Morgan gets a text message from her girlfriend, “Call me! Hey Morgan 🙂 ”  And Morgan texts her back, “Hey cutie pie how are you?”  Steve and Morgan have already been in contact and she is on her way home.  He is hidden in another spot.  Every time he goes to a different place.  He has not told Morgan, but he keeps this a secret from her.  We have heard so much about ways that our communications with Morgan can be intercepted that we are being ultra cautious.

Steve calls me because he knows how worried I am, and tells me that Morgan has just past where he is and in a minute he will start to follow her home.  He tells me it’s snowing and freezing out, there will not be a stalker in this weather.  It helps, but still I am worried that he is going to be close enough and I express this to him.  He tells me to not worry, that she will be out of sight, but he feels like we have to take small chances to catch him.  If she stops for even a few seconds he will catch up, then he can speed way up, and be upon her in absolutely no time at all.

I have a sick, empty feeling in my stomach, I feel we are taking chances with our daughter.  But in order to protect her, this is what it has come to.  Taking calculated risks, leaving her out of our sight for seconds at a time.  Hoping that our extra bit of hanging back is enough to give her stalker enough courage to move in, and then be caught.

There is no harrowing moment tonight, Morgan comes home without incident and wonders what all the fuss is about.  I know that this frightens her, that she might be followed again, and we are reminding her of it.  But I weigh that against how the Garfield Sheriff’s Department fell flat on their face, with the assurance that next time it would be different, when in fact the next time was worse.  I am not saying that they may not have intercepted him if she had dialed 911 while driving, but right when she got home and we called them they could have been proactive and looked for the car, pulled it over and questioned him – there are not too many ways to go from that intersection.   This further eroded any hope Morgan had in them of stopping this nightmare.

I met her in the driveway, with the usual spray and gave her a kiss.  She thanked me and then we saw the lights of Steve’s truck turning onto the street.  Morgan told me that we didn’t have to do this.  I told her, oh yes we do Morgan, and we will never stop, you know that,

We hugged, and when Steve drove up she walked to his truck and hugged him too.  I watched him whisper in her ear, and I wondered what “daddy thing” he had just told her.  She smiled, so I knew it was a good one.  We all walked in the house and Steve and I held hands watching her go to her room.  She told us we were “too much,” but without saying a word Steve and I knew we were not enough, not yet, but we knew we would be, we had to be.

We headed for an inviting bed, and said nothing, just staring at a dark ceiling for the longest while.  Then for some reason we both sat up and decided to check the cameras before going to sleep.  It seemed like I had heard noises earlier, really, really small noises, so I wasn’t concerned as it was snowing out.  We were exhausted, but went into the bathroom where it was all set up and sat together looking at our camera monitor, calling up motion events for the evening, there was one in particular we went right to, at 23.51.30 camera number 4 spots a little light moving around on the other side of the berm.  We watched it a few times and could not tell what it might be.  Tired and needing sleep we decided it could wait until morning.  Steve said it was probably a reflection of something.

We went to bed, then slept, and I felt we had somehow moved in a positive direction tonight…boy was I wrong.