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“Anyway, before we met, he had these, I don’t know what you’d call them. Rules, I guess. What he wanted me to wear. And it wasn’t anything bad or weird. To be honest, it was kind of a turn-on. I didn’t question it. Like I said, the way he presented it, it was kind of sexy. I’m embarrassed to admit that. It sounds so stupid now.”

I wrote the word “clothes” on my pad. As Corrine spoke, I kept circling it. I felt a bubble in my stomach.

“Everything went fine,” she said. “He was so good-looking, it should have been a red flag. A guy like him shouldn’t need to work so hard to get a date with somebody like me. He wore a suit to the restaurant. So sophisticated. He pulled my chair out. Guys don’t do that anymore. He was a real throwback. A gentleman. I felt like I’d just met Don Draper or something. You know, from Mad Men. He kinda looked like a younger version of Jon Hamm.

I couldn’t stop staring at my legal pad. I felt like I’d just eaten a basketball. I pressed my hand to my stomach.

“He ordered for me. Which really took me by surprise. But he was very insistent that we both have what he ordered.”

“Did you ask him about that?” Lou, a retired sheriff from Winnebago County in Wisconsin, asked.

“I didn’t. I mean, there wasn’t anything wrong with it; it was just strange. Anyway, we had dinner. We talked. It was easy between us. Then he drove me home. Walked me up to my door and kissed me. That’s it. A perfect gentleman. I was excited. Soon we were sexting, and it was… it was good. Exciting. I started thinking maybe Matt was it. Maybe I’d finally found a good one.”

“All your communications were through the app?” Roy asked. “You never communicated by phone or regular text?”

“No.” She shook her head.

“What happened next?” I asked.

Corrine shifted in her seat. “We kept on chatting. About a month later, Matt said he wanted to spend the weekend with me. He rented a house not far from where I live. He was very gentle about it. Telling me he didn’t want to do anything I wasn’t comfortable with. But by then, I was just completely smitten with him. He pushed all my buttons, checked all my boxes. Even the weird things like the demands about what I wore. He just… took control, you know? In an exciting way. So, I said yes. He sent me the address of where we’d be staying. Told me not to bring anything but the clothes I was wearing. I went.”

“It was just the two of you?” Tony Vega asked. “I mean, this house, was it in a neighborhood? Were there other people around?”

“No,” she said. “It was this cute Frank Lloyd Wright-style home tucked away in the woods. Two miles from me, but I didn’t even know it existed. When I got there, things were good. He made dinner. He thought of everything. He, uh… gave me this really skimpy blue negligee to wear. Lacy and pretty. Not something I’d ever buy for myself. And then, we were… together. You know, intimately. And at first, that was good. He was… attentive to my needs. He made me feel safe. Protected. He was always checking in with me. Making sure whatever he was doing wasn’t going too far. Some of it was. But when I told him, he stopped. So it was okay.”

I put my pen down. The room started to spin a little. I closed my eyes for an instant, letting my head settle.

“Did it ever change?” I asked, finding myself asking questions as if she were on the witness stand.

“It did,” she said, breaking eye contact. “That second day. He finally did go too far. It started as nothing. I took a shower and came out. We were going to go out and get lunch. I put my makeup on. I just forgot. Things were so easy between us, I kind of let my guard down. Well, Matt went a little crazy when he saw me. See, I put my red lipstick on. He yelled at me to take it off. Like… really yelled at me.”

“Did he explain why?” Roy asked.

“No,” she said. “But he did calm down by the time I’d washed my face and came back into the living room. He apologized. Then he gave me something. It seemed romantic, but also a little sad.”

“What was that?” Roy asked.

“He had this red silk ribbon,” she said. “He asked if he could tie it around my wrist. He said this was the only red he ever wanted me to wear. That if I did it, it meant he knew he could trust me. I was starting to get uneasy at that point, but I let him tie it on me. It just… it made him so happy. And he went back to being that kind of alpha male gentleman. We ended up staying in. I thought whatever upset him before had passed. So when he asked me to come back to bed with him, I went.”

I couldn’t move. My stomach flipped. I covered my mouth. I didn’t want anyone to see. I didn’t want to draw attention, but right there, sitting at that table, I knew I was about to be sick.

“But this time,” Corrine continued, “he got even more intense. Really started pushing my boundaries.”

“He hurt you?” I asked. It earned me a few dark looks from the men at the table. Even I knew better than to lead her like that.

“Well,” she said. “He didn’t injure me, if that’s what you mean. It’s just… things went beyond my comfort zone. I asked him to take me home. He got really quiet. Even more intense, if that’s possible. But he let me gather my things and drove me home. Well, to the park right across the street from where I live. As we sat there, he asked me to sign an NDA. I couldn’t believe it. And he seemed… it’s hard to describe. But it was like a snake. All coiled up, but ready to strike. Just red flags everywhere. I got out of that car and ran as fast as I could to my front door.”

“He didn’t follow you?” Roy asked.

She shook her head. “Not that time. And I’d decided I didn’t want to pursue anything further with him. For a day or two, it seemed like that would be the end of it. Then he started messaging me again through WhisprMatch. Apologizing. Saying how much he respected me. How much he cared about me and wanted to see me again. Being all charming like the first time we communicated. But I was so over it. I tried to let him down gently. He kept getting meaner. Calling me all sorts of terrible things. Degrading me.”

“This was all through the message section of the app?” Vega asked.

“Yes. He wanted my cell phone number but thank goodness I never gave it to him. The app was the only way he could contact me. I told him to stop. But then he started showing up. I caught him staring at me outside my window. In his car, parked across the street from where I went grocery shopping. And then he left notes on my windshield. Creepy stuff. First, it was him telling me how beautiful I was. But he’d do it in a way that made my skin crawl. You know, describing what I was wearing the day before.”

“When did you go to the police?” I asked.

“This went on for a couple of weeks. So I told him if he didn’t knock it off, I was going to go and get a restraining order or whatever. That infuriated him. Then one night, I was out taking a walk in the park across from my apartment. Someone came up behind me and put a hand over my mouth. I was terrified. When he whispered in my ear, I recognized the voice. It was Matt. He said if I caused him any trouble, or told anyone about him, he would make me disappear. He let go of me and had me close my eyes and count to ten. When I turned around, he was gone. So that’s when I went to the cops. But it never went anywhere. I didn’t know his real name. And WhisprMatch is different. None of your messages are saved. It’s kind of like Snapchat. You can take a screenshot. But if you don’t do that in about thirty seconds after you’ve read a message, it disappears. And when a user leaves the platform, all traces of them leave too. When I tried to pull up his profile at the police station, it was gone. That creeped me out too, like maybe he followed me. I had a couple of screenshots, and I gave those to the detective. But there was nothing anyone could do. I didn’t even have a photo of him. Just my own memory of what he looked like.”