Neil had powered it on, and a login screen with an empty password field immediately appeared.
A goddamned password that we didn’t know. There was a Post-it Note stuck to the keyboard, however, that said:
Have fun.
Player 2511
“Try to stay calm,” I said softly, stroking his thigh. I could feel the tension in his muscles and how ragged his breathing had become. That email Player had sent me, blackmailing me over the things he’d recorded using my webcam, was etched into both of our minds. Since then, I hadn’t touchedanything with an internet connection. Neil had forbidden me from going anywhere near social media. He took my cell phone, and I had to buy another one, a dumb phone that explicitly did not have a camera. My laptop had been completely destroyed when he threw it against my wall.
I understood where he was coming from with that: his rage at being spied on during such an intimate moment had set him off so completely that he just lost it.
“How? How am I supposed to stay calm?” Neil leaped to his feet, digging a hand into his hair.
I understood what he was feeling. The worst part was the feeling of impotence. We couldn’t fight back; we had no way of defending ourselves. All we could do was continue taking the hits as they came while trying to figure out who was hiding under Player’s mask.
“If we lose our heads now, we’ll never get to the bottom of this,” I murmured cautiously, still trying to support him. But Neil just looked so on edge. His gaze was cutting, his jaw tight with anger, and his shoulders rigid; every inch of him gave off an impression of banked power that was as dark as it was dauntless.
“I’m not used to just sitting around doing nothing while some asshole in a mask fucks with me!” He raised his voice and began stalking back and forth across the living room with one hand on his hip, the other rubbing his forehead intently.
“I understand that. But we can’t give in to panic or rage. We just have to figure out who he is. The law can take it from there,” I told him, fully confident that the system would be on our side and send that psychopath up the river.
“The law…” Neil repeated. He stopped and looked derisively at me. “The law isn’t gonna do shit about this. And I’m not going to wait around for this maniac to hurt you or my family again!” He gestured at the window, through which the house was clearly visible, and I sighed.
Neil felt responsible for everything that had happened up until that point, all of the threats that had been going on for months. Logan’s accident and then mine. Everyone’s life was at risk, and that was too great a burden for even someone as tenacious as Neil to bear on his own.
“After Chloe, he’s shifted his focus to the two of us,” he said wretchedly.
My forehead creased in a frown. Did something happen to his sister? He spotted my obvious confusion and bit his lip, regretting letting that information slip.
“Chloe? What—” I started to say, but he beat me to it.
“Remember after I spent the night in Detroit? How I left first thing the next morning because Logan called and asked me to get back to New York as soon as I could?” he asked, and I nodded.
He took a deep breath and went on. “That night, Chloe had vanished after going to a party with her friend Madison and the Krew. Apparently Luke is dating Madison, which I didn’t know,” he explained. “Player called me and told me a riddle over the phone. I memorized it, and Xavier, Logan, Alyssa, and I tried to solve it. There was a time limit; we had to go fast,” he said, clearly reliving memories of a terrible day I’d never even known he experienced. “We found her a little while later. She was locked in the trunk of a broken-down car in a motel parking lot. The car was rigged to explode. If we hadn’t gotten her out of there in time, my sister would be gone,” he finished, swallowing with difficulty.
I got up from the couch then and went to him, teary-eyed.
I could feel his silent pain, which his pride would never allow him to openly show. I had never seen him cry, not even during Logan’s hospital stay. I had caught glimpses of so much of him: his fears, his insecurities, his doubts…but rarely his softer feelings.
Those he secreted away, experiencing them all alone and never sharing them with anyone.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked thickly, trying to ignore the lump in my throat. He looked at me, ashamed, and I felt my heart clench, urging me forward until I could touch his jaw. His clean smell tormented me once again, just like the desire to love him that swelled inescapably in my chest.
I didn’t want him to feel guilty.
Neil was a victim just like the rest of us, not the architect of the whole clusterfuck.
“I didn’t want to scare you. I was going to tell you when the time was right,” he answered before inclining his head slightly to press a kissinto the center of my palm. A simple, ordinary move that nevertheless warmed me.
“Don’t think about what might have happened. Chloe is okay,” I said, trying to reassure him, but he turned gloomy again. He turned away from my touch, and I could see that he was still silently castigating himself for everything. He opened his mouth as if to say something but closed it again with a furious growl. Then he went back to pacing with his hands in his hair. It was clearly one of those moments when he was dying to smash something or go a few rounds with his punching bag.
I kept silent for a few moments, making space for his intense, uncomfortable feelings before asking my next question.
“Do you have any theories about who Player might be? Have you gotten any other clues that could help us figure it out?” I asked. Neil frowned at me, considering the question.
“No. Xavier thinks it might be some ex of mine, but I doubt that,” he answered skeptically. It was a logical theory: Player very well could be a former lover with a grudge.
“So what are you going to do with the laptop?” I asked. Neil regarded the laptop on the table thoughtfully for a few moments.
