Chapter 81 Worse than imagined
NANCY'S POV
What I pulled out was a small stack.
Not paper, photos.
The one on top was of a young woman, in a school uniform I didn't recognize.
My brows pulled together in puzzlement, even though I hadn't seen the next one yet.
The girl in the photo was unfamiliar, and she seemed about the same age as me.
Could this be a relative?
That was my first thought.
"No," I shook my head a minute later. Diana didn't have cousins in her age bracket.
Moreover, she was the only child, so it wasn't possible that the girl in the photo was her sister.
Who could it be then?
A friend's daughter?
That thought actually seemed quite logical, but it didn't answer the question entirely.
I picked the first picture up and set it down on the desk, letting my gaze fall on the one beneath it.
My brows drew tighter.
The second was also of another schoolgirl.
"What the hell is this?" I muttered, beginning to flip through the pictures one after the other.
Although not all were in uniforms, the pictures were all of schoolgirls. Their books, backpacks, and even their faces said as much.
Some looked to be in college, and some in high school.
For a second, my lungs forgot how to work, and my breath seized.
"Why...Why does he...?"
The question I couldn't bring myself to complete was why Mr Landon had these girls' pictures in his drawer.
Or were these application photos of students...
"Calm down, Nancy. It might not be what you're thinking," I muttered to myself, patting my palm lightly over my chest.
I needed to keep calm, so I could actually understand what was going on.
When I picked up another picture, my heart didn’t just drop. It plummeted to the pits of my stomach.
Because I finally recognized a pattern that I had overlooked since I picked up the first picture.
It wasn't about the photos being only of females or that they were about the same ages, but the fact that in all of it, none of the girls were facing the camera.
It looked like the pictures had been taken from a distance, when they were unsuspecting.
"My God," I clamped a hand over my mouth, staring intently at the girl who didn't look like she knew she was being watched.
My stomach churned violently, and I slowly pulled my hand off my mouth, mumbling inaudibly, "No."
This was simply unbelievable.
Every picture painted the same idea of secretly taken pictures, with each one looking worse than the last.
“What...What could he possibly need these for?” I choked out, fingers tightening around the stack as dread seeped through every pore in my body.
This act felt creepy, and it absolutely wasn't normal.
Only a stalker would take pictures like this.
Did that mean...
No, there was no way Mr Landon was a stalker.
But...Where was he always disappearing to then?
He was hardly ever home.
When one thought rose in my mind, ridden with suspicion, another would surface to negate it, until it felt like I was losing my mind.
My fingers trembled around the stack, and unable to keep my grip on it, they fluttered to the ground.
Startled, I bent over to quickly pick them up, but froze mid-action.
There, on the ground, was a picture I hadn't seen before.
A familiar face-Lily.
My breath hitched violently.
“No..." The picture I had barely picked up clattered to the ground again.
I stared at Lily's picture with widened eyes, jaw slackened in disbelief.
It looked like it had been taken at school, and just like the others, she wasn't directly facing the camera either.
My vision blurred slightly, my mind reeled. Suddenly, like they had been forcibly shoved into place, everything suddenly connected.
Starting from the way he'd handled Mr Hudson's case, to the way he'd told me he'd take care of it, and then Lily's disappearance...
Everything fit in like missing pieces of a puzzle, as perfect as it could be.
My stomach dropped, then churned violently.
Abruptly, I stood up, backing away from the pictures and his desk, as though they had burned me.
I backed up all the way, until my back bumped into a wall and my vision grew even hazier.
"Is this...Is this who he truly is?" I breathed out unevenly, unable to believe that the man who had spoken so softly to me over the phone, the man who had helped my brother Nathan, and the man who I had allowed to have sex with me, was this kind of person.
That he would harm someone.
My breath caught sharply when another realization hit me with full force.
Lily, she had gone missing because she had found out about us. She had gotten eliminated because of that, but I... I was a player on the pitch.
I was the one involved in this illicit relationship with him, and the truth smacked me in the face, all at once.
I wasn’t safe.
Not with him, and not in this house.
I had no idea what he had done or how he could have been so cruel to do so, but if he could do this to them, if he could make Lily disappear, then what was to stop him from doing the same to me?
A sound echoed faintly downstairs.
I listened carefully, and my entire body froze.
A car was pulling in, his car.
My heart slammed violently against my ribs when I realised he was back, and panic surged through me like wildfire.
I bent over quickly and gathered the photos that had scattered on the ground with shaky fingers, then shoved them back into the compartment, barely managing to close it properly.
My breathing was out of control now.
I tried to think, to properly plan out what to say if he found me in here or discovered that I had snooped around, but my mind seemed incapable of thinking up any appropriate lie.
I wiped my hands against my jeans, trying to steady myself and regain composure, but I just couldn't keep calm.
Now I knew the truth.
And the truth was far worse than anything I could have imagined.