“You don’t think I can?”
“No,” she said honestly, stopping and meeting my eyes. “But I don’t reckon you’re gonna want to, either.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Shoot.” She waved her dirty cloth at me. “The lunch rush is gonna start in the next fifteen minutes and unless you want everyone and their mother knowin’ where you are, I suggest you get yourself back to your house.”
She was trying to get rid of me.
Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t that easy to get rid of—unless you dropped a sex tape of me, of course.
I put thirty dollars on the counter in front of me and left, shooting a look at her over my shoulder. She wasn’t paying me any attention at all as she stuffed my tip in the tip jar behind the counter, and I narrowed my eyes at the back of her head.
I was going to find out what she meant.
As long as there were no people around.
CHAPTER FIVE – ELLE
I’d finally finished cleaning the house.
It’d taken me all of last night and almost all of today since I’d woken up, but now, as the clock on my crappy phone ticked over to six o’clock, I was done.
Finally.
It also meant I had to open my laptop and deal with the one thing I’d been avoiding: checking my emails.
Without my phone, not only would my business team be going crazy, but so would my sister. Since our parents had died in a crash when I was sixteen, she and I were all each of us had left. She was older than me by five years, which meant she was also super protective of me and would be going insane right now.
I really should have taken five minutes to text her my plan before I left.
I picked my laptop up off the coffee table and settled in on the sofa with it. It took a minute to boot up since it’d died overnight, and I had to type the passkey for the Wi-Fi in three times before I got the mishmash of capital letters and numbers correct.
Finally connected, I opened my browser and hit the shortcut for my private, personal email. I had a public one that I’d check only when I’d gauged my eyes out with a rusty spork, a business one that I’d have to check after I checked in with my sister, and the private one I was now signed into.
There were three hundred emails.
By the looks of it, they were all from my sister.
Wincing, I clicked the first email. With another wince, I went to the next, and the next, and the next. The more I clicked, the more violent they became. It went from “Please call me, I’m worried about you” to “If I ever see you again I’m going to kill you with my bare hands.”
Both total reasonable emails, to be honest.
I scanned the next few before going to the most recent ones and opening those. Her last email was the one I wanted.
From: Emily McGuire ([email protected])
To: Elle Evans ([email protected])
Subject: Okay, asshole, I get it
ELLE!!! I went to your apartment and found your phone. FFS! Where the hell are you? What’s going on? I guess you don’t have my number, so please call me as soon as you see this. If you don’t call me by the end of the day tomorrow the police are going to open a missing persons case. CALL ME YOU JERK 718-366-4851
I picked up my crappy phone and dialed her number. It rang once before she answered with a frantic, “Hello?”
Curling into a ball, I said, “Hey, Em.”
“Elle?” She screamed. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” I said to the sound of a door slamming on her end.
“What the fuck is going on? Where the fuck are you? That tape dropped and nobody has been able to find you. I have been looking all over the city for you. I’ve been beside myself! Why did you leave your phone at home? Why didn’t you tell me what was going on? I’m going to kill you!”
“I—”
“I’m not finished!” she shouted only the way a big sister could. “How dare you up and leave without telling me you were leaving? Ben was about to commit me to hospital! I haven’t slept in three days! Amelia hasn’t been able to go to school because she’s been so worried about you!”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too! Sorry I’m going to have to wring your neck to murder your dumb ass when you get home!”
“Can I talk now? Are you done yelling at me?”
“No, but I would like some answers, so I’ll delay the yelling until later.”
“I appreciate that,” I muttered. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you before I left. I panicked, Em. I had half an hour’s notice of the tape going public and there was nothing my lawyer could do to get it stopped. I had to run and I left my phone behind.”
There was a sniff. “You should have told me.”
“I know, but I didn’t think. I grabbed a shitty phone once I was out of the state, but I didn’t have your number. I should have checked my email and let you know I was safe as soon as I got here.”
“Here? Where is here? Where the hell are you?”
“Florida Keys.”
“What the—how in the fuck did you end up there?”
“I just drove,” I replied lamely. “Until I was as far away from New York as I could be. I have no idea what’s going on.”
She blew out a long breath that crackled down the line. “Well, shit, then. It’s a media storm,” she said solemnly. “I had to wade through a media camp to get to your building. The new doorman—who is very nice, by the way—let me into your place when I showed him my I.D. and flirted with him a little bit.”
“You’re married.”
“And you were missing. Shut up.”
Fair enough.
“You’re trending on social media, you’re all over all the gossip blogs and websites, and your lawyer is trying to get into contact with you.”
“How do you know that?” I navigated to my business email.
“Bethany called me. I’m your next of kin so when she couldn’t get hold of you, she called me to see if I knew where you were. She’s already handled everywhere who had the actual video up, and as far as she knows, it’s no longer on the internet.”
“If she believes that, I need a new lawyer.”
“That’s what I said to her. Either way, it’s on the dark web, and most of these idiots can barely handle Twitter, never mind anything else.” She sighed. “Elle, what happened?”
I was getting tired of telling this story. Still, I repeated for the third time that day what had happened.
“I didn’t mean that. I know you didn’t do it. I know you would never video yourself having sex. You didn’t have sex until you met him, so there was no way you were going to get that freaky in the bedroom, never mind a broom closet.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. You should call your lawyer and see what’s happening. Do you definitely know if it’s Mitch who leaked it?”
“I can’t imagine it would be anyone else. How would anyone have gotten hold of it? He either shared it or sold it.”