Miranda practically knocked her laptop off the bed she was bouncing up and down so hard. The screen name Griffin recognized matched an old one used by one of Telenet’s employees.
“You are so busted, Mr. Leonard Kerstater,” she whispered, staring at the Creep’s online company profile, complete with photo.
She settled down, sitting cross-legged, hugging her favorite stuffed animal, a calico cat, to her chest, feeling free and floaty and light and young…like she was a kid again. Like none of the past two years had actually happened.
Then she realized several minutes had passed without Griffin saying anything. She tapped the volume control, heard his ragged, panicked breathing.
“Griffin? Are you okay?” No answer. “Griffin? Jesse?”
When his voice came again, it sounded strangled tight. “Names. They don’t mean anything. People just hide behind them. It doesn’t mean you’re anyone different than who you really are.”
“You want me to stop calling you Griffin?” she asked, puzzled.
“I want to stop being Jesse. Stop being JohnBoy.” There was a noise like a hand slapping something hard. “But that’s never going to happen, is it? No matter what I call myself.”
“I wish—” She wished she knew what to say. Lying would be easy, but he deserved better. She borrowed from Dr. Patterson instead. “We can’t change the past, Jesse. We can only work toward a better future.”
“Future? You really think I’m ever going to have a future? We nail King—you know what that means? It means my mom and little sister and the kids at school and teachers and the guys at the fire station and, I don’t know, Fox News and CNN and who knows who, they’ll all know who I am. What I did. I’ll be famous—not me, JohnBoy. Those pictures and videos, they’ll go viral, end up on page one, flashed everywhere. What kind of future is that?”
She was silent. If anyone knew what that felt like, having your life ripped open, laid bare for the hyenas to feed on, it was her.
“I survived,” she whispered, hoping he didn’t hear the lie behind her words. Miranda had survived, been born out of the chaos and pain. Ariel hadn’t. “I’ll be with you,” she promised, hoping it wasn’t another lie. “Every step of the way.”
“Maybe I’m not as strong as you. Maybe I’m not Griffin. I’m only Jesse, poor, pathetic Jesse who can’t fix anything. Who couldn’t say no. Maybe I can’t go through with this.”
She waited, the silence between them filled with a thousand possibilities. His voice returned, a tiny whisper piercing the airwaves. “You said you found King. Give me his address.”
No. She wanted the Creep, King, to be exposed with as much public humiliation as what she’d suffered at his hands. She wanted him to face the scrutiny of hundreds of eyes on him, seeing him as he truly was: a wretched evil son of a bitch who preyed on the weak for profit and amusement.
She’d planned almost a year for this. Now that she’d found him, nothing was going to stop her. “No. Griffin, we need to stick to the plan.”
“I don’t give a shit about the plan. What if your file upload doesn’t work? What if he’s not there, at the arena, tomorrow? What if something goes wrong and he runs? No. We end this now. Tell me where he is.”
“What are you going to do?” She almost didn’t dare to ask, had a pretty good idea what he would say. He wanted King dead as much as she did. Maybe even more.
His breath rattled through the phone. “I have a gun.”