Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 175

Chapter 170

Drew POV

I looked back at my leaf.

I thought about what I knew.

He had been at school twice and at my house once. He was always in a car. He was always watching. He hadn’t done anything, hadn’t come up to me, hadn’t spoken. Just watched.

I thought about whether this was the kind of thing I should tell Dad.

I was pretty sure it was.

The reason I hadn’t told him before was partly because I wasn’t sure enough and partly because of the new face, which I didn’t want to change. But three times was a pattern. I was confident in patterns.

I looked at the leaf one more time.

Put it in the book very carefully.

Stood up and went inside.

Dad was at the kitchen counter. Lucian was sitting on the far stool going through something on a tablet. They both looked at me when I came in.

“Are you cold?” Dad asked. “It’s getting cold out.”

“I’m okay,” I said. I stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment.

“What is it?” Dad asked.

He asked it in the way he asked things now, the new face way, where he was actually looking.

I thought about how to say it accurately without saying more than I was sure of.

“There’s a man,” I said. “He’s been watching. Three times. School twice and the front garden just now.” I paused. “He’s always in a car. He doesn’t come up or talk. He just watches.”

The kitchen went quiet.

Lucian’s hand had stopped moving over the tablet.

Dad was looking at me with a completely different face. Not the worried face exactly. Something more like the face he had when he’d received information that required immediate processing and was doing it very fast.

“Come here,” he said.

I went to him. He crouched down to my height, which he did when he needed to look at me directly.

“Can you describe the man?” he said. “Anything you remember.”

I told him what I’d seen. The general shape, the cars-gray today, blue on Thursday, I couldn’t remember Tuesday’s exactly. The way he sat. The direction he looked.

Dad listened to all of it without interrupting.

When I finished, he looked at Lucian.

“Drew told me something,” I said. “I want to run it by you before I decide what to do with it.”

A pause. “Tell me.”

“He said there’s been a man watching. Three times-twice at school and once at the front of our house this aftemoon. Always in a car. Different cars each time, Drew noticed the different cars.” I paused. “He didn’t say anything before today because he wasn’t sure enough. But three times is a pattern and Drew knows patterns.”

Cameron was quiet for a moment.

“How sure is he?” he said. “About the man being the same person each time?”

“He said he was pretty sure,” I said. “The shape of the person, the way he sat. Drew’s observational quality is-” I stopped. “He’s four, Cameron. But he notices things accurately. He was right about the chickadee last week and everyone else thought it was a sparrow.”

“The chickadee,” Cameron repeated.

“It’s relevant because it demonstrates-look, the point is that when Drew says he noticed something, he noticed it. He’s not a child who reports things he’s uncertain about. He sits with uncertainty until he’s more sure. He told me today because it was the third time and three times was enough.”

“Okay,” Cameron said. “But four years old is still four years old. Is there any chance it’s a parent from the school? Someone who parks in the same spot regularly? Someone whose car Drew has seen in the vicinity before without connecting it to a specific-”

“I thought about that,” I said. “It’s possible. I’m not saying it’s not possible.” I leaned against the hallway wall. “But school and home. Both locations. That’s not a parent parking near the school. That’s someone who knows where we live.”

Cameron was quiet.

‘I don’t know that it’s anything,” I said. “Drew said the man never did anything, never got out of the car, never came near him. Just watched.” I paused. “Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe there’s a completely normal explanation and Drew picked up on something ambient and I’m building it into something it isn’t because-”

“Because of Logan,” Cameron said.