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“Which means this isn’t simply someone imitating you to land girls, Deke,” Tate added. “He’s fucking with you for certain. He could have instead deleted the Zing profile, and we’d have been none the wiser. But no, he kept it going, and then he made sure you found out about it.”
“And he did it in a way that said he didn’t give the world’s first fuck about Journee’s feelings.” Blair sighed. “It must have been hard for her to realize she’d been played all these months.”
Without looking away from the computer, Bailey said, “She tried to hide it by clinging to anger, but she was devastated. Whoever posed as Deke knew—” She cut off as the Zing profile opened. “Okay, I’m in.”
Everyone shuffled closer, and Deke bent over to get the best view of the screen, his body so close his breath tickled her ear.
Bailey went on, “I half-expected him to have deleted the profile so that I couldn’t hack into it. I mean, he knew in advance that I would try.”
“Which probably means we can take what private info he provided to create the profile with a grain of salt,” muttered Havana.
Pulling up his account information, Bailey gaped at what she read. “Oh come on, really?” The asshole had typed in her name and address.
“Ridiculous,” scoffed Havana. “This whole thing is obviously some kind of damn joke to him. He knows there’s no way Deke would suspect you’d created the profile.” The devil paused. “You don’t, do you?”
“Fuck, no,” Deke firmly stated. “She can be a sly little thing and likes to play with people, but she wouldn’t do something like this.”
It was probably wrong that both Bailey and her snake took that as a compliment, but whatever. The mamba was as furious as her about the catfishing crap—in the serpent’s view, only they got to fuck with Deke.
“Our boy hasn’t changed his phone number,” Deke noted. “New email address, though. You can hack into it, Bailey, right?”
“Yes, I just want to check his messages on here first.” She skimmed through them quickly. “Journee’s the only person he’s been communicating with.” And nothing in the flirty messages pointed to who he could be. “Once I’ve deactivated this, I’ll do an online search for other profiles of you.”
Straightening, Deke gave the mamba space as he watched her work. Her gaze was locked on the screen with lethal accuracy, her fingers zooming over the keyboard so fast they were a blur.
Six. It turned out there were six other profiles. Some were on dating apps, some were on social media platforms, and one existed in a private anti-shifter extremist group.
More, each had been created using the IDs of six pride members—namely Sam, Therese, Gerard, Cassandra, Shay, and Dayna.
Unfuckingbelievable.
His cat hissed and spat, raking Deke’s insides with its claws, infuriated by not only the situation but by how they didn’t have the name of the culprit.
“The son of a bitch sure does like pretending to be other people,” mused Luke, his tone clipped. “You know, one of these six could actually be the culprit. Well, not Therese or Cassandra, considering the humans claimed they spoke to a male on the phone. But the others? It’s possible. They might have used their own ID one time to paint themselves as a scapegoat so they wouldn’t come under suspicion.”
Scratching the back of his head, Deke grimaced. “I can’t envision any of them doing it. This isn’t a mere case of someone slashing my tire or keying my car. Whoever did this spent months creating profiles, charming women, and doing a whole lot of calling and texting and lying—it had to be exhausting. You don’t do something like that unless you have a serious grudge.”
Pausing, Deke shook his head. “None of the members of our pride he’s effectively implicating have that kind of grudge against me. I’ve never had major beef with any of them, or anyone in the pride really. Okay, Dayna’s likely feeling murderous toward me now, but she wasn’t before.”
“Just because you didn’t have a huge fallout with anybody doesn’t mean someone isn’t super angry at you,” said Bailey. “You might not even realize you did something to hurt or offend them. What one person will dwell over is something another person can laugh off.”
Aspen folded her arms. “She makes a valid point.”
Bailey shrugged. “Happens a lot.”
Deke let out a doubtful snort that made her smile.
Bailey switched her focus back to the computer. On each profile, she checked every message, every post, every slice of info. There was nothing that pointed to who was playing these games. Nor was there anything informative to find in any of the emails in the various accounts.
Cursing in his head, Deke puffed out a breath.
Bailey turned to the Alphas. “So what now?”
Tate rubbed at his nape. “We have nothing that tells us who did this. Much as I personally don’t believe these six people are anything but scapegoats, they should still be questioned.” He cut his gaze to Deke. “I don’t think you should be there for that.”
