In Stone

14: "You pick this up...too fast."

14: “You pick this up...too fast.”

Caia was Googling Simone again. She was getting lost online trying to find the elusive address of her former idol. She wished she had more internet savvy. She was sure that finding an address of a famous person was cake for someone who actually knew what they were doing.

But since she didn't, she just stole every opportunity to look up anything at all related to her. There was a lot of information to wade through as Simone was famous in the sculpting world. She found nothing on her past five years ago which was and wasn't a surprise. Caspian said they had come over five years ago, so of course there wouldn't be anything. At the same time, Caia was jealous that a sculptor had gained such fame in just five years.

Caia got in trouble at work because she was on her phone, just going through every forum and thread that bore Simone's name and work. A few times she would get caught up in artistic discussions that had little to do with Simone if at all. She would come back to herself half an hour later feeling guilty because of it.

She didn't bring it up again to Caspian. She thought about doing so then decided against it on the grounds that he had enough problems in just dealing with her parents.

They were calling daily now. Every time, Caspian would answer her phone. Her father would hang up upon hearing his voice. Her mother on the other hand would start cussing and damning him, demanding that he put Caia on the phone. So he would hang up on her telling her that she could speak to Caia again when was being reasonable.

Caia began looking for other places to live. Her mother was threatening that Caia would be out on her whoring ass before the month was out every time Caspian answered. Caia was scared and certain that she was this close to being homeless despite what Caspian said to the contrary.

Because she was shopping for a new dwelling, Caspian didn't think it odd when she spent hours on her computer. He just assumed she was house hunting. She didn't bother to try correcting him about what she was really doing.

She felt so conflicted. She was trying to have morals, she really was. Vigilante justice was wrong for a reason. People shouldn't take the law into their own hands because one wrong didn't correct a second one. Besides that, Caspian said he intended on killing her. Murder was the ultimate wrong. Caia should be more against that than anything else.

Yet here she was, continuing to search for Simone. She couldn't even lie to herself and say that she wasn't doing it for Caspian. Of course she was. She had no other reason to scour the internet looking for someone's address like the most inefficient stalker in history.

Was she really so desperately lonely that she would sacrifice her morals even to this degree? She knew she would do less for the same thing, but would she really sink this low?

Maybe she was just a really good friend. She tried telling herself that instead. This wasn't the crazy behavior of one so struck by solitude that she would do literally anything to keep him around. This was the loyalty of one friend eager and willing to do anything for another friend. People said that your best friend was the one you asked to help hide a body. That was what this was, right? It wasn't like she was killing Simone. She wasn't even hiding the body. She was just pointing in the right direction and whatever happened, happened.

Besides, it wasn't like she was actually going to find the address. Simone's husband was a very rich man. Rich men could afford to have their addresses hidden from people like her. Ways to hide your address existed to prevent the very thing that was driving her to find it.

It was wondering what Simone's husband was like that had Caia going off topic to look him up. She had never bothered before because she never cared.