Chapter 15 Selene
“Really? No one wants to tell the sad tale of Scarlett Scott for the brat?”
Selene
I sat down beside Neil, trying to give him the support he needed to face the situation.
He had unwrapped the box, and bits of black paper were now strewn all over the floor.
Inside, however, was nothing too macabre, just a laptop.
Neil had powered it on, and a login screen with an empty password field immediately appeared.
A goddamned password that we didn’t know. There was a Post-it Note stuck to the keyboard, however, that said:
Have fun.
Player 2511
“Try to stay calm,” I said softly, stroking his thigh.
I could feel the tension in his muscles and how ragged his breathing had become.
That email Player had sent me, blackmailing me over the things he’d recorded using my webcam, was etched into both of our minds.
Since then, I hadn’t touched anything with an internet connection.
Neil had forbidden me from going anywhere near social media.
He took my cell phone, and I had to buy another one, a dumb phone that explicitly did not have a camera.
My laptop had been completely destroyed when he threw it against my wall.
I understood where he was coming from with that: his rage at being spied on during such an intimate moment had set him off so completely that he just lost it.
“How? How am I supposed to stay calm?” Neil leaped to his feet, digging a hand into his hair.
I understood what he was feeling. The worst part was the feeling of impotence. We couldn’t fight back; we had no way of defending ourselves. All we could do was continue taking the hits as they came while trying to figure out who was hiding under Player’s mask.
“If we lose our heads now, we’ll never get to the bottom of this,” I murmured cautiously, still trying to support him.
But Neil just looked so on edge. His gaze was cutting, his jaw tight with anger, and his shoulders rigid; every inch of him gave off an impression of banked power that was as dark as it was dauntless.
“I’m not used to just sitting around doing nothing while some asshole in a mask fucks with me!” He raised his voice and began stalking back and forth across the living room with one hand on his hip, the other rubbing his forehead intently.
“I understand that. But we can’t give in to panic or rage. We just have to figure out who he is. The law can take it from there,” I told him, fully confident that the system would be on our side and send that psychopath up the river.
“The law…” Neil repeated. He stopped and looked derisively at me. “The law isn’t gonna do shit about this. And I’m not going to wait around for this maniac to hurt you or my family again!” He gestured at the window, through which the house was clearly visible, and I sighed.
Neil felt responsible for everything that had happened up until that point, all of the threats that had been going on for months. Logan’s accident and then mine. Everyone’s life was at risk, and that was too great a burden for even someone as tenacious as Neil to bear on his own.
“After Chloe, he’s shifted his focus to the two of us,” he said wretchedly.
My forehead creased in a frown. Did something happen to his sister? He spotted my obvious confusion and bit his lip, regretting letting that information slip.
“Chloe? What—” I started to say, but he beat me to it.
“Remember after I spent the night in Detroit? How I left first thing the next morning because Logan called and asked me to get back to New York as soon as I could?” he asked, and I nodded.
He took a deep breath and went on. “That night, Chloe had vanished after going to a party with her friend Madison and the Krew. Apparently Luke is dating Madison, which I didn’t know,” he explained.
“Player called me and told me a riddle over the phone. I memorized it, and Xavier, Logan, Alyssa, and I tried to solve it. There was a time limit; we had to go fast,” he said, clearly reliving memories of a terrible day I’d never even known he experienced.
“We found her a little while later. She was locked in the trunk of a broken-down car in a motel parking lot. The car was rigged to explode. If we hadn’t gotten her out of there in time, my sister would be gone,” he finished, swallowing with difficulty.
I got up from the couch then and went to him, teary-eyed.
I could feel his silent pain, which his pride would never allow him to openly show. I had never seen him cry, not even during Logan’s hospital stay. I had caught glimpses of so much of him: his fears, his insecurities, his doubts…but rarely his softer feelings.
Those he secreted away, experiencing them all alone and never sharing them with anyone.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked thickly, trying to ignore the lump in my throat. He looked at me, ashamed, and I felt my heart clench, urging me forward until I could touch his jaw. His clean smell tormented me once again, just like the desire to love him that swelled inescapably in my chest.
