I racked my brain. Golden was thirty minutes away. When Kori had jumped in Parker’s car, it’d been about one thirty, leaving her enough time to meet Shay. It was the last place she went. The last thing she did. As with any mystery, it was best to work your way backward. It was how I always designed the mazes in my games.

But who was Shay? And why did Kori really go there to meet him?

There was only one person who would know. The man himself.

I jumped hearing the knock on my door.

“Coming!” I called, getting up from my desk.

“Serena, Cole and Lexi are here to see you,” Mom said.

Of course Cole and Lexi had to come over; I hadn’t left them any other choice. I’d been avoiding the regular calls and text messages.

I watched as Cole and Lexi came in and made themselves at home in my room as they’d always done before. But now it felt like an invasion.

I knew I was being shitty. I recognized the red around Lexi’s eyes, the sullen weariness that hung over Cole’s coolness, but it was silently understood that any and all pain associated with losing Kori was mine to hoard and feast on alone. If I didn’t want sympathy, then no one was getting any.

“So what are you doing?” Cole asked, totally disregarding my privacy and reading the chat log on the screen. “Meeting strangers at motels?”

“No!” I said emphatically as I punched the monitor power button. No, that didn’t look guilty at all.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Lexi gnawing away at the crook of her thumb. She looked like a beaver with a sapling fruit tree. Her chestnut eyes, round and wide, stared back at me. She didn’t like what she saw. It worried her.

“Look, I didn’t meet anyone at a motel, okay. It was Kori.” I turned the computer monitor back on and explained about shaym and how he’d thought I was Kori and how she’d been on my computer arranging to meet him the night she died.

“So what are you doing still talking to him?” Cole asked.

“I’m not. I mean, I might. I’m thinking about it. He might not know what happened to Kori. Maybe he’ll meet me. Maybe he knows something.”

“Knows something?” Lexi shifted nervously. “About what?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I want to meet him. I mean, why did Kori go see him?”

“Ser, Kori knew a lot of guys, dangerous guys. I don’t think there’s much mystery here,” Cole said, and Lexi nodded. They were certain shaym was a drug dealer. “Let it go.”

But it was too late; shaym had come online and I’d already started typing.

dynamitehackr: i need 2 see u

shaym: Kori?

dynamitehackr: Kismet Mini Mart on Pine and Lakeshore