“Tanner. Hey. It’s Ash.”
“What’s up?” His voice was unreadable. Was he excited to be talking to me? Or did he hate my guts?
“Listen, I’m really sorry about the other night. I’d had a lot to drink and…it had been a long day.”
There was a long pause. “I’m sorry too. I had no business telling you what to do. You’re a grown woman.”
“Don’t worry about it.” How could I segue into asking about Rosalie? I decided to just go for it. “You own PicStock, right?”
“Yes.” He sounded very confused by the sudden change of topic. “Why?”
“So you know how I told you that my sister went missing a few years ago? Well…I just came across a picture of her on PicStock. I was hoping you could give me some info about the photo. Like when it was taken. And who the photographer was.”
“Are you serious? That’s amazing! Of course I can get that info. What’s the photo ID?”
“751495.”
“Great. I’ll see what I can find.” The line went dead.
I smiled at the phone. I tried not to get my hopes up too much. But with this new lead and Tanner helping…it felt like Imight actually have a shot at finding out what had happened to Rosalie. Afterall…Tanner was a better stalker than I was. Since technically he was the one who’d been stalking me, not the other way around.
“Well that sounded like it went surprisingly well,” said Chastity. “Imagine how well it would have gone if you had sent a nudie first, though.”
I tapped my fingers on the desk while I waited for him to call back. It was probably only about 5 minutes, but it felt like an eternity.
When he finally called, I picked up on the first ring.
“Are you at work?” he asked.
Weird greeting.“Yeah. Why?”
“Good. Go wait out front. I’ll pick you up in ten.” And then he hung up.
I looked at the phone as if the screen would magically give me more information about whatever the hell had just happened.
“What’d he find?” asked Chastity.
“He didn’t say. He just told me to wait outside. And that he’s going to pick me up in ten minutes.”
“Ooh la la. I bet he’s going to take you to Club Onyx to punish you for talking back to him the other night.”
“What does that have to do with the picture of Rosalie?”
“No idea. But I bet you’re gonna have a wild night.”
“Wild night?” asked Madison.
I jumped at the sound of her voice. How long had she been creeping on us?
“Yeah,” said Chastity. “Tanner is picking Ash up in ten minutes.”
“For what?”
Chastity’s eyes lit up. “We aren’t sure. All we know is that it involves handcuffs, a bed, and a whip. Oh, and lots of spectators.” She said it loud enough for all of our coworkers to hear.
Kill me now.“We definitely donotknow that. He just said he was coming to pick me up in ten.”
“Right. But the subtext…”
