“That’s true,” I nodded.
“When you meet Chance at dinner tonight, tell him that you know,” the woman told me.
“Will it matter?” I asked. “No matter what I tell him, he’ll stick to his guns. He’s stubborn.”
“Oh, I know,” the woman agreed. “But in this case, he has no reason to be. The problem has been taken care of.”
“What? Jason has been taken care of?” I asked.
“He has.”
“How?”
The woman laughed lightly. “I wasn’t willing to let this guy get away with what he had done. He’s obviously got some issues, and he would have gone on to mess up more lives had he been left unchecked. So, I had a few friends of mine follow him. Apparently, he had started stalking a new girl, another student.”
“No.”
“Her name was Gina Smith; she had been in one of his classes last semester, and she had already turned him down a couple of times.
“Once my friends realized that he was a serial stalker, they broke into his dorm and went through his things. He has quite an extensive collection of pictures of other women.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “I should have reported him long ago.”
“You should have,” the woman agreed. “One of my friends made contact with Gina and told her what was happening.”
“Did she suspect that Jason was stalking her?”
“She had no clue, which highlights what a practiced stalker he was,” the woman replied. “In any case, my friends advised her to press charges, which she did. The cops found quite a nice little stash of pictures of all the different women Jason has stalked over the years.”
“Oh my God…” I breathed.
“Jason was taken into custody about a week ago,” the women informed me. “He spent a few nights in jail.”
“He’s in jail?”
“Not anymore,” the woman replied, with a hint of regret in her tone. “It turns out his father is quite a powerful man. He managed to get the charges dropped, and Jason was released in time to graduate. But he did get a beautiful black eye courtesy of his time behind bars. I think his first experience of jail was enough to convince him that he would never want to go back.”
“So that means…”
“Jason has no idea that his incarceration had anything to do with you and Chance,” the woman said. “He’s under the impression that Gina was the only one involved. She’s got a restraining order placed against him, too. As far as I’ve heard, Jason’s moving to a different state – and I doubt he’ll be back anytime soon.”
I was shocked and thrilled and overwhelmed all at the same time. I had so many different questions; I didn’t know where to begin. “Does Chance know all this?”
“I thought I’d give you the pleasure of telling him,” the woman said. “He might appreciate it more coming from you. Oh, and by the way, Jason had quite a few pictures of you and Chance together.”
“Oh God…”
“Don’t worry, my friends got them all,” the woman assured me. “So, there’s no hard evidence of your relationship with Chance. They left the rest of the pictures where the cops could find them, though…”
“Who are you?” I asked again.
“Think of me as your fairy godmother,” the woman replied, and I could tell she was smiling.
“I’ve never met you?” I asked curiously.
“No.”
“But you know Chance,” I surmised.