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“What time’s your appointment?”
“Ten.”
“Thirty minutes?”
“An hour.”
“Okay, I’ll be waiting by the phone from eleven on tomorrow.”
“I might need to grab a quick sandwich right afterwards. Sometimes, I get really hungry after therapy.”
“The same thing happens to me. It’s like all the emotions that have been twisting my stomach into knots have been released, and suddenly I’m starving.”
“Exactly. I promise I’ll call you after the appointment, but it might not be at eleven on the dot.”
“No worries. Take your time. As long as I know you’ll be calling me to talk things through at some point tomorrow, I’m all good.”
“Thank you. You’re so sweet. Well, I’d better go. I’ve been using my mom’s car while I’m in Seattle, and I need to run some errands now to be able to pick her up from work on time.”
“Okay. Tell your mom I said hi. Unless she hates me now.”
“Henn, nobody hates you. Least of all me. The issue isn’t whether I’ve stopped loving you. I haven’t. I still love you with all my heart. The issue is whether I can trust you. It’s whether I love the real you or that dude from ‘You.’”
I roll my eyes. “He’s a mediocre hacker at best. Also, he’s a psychopath, while I’m merely a sociopath.”
She laughs. “Didn’t mean to offend.”
“Well, you did.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.” Her tone has become surprisingly flirtatious. “Bye for now, Peter.”
“Bye for now, Banana.”
She still loves me. That’s what she said. And I could feel that it’s true. In fact, based on her tone at the end there, I think Hannah’s already decided she’s going to forgive me, and seeing her therapist tomorrow is a mere formality. As a matter of fact, now that I’ve heard her voice, I’m not even worried about her therapy appointment tomorrow. If her therapist is anything like mine, all she’s going to do is coax Hannah’s truth out of her—get Hannah to admit out loud what she already knows she wants in her heart. And what Hannah wants in her heart is me. Hallelujah.
When the line goes dead, I shove my phone into my pocket and whoop with glee. I feel alive again—the most alive I’ve felt in five fucking days. She loves me! As long as we’ve got that, then we can fix the rest. I know we can.
With a happy sigh, I head back inside Reed’s house. But only two steps into his living room, I get a notification that stops me dead in my tracks.
Greg Smith.
He finally clicked one of my phishing links.
Holy shit.
I’ve been trying to get into that fucker’s burner phone for two months now. And now, out of nowhere, he’s clicked a link and given me access.
“What’d Hannah say?” Reed says, approaching me.
I tell him the gist of my conversation with Hannah. And then, since I’m losing my mind about what just happened with Greg Smith, I tell Reed all about him, too, including everything I’ve been doing to torture the guy for the past two months. “You want to watch me hack into his burner phone?” I ask.
Reed looks equal parts relieved that I’m feeling so much better and amused by what I’ve told him about my campaign of terror. “Of course, I want to watch you hack him,” Reed says. “Fuck the soup. I love watching a genius at work in any context. Even better, if he’s a vengeful genius.”
I sit on the edge of the bed that’s been mine these past five days at Reed’s house and open my laptop while Reed sits next to me and peeks over my shoulder.
“Okay, I’m in,” I report. “Easy peasy.”
“And?” Reed asks.
“Gimme a second.” I click around for a while. “Looks like he uses this phone to hire sex workers. Lots of ’em. Huh. That’s interesting, considering how many women he’s scamming at any given time. You’d think he’d be too exhausted from being a fake boyfriend to hire a sex worker.”
“Maybe it’s a relief for him to have sex with women he doesn’t need to pretend to like.”
“Good point. I bet that’s exactly right.”
I click around for a bit more. But that’s it. He uses this phone exclusively to contact sex workers, and nothing else.
“Well, damn,” I say. “After all that phishing, and all that anticipation, this phone turns out to be a big, fat nothing-burger.”
“What’d you expect to find?” Reed says.
“I don’t know. I thought maybe there’d be something here I could decimate him with. But nobody in law enforcement is gonna give two shits about any of this.”
“So, what are you gonna do?”
“Nothing. I mean, I’ll keep doing all the stuff I told you about. The cars. The postings. Making sure he can’t get hired and can’t get a date. I’ll keep fucking around with his finances, too. But there’s nothing here I can throw into the mix.”