I didn’t want him to feel guilty.
Neil was a victim just like the rest of us, not the architect of the whole clusterfuck.
“I didn’t want to scare you. I was going to tell you when the time was right,” he answered before inclining his head slightly to press a kiss into the center of my palm. A simple, ordinary move that nevertheless warmed me.
“Don’t think about what might have happened.
Chloe is okay,” I said, trying to reassure him, but he turned gloomy again.
He turned away from my touch, and I could see that he was still silently castigating himself for everything.
He opened his mouth as if to say something but closed it again with a furious growl.
Then he went back to pacing with his hands in his hair.
It was clearly one of those moments when he was dying to smash something or go a few rounds with his punching bag.
I kept silent for a few moments, making space for his intense, uncomfortable feelings before asking my next question.
“Do you have any theories about who Player might be? Have you gotten any other clues that could help us figure it out?” I asked. Neil frowned at me, considering the question.
“No. Xavier thinks it might be some ex of mine, but I doubt that,” he answered skeptically. It was a logical theory: Player very well could be a former lover with a grudge.
“So what are you going to do with the laptop?” I asked. Neil regarded the laptop on the table thoughtfully for a few moments.
“Luke will be able to access it. He knows a lot more about that stuff than I do. I’ll text him to meet up.” He pulled his phone out of his jeans and hastily tapped out a message to his friend.
“I’ll go with you,” I suggested.
“No,” he answered immediately, keeping his head bent over the phone screen.
“I’m going. I’m not going to let you face this mess all by yourself,” I said, digging in my heels.
Neil looked at me then, irritated by my persistence.
I didn’t allow myself to look intimidated and crossed my arms over my chest instead, daring him to argue with me.
He slid his phone back into his pocket and advanced on me slowly, like a predator approaching his prey.
“Why…” he began, bending his head until our gazes were level, “do you always have to be so fucking pigheaded? Huh?” he whispered, his warm breath brushing against my lips. His placid tone clashed with his obvious attempt to cow me. I shivered a little but didn’t back down.
“And why do you always have to make decisions for the both of us?” I shot back at him.
I stared hard at the expanse of his throat left exposed by his sweater and considered pressing a kiss to it.
He certainly enjoyed it when I paid attention to that area; maybe I could relax him a little bit.
But then he cleared his throat to get my attention, and I looked back at his face, noting his smug smile.
“Okay…” he conceded with a deep breath. “Come with me. But I’m warning you—no chatting with Luke. In fact, ignore him completely. Don’t even look at him,” he ordered sternly, brushing past me to grab his coat and throw it on.
* * *
Half an hour later, we were standing outside Luke’s apartment door.
I chafed my hands together to warm them while Neil rang the doorbell incessantly, waiting for his friend to open the door for us.
“I’m coming!” We heard his voice through the door, which he quickly pulled open with an annoyed huff. When he saw Neil’s irritated glare boring into him, he arranged his face into a serious expression. “You trying to break the doorbell or what?” he chided Neil sarcastically.
“Should have been quicker, Luke. I don’t have time to waste,” Neil snapped, brushing past him with a shoulder-check. As he did so, I took note of the several inches Neil had on his friend. Then I looked at Luke, who had just then noticed my presence.
“Hey, Selene. This prick didn’t tell me you were coming too.
How are you doing?” he asked, looking me up and down.
I did the same right back at him. I wasn’t attracted to him, just ordinarily curious.
He was dressed in all black, highlighting his lean body, chiseled and well-balanced.
His blue eyes stood out against his pale skin, while his blond hair looked a little shorter than I remembered.
“I’m good. And yourself?” I answered quickly, trying not to show how stressed and anxiety-ridden I actually was. There was no need to add weight to this already tense atmosphere.
“Parker,” Neil barked out behind him. “You wanna get your ass over here and help me?” Luke rolled his eyes skyward and moved to let me inside.
“Someone’s in a hurry. We can catch up another time, maybe just the two of us,” he winked.
I gave him the smallest possible smile and didn’t say anything.
I could feel Neil’s burning eyes on me. His eyebrows were arched into a resolute expression, and he appeared to be clenching his jaw deliberately.