“What’s wrong with it?” she whispered, tears still tracking down her face. “You admit that you wrote that?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said, scrolling through the article. “It’s not my best work, I admit, but—” He broke off, staring in horror. There were quotes that he’d deleted and—“Oh my God.” It was the video. The video. The one he’d decided not to send to his editor the night before. “Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.”

His mother came back to the bed, lowering herself to perch on the edge. “You . . . didn’t write that, then?” Her relief was evident.

His gaze flew up to hers. “I did, but I took a lot of it out before I sent it in. I never sent this video to the Gabber. Never, Mom. I never even uploaded it to the Gabber server. I never copied it to my own laptop. It was on a thumb drive and I viewed the video from that.”

She closed her eyes, exhaling slowly. “Thank the good Lord for that, at least.”

He scrolled further, his stomach hurting more with each word he read. “I didn’t write this part either, Mom. I swear it. I took out the reference to this Prescott guy because he was a sleazebag.”

Just like my editor.

Oh my God. How had Nolan gotten this? “I don’t know how this happened.”

“Well, you’d better figure it out quickly because it’s had over a million views since it was put up.”

Jeff backed out of the article to see the time stamp. “It was posted last night at eight P.M. I sent in my edited version at seven.”

“Then drank yourself stupid?”

“Yeah. Because . . .”

“Because?” she prompted. At least she was no longer yelling.

“Because . . . reasons.”

She looked away, her lips still trembling. “Grow up, Jeff. You posted a video of a woman being assaulted. And you make it all better by getting drunk.”

“No, Mom. Yes, I’m drunk. No, I didn’t post that video. I did not.”

“Then how is it under your name?”

“I don’t know. Let me think.”

She wiped her face with her fingertips. “Where did you get the video?” she asked, a little more calmly.

“From this real douchebag in New Orleans named Stan Prescott. He sold me the thumb drive.”

“Wait,” she interrupted. “You were in New Orleans? Are you serious? How the hell did you get to New Orleans? You are sixteen years old. You don’t even have a car.”

“I flew.” He dug his knuckles into his temples. “You can yell at me about that later.”

“Trust me, I will.” She drew a deep breath and let it out. “So, back to the video.”

“Fine. I was doing an article on one of the women who escaped that serial killer back in February. Mercy Callahan. She lives in New Orleans. One of her college friends there pointed me to this guy. Said he had some information.”