Thea pokes my arm. “My taste includes you, too.”
“Smile and eyes,” Maisy cuts in, studying me. “Twelve out of ten, but butt? Eh, six out of ten.”
“What’s wrong with my ass? Have you ever seen a soccer player’s ass up close, little Landry?”
“Absolutely nothing wrong back here,” Thea assures me, biting her lip around a smile and tucking her hand in the back pocket of my jeans, boldly giving my ass a squeeze.
I give her a smile, but it doesn’t reach my eyes. I can’t shake the dark web of thoughts clinging to me.
We climb into my Lexus GX and I waste no time pulling out of the lot. As soon as I drop them off, I’m setting out on the hunt to dig up the comment triggering my memory to check it against Coleman’s words.
Hiding my suspicion from Thea and Maisy on the ride home was hard. I didn’t want Thea to think I was in a bad mood, but I was itching to get on my computer and dig through her blog. A sick feeling has lodged in my gut and I have to double check if I’m right.
My knee bounces as I wake my system from sleep mode, and my fingers pound the keys harder than necessary as I type in my login.
I go straight for her blog, Coleman’s words playing in my head like the eerie tune of a rundown carousel ride.
The same thing repeats in the comments.
Henry_Your_GoodKnight: Your intelligent eyes say it all, love. You’re longing for the world to show you all it has to offer.
Henry_Your_GoodKnight: Do you trust me, princess? Your knight waits for you. My precious doll. Say you’ll take my hand and I’ll show you all the world has to offer.
Henry_Your_GoodKnight: Missing these intelligent eyes and talking to you. Where have you gone, love? Do you miss me, too? I dream of finding you, coming to steal you away for the whirlwind romance the world has to offer you. It’s me, I’m your world. If I held out my hand, would you take it? The thought consumes me.
The timestamps are recent. My overprotectiveness for Thea goes into overdrive, but I have to know what I’m dealing with first.
Gritting my teeth, I take the IP address and trace it. The search runs for a second, bouncing around before telling me it routes to the Ukraine. That isn’t right. I know it.
There’s no way in hell Coleman says the same exact thing to Thea that this Henry Knight guy says all over her blog.
“Fucker,” I grit out. “Know how to mask yourself with a VPN, huh? I’ll find you.”
I switch to searching for Coleman instead. One way or another I’ll tie him to the Henry Knight username and gather everything I need to prove to Thea she needs to stay away from him. Basic search engines only turn up his LinkedIn and results that don’t match him. I slam my fist on the desk, frustrated beyond measure.
How can he have wiped himself from the web? It’s damn near impossible these days to fly so under the radar. Leaning forward with a deep inhale, I pull up the Ridgeview School District database and use Dad’s password to login to the admin network. Coleman’s employee file has to have something. I click through only to find his previous employment history won’t open.
Closed records.
“That’s not shady at all,” I mutter, trying to find a workaround to access it.
All I get is his ID photo and his start date. The name on his file makes me suck in a breath. Shit.
H. K. Coleman.
“Too close to be a coincidence. What does H stand for?”
The deeper I search, the more roadblocks I come up against. My hair must be standing on end from practically ripping it out of my head because I’m not getting anywhere.
It’s like Coleman showed up without any trace of where the hell he came from. I’ve never been able to find anything useful on him. No one is that much of a ghost.
When I’m about to give up, a search result on my third try with new keywords catches my eye. Next to the link is a thumbnail of Coleman smiling with a group of students. Mostly girls, I note with clenched teeth.
The link says North East Regional Award for Excellence. Beneath that, the description goes on to preview the article.
Local students from Thorne Point Junior Academy commended for their fundraiser work, along with their advisor, Harold K. Coleman.
An icy sensation drags down my back like vicious nails. Harold. If my name was Harold, I’d go by Henry, too. I swear to god, if Coleman’s middle name is Knight…
My violent thoughts race too fast to sort out. I click on the link while my heart thuds.
An auto-download triggers.
“Shit!” I fumble with the keyboard and mouse, but I’m too slow to stop it. Within seconds, the file downloads and runs an install package. “Mother fuck—no!”
Goddamn it, I’m better than this. I know not to click on unfamiliar links or download fishy files, no matter how funny an angry desktop goose sounds. Learned that the hard way thanks to a trending TikTok video. Wasn’t worth it, twelve out of ten wouldn’t recommend.
Whoever this is, they’re good. They confused a major search engine to show their download within the results, luring anyone looking hard to find Coleman once they put together enough of the puzzle. That is top level shit. I have no idea how they pulled it off.
An 8-bit crow animation flies across my screen, the little black bird mocking me. The screen goes dark and flashes with a skull. Once the crow lands on top of the skull, the whole monitor display glitches into pixelated distortion before returning to normal.
I’m looking around for the crow, ready to drag its ass to the trash can icon, when a chat window pops up. There’s no way anyone should have access to my system. Whatever was in that download package, it infiltrated my firewalls.
Dolos: Looking for info on Harold Coleman?
I hesitate to answer, rubbing my jaw. This whole thing feels hinky.
Dolos: Time’s ticking. Answer now.
When I don’t respond, they message again.
Dolos: Connor Alexander Bishop. Ridgeview, Colorado. Senior at Silver Lake High School. Varsity soccer captain. Son of city council chairwoman Vivian Bishop. Active social media presence. Girlfriend, Thea Kennedy. Oh, she lives next door. Cute. Should we keep going?
“Jesus.” I push back from the desk and scrub my face.
Within seconds they were able to doxx me and get a whole picture of my life. Not just mine. Thea’s, through her connection to me. This is a professional who knows what they’re doing.
If they’re on my system, they could get into my blackmail files or find the backdoor to Thea. Not happening. I drag myself back and release a ragged breath.
Connor: Enough, I get it. I’m here. Nice work on the search result embedding. You got me.
Dolos: Glad you’re paying attention.
Connor: You have details on Coleman?
Dolos: We do.
Connor: And??? Give it to me. I need it.
Dolos: That’s not how this works. First you need to do us a favor. If you’re successful, we’ll give you everything you’re searching for.
Connor: And if I refuse?
They can give it to me now or not at all. I don’t have time to play games. I’ll get it on my own.