away from her mouth and words burst out of her in a rush. “Get the hell off me, you crazy fuck!”
“Lenore?” The guy’s voice turned confused.
“Her name’s not Lenore,” Josh said, stepping up behind Carlos and looking ready to throw down. “And if you don’t get your hands off her, my boyfriend’s going to show you how good his batting average is.”
“Damn straight,” Carlos said. “Your big-ass head will be an easy target.”
“Jesus. Calm the hell down.” The man released Cora at that and she nearly fell on her face as she bolted away from him in those godforsaken heels. She ran to the spot behind Carlos and then spun to face BigMan. The guy was a big dude. Beefy and barrel-chested and thick around the middle. But his face was young—a college-boy face. And he seemed . . . bewildered. He lifted his palms to them. “Look, bro. I think this is just a big misunderstanding. I wasn’t here to cause trouble. She wanted this. She’s got a safe word.”
“Call the cops, Josh,” Carlos barked.
But Cora reached out and put a hand on Josh’s arm. “Wait.”
Josh gave her a what-the-fuck look. “Hon, we have to—”
Cora didn’t have time to explain about how complicated it could get with her mom the police captain knowing or one of her mom’s officers interviewing some guy Cora had met in a kinky video game. “Just . . .”
“Wait, you’re not Lenore.”
The blurted statement from BigMan drew all of their attention.
The guy stepped closer, his eyes evaluating her face, her hair, her body in the light coming from Josh and Carlos’s open doorway. “And if you are, you’re a goddamned liar.”
Carlos waved the bat. “Back off, man.”
The guy halted his step but shook his head. “Jesus Christ, I’ve got the wrong girl. You’re . . .” His gaze traced over her again and he winced. “Yeah, there’s no way you’re her.”
The words were like a bucket of ice water. She didn’t want anything to do with this nutjob, but the dismissiveness of his words cut deep. She could hear his opinion as loud as a bullhorn: How could someone like her possibly have anything to do with the sexy, beautiful Lenore?
Cora straightened her spine, gathering every ounce of will she had to look righteous and unaffected. “I don’t know who the hell you are or who you’re looking for, but if you’re not off my porch in the next thirty seconds, I’m—”
But it was too late. The sirens blared from down the street. Another neighbor must’ve called.
BigMan jumped the railing and bolted.
—
A few hours later, Cora had been interviewed by two cops she knew, which meant her mother would find out—yay—and she’d drank too much of Josh’s gourmet coffee, which had left her jittery. She hadn’t given the police the full story. She’d stuck with the lie that she had no idea who the guy was and that it was apparently some case of mistaken identity.
Carlos had given her a raised brow. He’d probably grill her on another day, but she wasn’t going to admit to anything more than that on record. And she appreciated that after the cops left, he and Josh had hung around with her for a while to make sure she was okay and hadn’t pushed for more information.
But now she was alone and should probably go to bed, but there was no way she could sleep. Instead she wrapped herself up in her grandmother’s afghan and sat in front of the dual computer monitors in her makeshift office space in her bedroom. She pulled up the Hayven game. She’d missed the window of time to chat with Dmitry by many hours, but that wasn’t why she was signing in now. Hell, she may never chat with anyone in the game again after what had happened tonight. If someone like BigMan could get her information, she wasn’t safe from anyone. She hadn’t gathered a lot from BigMan in the few times they’d chatted, but she’d figured out quickly that he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. How the hell had someone like him gotten her personal information?
Time to find out.
She opened up the log-in box and used her password manager to enter the long, complicated string of numbers and characters. Then, she clicked the checkbox for stealth mode. She didn’t need anyone knowing Lenore was online right now. The game queued up. Her inbox was stuffed with unread messages. Dmitry had sent her an invitation to play privately but, of course, she’d been too busy being attacked to answer. She minimized the mailbox to get into the main part of the game. The interior of the house she’d built for herself in Hayven came into view, a cute little cottage in the woods. The game was first-person style, so she was looking out from the perspective of Lenore, who was currently lying in bed.
But Cora wasn’t there to be Lenore right now. She was on a mission. She opened chat mode and went into her list of people she’d interacted with before. Their screen names were there along with an icon letting her know who was actively online and who wasn’t. BigMan wasn’t online. Neither was Dmitry.
She clicked BigMan’s name to open up his profile. It was relatively vague but had more than hers did. He listed his profession as athletic trainer and his age as thirty. Yeah, okay. No way was that guy a day over twenty-two. She scanned down. Located in north Texas. No pets. Favorite sports team—Dallas U Coyotes. There were multiple exclamation points behind the team name.
“Bingo.” The word slipped passed her lips as she opened up another log-in page for Hayven on her second monitor. She typed in BigMan232 and then for the password tried Coyotes.
Guys were notorious for choosing their favorite sports team as a password. She’d seen it way too many times at the police station. But that one didn’t work, so she tried a list of variations: coyotes, DallasCoyotes, DallasU, GoCoyotes, GoBigOrange. The system didn’t seem to have a limit on how many times someone could try a password—a shitty lack of a security—but it served her purposes right now. She typed a few more and started to wonder if she was going down the wrong track when she remembered a T-shirt she’d seen Carlos wearing one day. Fear the Coyote. She typed that in and the screen changed, bringing her into the castle BigMan had fashioned for himself. Of course the dude had built himself a castle.
“Gotcha, motherfucker.”
It was a bizarre feeling to see through his “eyes” in the game, but she didn’t linger. Even though it was virtual, it felt creepy being in his head. She clicked into his account settings. There it was. William Bentley Barrett, twenty-one, Fort Worth address. Everything was there for the taking. If she really wanted to work at it, she could probably grab his credit card number, but she had no interest in that.
She needed to get some idea of how this guy had gotten to her. Maybe he played dumb online and really had some mad tech skills. She closed out Lenore’s page on the other screen and opened up Facebook. She searched for William’s name, found him easily enough, and opened his page. He hadn’t bothered to set up any privacy settings and he used the same password for that account—flag number one that he wasn’t some closet computer genius.
She clicked around to the About section and his timeline. He worked as the front-desk attendant at a local gym. Was a student at Dallas U. Used to play on the football team but got sidelined by an injury. He’d liked a few sports-related pages and local dance
