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Gabe frowned at the rough edge to her voice and sat up on the side of his bed. “What’s wrong?”
“You know that email I got from the teenager? The one who was being bullied at school?”
“I remember.”
“He wrote back and he’s talking about ending it and I don’t know what to do,” she said, her words running together on a long breath. “I went to the police and they tracked down his IP, but it didn’t tell them anything. There’s only one major internet provider here, so they can’t even narrow that down, and I don’t know what to do! They told me they could try to get a search warrant from the internet provider, but that will take days. Do you have any ideas? I can’t just hope he doesn’t kill himself, Gabe. He wrote to me for help.”
“Shh. It’s okay.” He hated hearing the pain in her voice. “Listen, maybe there are a few ways we can work on this. Do you have the IP?”
“No! Should I call the deputy? Maybe he can—”
“Hey,” Gabe interrupted. “It’s not hard. I’ll walk you through it.”
“You don’t have time for this,” she insisted, her voice cracking a little and breaking his heart. He should be there with her.
“I have plenty of time. I was just lying down in my old bedroom staring at my ceiling. No big deal. Now, is your email program open? What’s the email address?”
Luckily, the address was from one of the big providers that embedded IPs in the header. He walked her through how to grab the hidden information. “Okay, now it gets trickier,” he said. “You don’t even know a first name?”
“No!” she cried. “Nothing! The deputy said if I could just get a little more out of him, maybe they could help, but I already tried to get him to contact me. He hasn’t.”
“Are you a monitor on the Dear Veronica blog?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, listen,” he said. “I was stalking you a little last week, reading through your old columns, trying to figure out the best way to seduce you.”
Her laugh sounded like a little hiccup of relief.
“It seems like there are a lot of comments for every post.”
“There are. Yes. I delete the ones that are abusive.”
He smiled, thinking of how hard she must frown going through comments like that. “And you have to register to comment, right?”
“Yes, but people use fake names all the time. Almost everyone does.”
“But they have to use a real, verifiable email address,” he said. “So if you can find a user with the same IP address as your teenager—”
“Then I might find a real email address!” she gasped.
“Exactly. There are some pretty simple search functions you can use.” He promised to send her a link that would tell her exactly how to search the blog for that IP address.
“Gabe. Thank you. I just...I was afraid to call and bother you, and—”
“You don’t ever have to be afraid to call me. I’m just happy you’re still willing to talk to me.”
He’d been vaguely hoping that she’d reassure him. That she’d laugh and say, “Of course I still want to talk to you!” But she didn’t say anything.
“Let me know what happens with the IP search,” he said.
“Sure. Yes. If I can get a real email address, my friend Isabelle has a boyfriend who’s a US marshal. Maybe he can push the sheriff’s department a little harder.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” Gabe said.
“I’ll let you know. Thank you, Gabe.”
He hated the way she said it so formally, as if he wasn’t expected to help her. He collapsed back onto his bed, but this time he didn’t close his eyes. The knot retied itself tightly in his stomach.
