Stuck Like Glue [On Hold]

Chapter Two: Eric

Stuck Like Glue

Chapter 2: Eric

Installing cameras in the apartment of a girl I had never met wasn’t even the creepiest thing I had ever done. Kind of pathetic, but unfortunately true. I was a weird kid. Let’s just say I had been pretty persistent while chasing a girl during my first year of high school. I tried everything, including love letters with unmentionable contents. I was pretty sure I’d even memorized her entire schedule, and not just her school schedule. I was lucky she hadn’t filed a restraining order against me.

The first and last time I listened to my brother’s advice.

Sometimes I wondered if he really was the older sibling, but moments of sabotage like that one reminded me of my reality. I was still the kid brother, no matter how many idiotic comments Will made in a single day. (His record was twenty.)

I got into Emma van der Bilt’s apartment fairly easily, and that was supposed to be the tough part. All I had to do was dress up as a cleaning guy and avoid attracting attention to myself. I doubted anyone would actually be able to recognize each and every employee in a building as big as this one, but I wasn’t about to risk it.

Risk. My usage of that word was ironic; it was funny, almost. I was worried about putting myself at risk by attracting unwanted attention to myself, yet I was in the middle of enacting the first stage of my dad’s kidnapping plan. If I had really wanted to avoid risk, I wouldn’t have gotten involved in this insane plan in the first place, because that’s what it was. Insane—absolutely insane. I was kidnapping an heiress because my dad had asked me to.

Not just me, though. Will had been dragged into this with me, and he was even more reluctant to agree than I was, surprisingly. He was usually the one who went for crazy plans, but this one was too much for even him, maybe because it involved illegal activity minus the alcohol.

Normally, I wouldn’t have agreed, either. The idea was unreasonable; why would I have agreed if not for my father? I wouldn’t have. I wasn’t interested in money or crime or whatever it was that led people to hold others hostage. I just wanted to help my dad, and I knew that whatever reckless plan he had in mind would fall apart if I let him do it by himself. I couldn’t let him go down like that. So when he asked me to help him, I agreed. Maybe I had just signed away the next ten years of my life and signed myself up for prison. I had no way of knowing what the outcome of this would be. All I knew was that family came first, and when family came up with horrible kidnapping plans, you went with it, which was why I currently found myself installing a camera in some rich teenage girl’s room.

I pulled the second to last camera from my jacket pocket and climbed on a steady-looking wooden chair to reach the hiding spot I’d picked out. There was some weird, neon pink and black decorative piece on the wall, and it would easily conceal a miniature surveillance camera.

The chair began to give out when I reached up, and I cursed. “Oh, shit.” I threw out my arms in a last-minute attempt to steady myself. That chair wasn’t nearly as stable as it looked. Appearances were deceiving.

Once I was sure I wasn’t going to fall and knock down everything in my path, I shoved the camera into place and climbed back onto solid ground. I made sure everything looked the same as it had before I had entered, and all that really involved was putting the chair back in its place. I was good to go.

One camera left, two possible rooms. The first was a bathroom; the second was somebody’s room. Emma didn’t live alone, it seemed. I had assumed she did when she left her apartment alone for two consecutive days, but I was wrong. I vaguely considered the possibility that she lived with a guy and led a second life with him here in this apartment, one she kept hidden from her billionaire parents, but the second I walked in, it became clear to me that this room belonged to a girl. The walls were painted a bright pink, the decorations were all white and pink—and I mean every shade of pink that exists in this world—and there was makeup and perfume and girly shit everywhere. Frankly, if it were her secret boyfriend’s room, I would have been kind of scared.