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.

My eyes scanned the room for a possible hiding spot. Nothing popped out at me, although that may have been because the bright pink walls were blinding me. I squinted my eyes and walked over to the left side of the room, stopping when I reached a desk. There was a picture frame on display. I picked it up in a gloved hand once my eyes had adjusted to the color.

The words “Best Friends” were engraved at the bottom of the frame; the frame itself held a picture of Emma van der Bilt and a blonde girl that looked to be the same age as her. I wasn’t going to lie; this girl was fucking stunning. They both were, but there was something about the blonde girl’s smile. It was captivating—almost contagious. I couldn’t stop looking at her.

Fuck. Alright, creep, that’s enough. I shook my head. This entire situation was already creepy enough as it was. I didn’t need to make it any worse. This didn’t need to turn into a repeat of my freshman year of high school. Those were some dark times.

Jesus. Why had no one told me I was such a creep back then? Bastards. At least now I knew when to rein it in before it got out of hand.

Shaking my head, I set the picture frame back down and quickly installed the last camera, mentally chanting something about not being creepy when I set my computer up and started monitoring the apartment once I got home.

When the last camera had been installed, I got the hell out of there, and I managed to do it without being detected or suspected. Luck must have been on my side. I usually liked to say God was on my side when something went well, but I had a feeling he wasn’t on my side just then.

***

I stared at four empty rooms on the screen for at least an hour before Will got home. Emma was probably at school, but she would have to go home eventually. Hopefully she would go to her apartment, not her dad’s mansion. Snatching her from a mansion that was under constant surveillance wasn’t an option. I was stupid for agreeing to this, sure, but I wasn’t suicidal.

“What are you doing here?” Will asked. “Don’t you have your own computer?”

I did have my own computer, but I didn’t feel like using a computer that was as slow as our eighty year-old neighbor on the stairs. As fun as aggressively threatening a piece of technology could be at times, I wasn’t feeling it that day.

I heard him walk closer and then he stopped. “You installed cameras in her apartment?” he asked incredulously. He sounded like he was about to shit his pants.

“Yes,” I replied, still staring intently at the screen. Any day now, Emma.  

This was going a lot slower than I had originally thought. Then again, it wasn’t like I had anything better to do. Will and I had taken a leave of absence at our university, and without classes, extracurricular, or a job to keep me busy, my daily schedule had dramatically shrunk in size.

“Oh, my God,” Will said.  Here we go… “I’m officially a creeper. No, we’re officially creepers. I never thought I’d have to resort to this. If this gets out, this could ruin my reputation.”

What a drama queen. Was he my sister or my brother? “They’re not even home yet. I’ll just close my eyes if they start to undress. Problem solved.”

I wasn’t that creepy. I had invaded their privacy, yeah, but I wasn’t about to watch them get naked. That was just rude.

I heard him begin to pace around, and I spun around in my chair to watch him freak out. “This is so wrong,” he said. “I’m William Knight. I don’t need to stalk girls. They stalk me. It’s a proven fact. Remember Elena, Massey, Bailee, and whatever the rest of their names were? They followed me around for weeks!”

“And this is why you’re still single,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Why does it even matter? You’re not getting with this girl, anyway, or her friend, for that matter.”

I knew this was the wrong thing to say. That was why I said it.

Sure enough, Will became defensive as soon as the words left my mouth. “No, I’m single because I choose to be. Why couldn’t I get with this girl? Or her friend?”

I laughed and said, “No, you’re still single because you’re an ass. Besides, sleeping with them wasn’t what we were told to do.”

My brother was the definition of a womanizer. He went through girls like he went through slices of pizza. I didn’t agree with what he did, but it was his life, not mine. Besides, it wasn’t like he lied to any of those girls. He was up front about what he was looking for—the whole “no strings” shit he liked to talk about—and if they still went for him, it was their problem. Everyone who knew Will knew what he was like. Expecting anything different from him was just foolish, but that didn’t stop girls from doing just that. I felt bad for them because they deserved better than what he had to offer, but it wasn’t like a warning was going to stop them. The warnings were already out there; they were just commonly ignored.

Myself, I stuck to relationships. I didn’t like flings. Flings began with sex and ended with “see ya never.” Will’s words, not mine.

Call me old-fashioned or whatever, but I wasn’t into that. I didn’t want to date around. I wanted to find that one person that made everything that was wrong in the world seem right, even if it was just when you were with them. I wanted what my dad had had with my mom. There was a reason losing her had broken him; she meant everything to him. I had no idea what it felt like to love someone like that.

“Of course,” Will said, annoyance prevalent in his tone. “So obedient, as always.”

I didn’t say anything. He was right; I was obedient. I didn’t think that was a bad thing, but he made it sound like it was. It wasn’t like what my dad had said was out of this world, though. The whole no-sex thing was just common sense. You didn’t sleep with the girl you just kidnapped, and you definitely didn’t expect her to want to sleep with you. That wasn’t how things worked. Even I, a first-time kidnapper, knew that. Apparently, my dumb-ass of a brother didn’t—not that I was surprised.

“I’m sure Pops won’t mind if we have some fun with this,” Will went on. “There’s nothing wrong with fooling around a little bit, is there?”

God. This was going to be a disaster, wasn’t it? I could already tell it was.

“You wouldn’t think so, would you?” There was so much wrong with what he was saying, but I wasn’t even going to try to get it through his head that it was wrong. There was no hope for him. “What makes you think she’s going to want to fool around? After tonight, you’ll have no chance with her.”

“Man, look at me,” he said. He gestured to himself, as if that answered my question. “Of course she’s gonna wanna fool around. Her friend, too.” He shook his head and laughed, obviously thinking I was wrong and he was right.

“Doubt it,” I said.

Obviously I was going to have to be the level-headed one in this expedition. Will was going to end up making some stupid mistake in his efforts to charm the pants off of this girl, efforts that would undoubtedly fail. Girls never seemed to be able to resist him, but those girls weren’t kidnapping victims. I had never done this before, but I was guessing the same rules didn’t apply to hostages.

Question was, how long would it take him to get that? My guess was long enough to get us imprisoned for life or mauled by a stiletto heel.

My only family was a pair of idiots. They were going to be the end of me. If only emancipating a sibling were possible—although I had a feeling Will would survive a week at most without me. Poison ivy did, after all, just “look like a leaf.”