The Vanishing of Brandyn Taylor

When?

Rachel had fetched the small Tupperware box we used as a first aid kit, and cleaned the grazes on the palms of my hands. All the time the three of us were discussing what we could do about this guy following me. I assumed, at this point, that it was just me he was following, but to be honest he could have been following us both, just Rachel not leaving the house much recently might have been why it seemed it was only me he followed.

"Tim," Rachel asked as she packed the first aid kit away. "Have you got any ideas on what we should about this?"

Tim thought about this for a few moments.

"The police is the first thing that comes to mind, but I have a feeling they'll say they can't do much until the guy actually does something, threatens you or whatever. The only other thing I can think of is set some sort of trap, Kiera walks around town until we see him following her, then we work together to confront him."

"What if he gets violent though?" I asked.

"That's the downside, but I can't see him doing that if we stick to well populated areas. He's not likely to want to draw attention to himself like that." Tim replied.

"So we would make sure Kiera stuck to busy places, hence you suggesting town Tim?"

"Exactly Rach, But there is always a slight risk of it turning bad though. You girls can't hide away at home forever. You've got to get out and about."

"Yeah, I don't fancy being a prisoner in my own home." I added. "I'm sure Rach is fed up being stuck inside already. But do we have any other options?"

Nobody spoke, I took that as a sign that this was the only option we had, or at least the only one that we could think of.

"We could always use our trusty internet search engine, see what's said online about what to do in this situation." Rachel suggested.

Much as she would disagree, Rachel was quite smart and often her ideas were actually quite good ones. We gave the laptop to Tim, he was an absolute whizz at computer stuff (plus he did have a lot of computer geek connections who may be able to help us too.) He typed 'what to do when being stalked' into the search bar, and skimmed down the results.

"There's a national stalker helpline you can contact." Tim said. "Or it does say you can call the police, as you have a right to feel safe in your own home etc. Basic info says tell people you know about it, keep a log of dates and times you see your stalker, or any contact they make with you. A lot of this other stuff relates to online stalking so that's irrelevant. It says on this site to have a back up plan, somewhere safe you can go to quickly if you need, and even consider using a code phrase; so for example if you can't speak freely for any reason, you say this code phrase to whoever you give it to, and they know that you're in danger. This other one actually says don't interact with the stalker because that's what they want, don't react if you notice them following you."

"In other words don't confront them?" Rachel asked.

"Erm, yeah. Maybe my idea wasn't such a good one then. I don't want you putting yourself at risk of being harmed Kiera, both Rachel and I just want to make sure you're safe."

"I know you both do. So there's not really a lot we can do unless I'm threatened it sounds like."

"It's a bit different if he starts hanging around outside your flat or something though. Otherwise it seems unless he threatens you or Rach there's not much we can do."

"Just make sure you always have your phone on you Kiera," Rachel said. "Keep it charged and I'll do the same. So what about this code phrase, any idea what we could use?"