Chapter 91: Men’s Wreckage

At 9:02 PM, Jalen sat on Sydney’s couch with her laptop open on the coffee table in front of him. Sydney was curled up next to him in a fresh oversized hoodie. Her hair was pulled back, and her face was still slightly puffy from earlier but composed. Her hand was resting on his thigh.

The Zoom windows populated one by one.

Karla appeared first, sitting at her kitchen island with a glass of water in front of her. Then Kristen, in her living room with a blanket over her lap. Megan, framed against the soft lamp lighting of her room at the shelter. Rachel, in workout clothes with her hair in a high bun, sitting at her desk. Heidi, in bed at her apartment with her laptop propped on her thighs and her hand resting on her own growing belly. Chrysti, sitting cross-legged on her bed in a tank top and yoga pants, her dark hair pulled into a loose knot.

The six faces filled the screen.

“Hey, everyone,” Jalen said quietly.

“Hey,” said a few voices along with a few small waves.

Karla was watching the screen carefully. The others were just waiting.

“I want to thank you all for jumping on this on short notice. I know it’s late, and I know it’s been a long day for some of you, so I’ll get into it.”

He glanced at Sydney. She gave him a small nod.

“Earlier today, Karla and I went down to the police station in Atlanta. The detectives had a suspect in custody in connection with my shooting. They wanted me to come in and see if I could identify him through a one-way mirror.”

Heidi sat up slightly. Kristen’s hand came up to her mouth.

“I identified him. He confessed shortly after.”

“Who?” Rachel asked, her voice sharp.

Jalen took a breath.

“Greg Dalton.”

For a second, nobody moved. The name didn’t immediately mean anything to most of them. Then Heidi’s eyes flicked to Jalen and Sydney’s window on the screen, and the recognition started to spread.

“Wait,” Kristen said slowly. “Sydney’s Greg? That Greg?”

Sydney nodded once.

The screen went quiet.

Karla broke the silence. “I was there with Jalen this afternoon. It’s confirmed. The shooter was Sydney’s ex-boyfriend. He has no connection to Chris. The two situations are entirely separate. Chris is still doing what Chris is doing, but the man who pulled the trigger three weeks ago was Greg Dalton.”

Megan’s mouth had fallen open slightly. “I ... wait. I’m sorry. I’m still catching up. Greg, as in the guy Sydney was with when she met Jalen. That guy. The one she dumped.”

“That’s him,” Sydney said.

Rachel exhaled a long, slow breath. “Holy fucking shit.”

“Yeah,” Jalen said.

Heidi was still staring at Jalen and Sydney’s window. “Sydney. Are you okay?”

Sydney’s eyes filled, but she didn’t cry. She just nodded slowly. “I’m ... working through it. Jalen and I have been talking all afternoon. I’m okay. I’ve cried a lot today. I might cry more, but I’m okay.”

“Jalen, tell them what Greg said.” Karla said. “They deserve to know.”

So, Jalen did.

He laid it out the same way he had laid it out for Sydney. The party. The recognition Greg had at her condo when he saw Jalen pull up five days after the breakup. The unraveling that followed. The job loss. The DUI. The drinking. And then the months of stalking.

He saw Heidi’s face change when he got to the stalking. Megan’s hand had come up to her mouth. Kristen was visibly trying not to cry.

“He followed Jalen home from my place one night,” Sydney said quietly. “Then to his work. Then back to his apartment. He knew where Jalen lived. He knew where Jalen worked. For months.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rachel said.

“It gets worse,” Jalen said. “He started following me and saw all of you. Different days, different times, but he was tracking the whole network. He saw the women I was visiting, and he saw the meeting.”

“What meeting?” Chrysti asked.

“The one at his place,” Karla said. “The first time the six of us were all there together.”

Chrysti’s eyes widened.

“He saw us all go in,” Sydney said. “All six of us. Including me. Walking into Jalen’s apartment together.”

“Oh my God,” Heidi whispered.

“He built a theory in his head,” Jalen continued. “He convinced himself I was running some kind of cult. That I was corrupting all of you. He thought you all couldn’t see what was happening to you. He decided that if he took me out, all of you would be freed.”

Rachel actually laughed, but it wasn’t a humor laugh. It was the laugh of someone who had just heard something so awful that the only physical response left was a brittle sound. “He thought we were a cult.”

“He thought I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Jalen said.

“And so, he just ... decided to murder you,” Megan said. Her voice was flat.

“Yeah.”

“He stalked you for months. He stalked us for months. And we never knew.”

“None of us did,” Karla said. “I had Chris’s PIs on my radar. I was tracking every car that looked out of place. I had Jalen’s apartment under police protection. I had the women on alert. And there was a second man entirely that none of us were watching for.”

The screen was quiet again.

Kristen finally spoke, her voice unsteady. “He was outside my work?”

“He was outside Wellness Georgia at least once, yes,” Jalen said. “He saw me come and go from his stakeouts at your place. We don’t know everywhere he was. The detective said his car had been parked in a lot of places over the last several months.”

Kristen looked down. “I ... I had a feeling, twice, that someone was watching me when I walked out to my car. I told myself I was being paranoid. I never said anything to anyone.”

“You weren’t being paranoid,” Sydney said softly.

Heidi was wiping at her eyes. “I keep thinking about the fact that he was going to do something. Like, this wasn’t an impulsive thing. He was building toward it for months. He planned it. And we were all just walking around our lives having no idea that he was watching us.”

“That’s exactly what’s so disturbing about this,” Karla said. Her voice had taken on the professional register she used in court. “He didn’t snap one day and pick up a gun. He planned this over a sustained period of time. He bought the trench coat. He bought the hoodie. He waited for the right opportunity. He followed Jalen from his apartment to the St. Regis Bar that night specifically waiting for a moment when there’d be no witnesses.”

“And he almost got away with it,” Megan said.

“He almost did,” Karla agreed. “The only reasons he didn’t are that an external bank camera caught the side of his face on his walk to Jalen’s truck, and a sanitation worker found his gun in a dumpster within the next day or two. The gun was registered to him, ballistics matched, and they had enough to bring him in. Without those two breaks, he might still be out there.”