'll be fine once you get here and you and I get reacquainted," he says in a voice that sounds more like a hiss.
"You son of a bitch!" I hear Cooper yell, sounding more with it now – and totally angry.
"If you're still at his parents, I'm down the street, behind Parker's Supermarket, in a white van. I'll see you walk across the lot, and if I spot any cops near you at all, or coming after me on foot or in cruisers, your friend, Cooper, won't make it out of here alive. And believe me, Heather, I mean that."
I swallow hard. "And when you have me, he goes free, right?" I ask.
"If I have you, I have absolutely no need for him. He goes free, and he'll be fine."
"Me for him," I repeat, staring into Barrett's fearful eyes. I can see that Barrett is already questioning the plan completely. And I'm starting to understand why. There's no way for them to help me until it's too late. Not without something terrible happening to Cooper.
"You for him. You have ten minutes."
I stare at Barrett as I say the words.
"I'll see you soon, Tad."
"I can't wait, baby," he says.
"Heather, no!" I hear Cooper yell, before the line disconnects.
I stand up and look at everyone around me, seeing that they're already ready to talk me out of it. They're already thinking this is the worst plan ever, or they're afraid of Cooper's wrath.
All I can think about is Cooper. His smile. His constant five-o-clock shadow and how it feels under my hand when we're kissing. His lips on mine. His body against mine last night as we kissed freely. His long dark, wavy hair. Those piercing blue eyes that seem to see into my soul. And the fact that he put everything on the line today to keep me safe. I love him.
I've never loved anyone this much.
"I'm going," I say.