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“He’s my favorite teacher,” Thea says firmly.
“I’m questioning your taste.”
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.
