Them

Boris Brownly was going about his day as a seasoned probation officer. He had just met with a dope dealer, no doubt destined to reoffend, and was pulling his lunch out of the bag he took to work every day, setting it on the table, when his phone buzzed with a text message. Are you ready for me? was displayed across the screen and caught his eye at first glance. Confused, he set his bologna sandwich down and picked up the phone. He tapped on the text for more information. He had to blink a few times to be sure it was being sent from the name it appeared to be sent from. Yes, it really was sent from Karma Stone. He was shocked, but he was more delighted than anything. He’d been hoping for years that she would have the balls to fuck with him so she could finally be put in her place once and for all. “Hello, bitch,” he muttered under his breath. “Long time no see. Keep them coming so I can finally nail your ass.” His lunch forgotten, he quickly dialed the police department’s nonemergency number and relayed the information to the person who answered. He was asked to bring in his phone, and after getting someone to cover for him for the remainder of the day, he left the probation department. During the drive to have his phone investigated, his mind peeled back through the years to Janelle Stone and how much he loathed the woman. He had taken an immediate dislike to the bitch the instant they met. She came across as arrogant and defiant. Janelle Stone definitely did not like being told what to do. So when she got off after killing his friend and being suspected in other deaths and attacks that couldn’t be proven, he had never been angrier in his life. Had he been able to get his hands on her, he just might have throttled her to death—and never gotten this message, because he would be in prison for life. The question of where Janelle Stone had been all these years drove him mad. Okay, he admitted it. He was obsessed with the bitch. He couldn’t help it. There was just something about the disgusting sicko that made him want to do all he could to piss her off. But in his mind, it wasn’t just about showing her who was in control and one-upping her—it was about justice. It ate at him regularly that she never paid for so many things she had done. Obsessed or not, some speculated that she had died, while others speculated that she had left the country, with the latter being the most likely. Had she died, he couldn’t believe her body wouldn’t have been found somewhere, which would have made the news, and if she’d gotten in trouble again, he would have been aware of it because he did regular checks on her. So because there were no arrests over the years, most people assumed she’d become some other country’s problem. When he got to the police station, he learned that one of the officers assigned to guard her—after she had the nerve to shove him off the ward, which still made his face burn red with embarrassment and fury to this day—had also received an email from Stone with the same sentence: Are you ready for me? “Yeah, I’m ready for you, bitch. I’ve been ready for over a decade,” he muttered. He waited impatiently as the technicians investigated his phone, but just like with the other officer, the message simply wasn’t traceable. The nut job was at least smart enough to use a proxy. The tech guy had no idea which country the message had originated from, let alone exactly where. At the time, Boris wasn’t too concerned about it, because he knew that sooner or later she would fuck up. She was just too damn stupid and reckless. She wouldn’t have gotten in trouble for so many different things—even if she hadn’t been made to pay for all of them—if she had had any brains. If Stone were on national television, that wouldn’t stop her from attacking someone if they pissed her off enough. When Stone had it in for someone, nothing else mattered. A small smile spread across the aging probation officer’s face. He couldn’t wait for the next message.