Who Falls Hardest (Clearwater University)

Emma’s eyes flare wide, and she steps away from me, pulling her cell phone from my other hand and staring at the screen. Whoever that text came from, I’d bet anything it wasn’t her dad.

“Sorry, Mom.” I lick my lips. Leftover adrenaline and fury make it hard to speak. My body feels like it’s buzzing. “I just… I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Nothing’s wrong, is it?”

“Okay, now you’re scaring me.” She sounds more awake, and I can imagine her sitting up straighter. Fuck, I hate that she’s gotten dragged into this. “What on earth is going on?”

“I got hacked,” I say simply. At least I know she’ll understand what that means, unlike Officer Lambert the Genius. “Somebody’s fucking with me, and with Emma, Reese, and West too. She made it seem like something had happened to you. You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, yes. I’m fine. Are you? Oh my goodness, Trent, where are you?”

“The police station.”

She lets out a little yelp of surprise, and I curse inwardly. Fucking hell. I’m so damn happy she’s okay, but for fuck’s sake, this was not how I wanted her to find out about all of this bullshit.

I promise her I’ll fill her in on everything later and reassure her that I’m okay. I can tell she doesn’t believe it, but I can also feel Officer Lambert staring at me, and I want to deal with this shit and figure out how the hell to stop Leslie.

“Mom, I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you.”

“I love you too, Trent,” she says, confusion still lingering in her voice.

I press the END CALL button with more force than necessary, then turn to Officer Lambert, fixing him with a hard stare. He and the other cop who was hanging out by the door are now standing together, watching us like two useless fucking lumps of flesh.

“All right. I’m only gonna go over this one more time,” I say, pressing my lips together. “The car is mine. I didn’t steal it. But someone did commit a crime.” I gesture to myself, then to Emma and my friends. “All four of us were hacked. Why the hell don’t you do something about that?”

3

Emma

“Well, that was a waste of several fucking hours,” Reese grumbles under his breath as we head down a hallway in the police station toward the exit.

My knees still feel a little shaky, and I feel a little queasy. After I got that fake text from my dad, Trent stopped taking anyone’s shit. He finally got the cops to listen and believe that he didn’t steal his own car—and then the real fun began.

I had wondered what local police might be able to do to stop Leslie even if they believed that she had hacked into our lives.

And the unfortunate truth is, not much.

They took statements from all of us, including information about how the guys’ credit cards stopped working, about how Trent’s car was listed as stolen, and about the text from a number that looked like my father’s. Then they gave us some outdated and generic pamphlets about “securing our online presence” and told us they’d look into Leslie’s whereabouts and verify whether she’s really been at that rehab facility.

And then they let us go.

“Jesus fucking Christ, you can say that again.” Trent shakes his head angrily as we pass by the front desk.

I can’t help but agree with all of them. I’m glad none of us are spending the night behind bars, but given the skill Leslie has shown in invading all of our lives, I wonder if the police will be any help at all in our fight against her.

Somehow, I doubt it.

“Let’s just go home,” I say, then do a small double-take. The words just slipped off my tongue, but I forgot that my “home” for the moment is the house all three men rent off-campus.

None of them miss it, and Reese’s bright emerald eyes gleam in the light from the streetlamps as he glances at me, a smile curving his lips.

My heart thuds a little harder in my chest, and I tug my gaze away from his when West reaches the exit and holds the door open for me. We step outside into the cool night air of California, but before we can walk down the front steps, a voice calls out across the mostly empty parking lot.

“Emma!”

Oh, shit. It’s my dad.

I texted him after I got the false message from Leslie, wanting to make sure he was okay and verify that he hadn’t texted me about any accident. I didn’t tell him everything that’s going on, but I should’ve known he would be worried enough to come down to the station.

He doesn’t know the full story—doesn’t know about the bullying I endured in high school or all the shit that went down last semester that led to this moment—but now he knows about Leslie’s part in it, at least.