The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(31)

Meredith wasn’t.

But I certainly am.

The man beside Jaycee stirs in his sleep. Skittish, out of habit, she quickly closes the screen she was reading.

It’s just as well. Who cares who BamaBelle really is?

Who cares who I really am?

That’s the beauty of the Internet. There, you can be anyone you want to be. You can escape your real life.

That’s all Jaycee ever really wanted, from the time she was a little girl, abandoned by her unwed mother to be raised by grandparents who took her in out of duty, and nothing more.

She wanted to escape.

That’s why she used to hide in the shed behind the house, until she got so cold or hungry that she had to drag herself back inside to face reality—usually, with punishment for not answering when they called her name.

It’s why she looked forward to going to school every day, while her classmates complained and lived for the weekends.

And it’s why she discovered that she liked being on stage when her freshman drama teacher convinced her to audition for the high school musical. She could step into the spotlight, leave behind her real life with all its problems, and for a few hours, at least, become someone else—anyone else.

At seventeen she fell in love with Steven Petersen onstage—and off. That was the year everything happened: the year her grandmother died, the year she got pregnant, the year Steve broke her heart, and the year she gave up her newborn for adoption.

Not that you wanted to keep her anyway. You didn’t want anything tying you down, holding you back.

At eighteen she finally got to escape for real.

She left behind the name she’d been born with and the miserable house where she’d been raised, and the godforsaken northern town where few people ever really gave a damn about her. She changed everything she could: hair color, build, clothing style, the way she walked, the way she spoke . . .

She rests her chin in her hand, remembering. That was the first time she truly, officially, became someone else. But it wasn’t the last. Not by any stretch.

As she muses, she realizes that the flight attendant, leaning against the galley counter reading a magazine, is glancing in her direction.

She averts her own gaze out of habit—all those years of trying not to make eye contact, afraid someone is going to recognize her, engage her in conversation.

Usually if you do that, people get the hint that you want to be left alone.

“Doesn’t everyone?” Cory likes to ask her when she gets paranoid.

“I didn’t always,” she’s reminded him—and herself. There was a time when she craved attention—from anyone. Even strangers.

Maybe there’s a part of her that still does. That would explain it all, wouldn’t it? Even why she couldn’t leave well enough alone and simply lurk online; why she was compelled to engage by writing the blog, interacting with people online . . . people like BamaBelle, who have no idea who, or what, she really is . . . or isn’t.

Yes, she wants to—needs to—interact with them at a safe distance. But face-to-face?

No, thank you.

Sneaking a peek at the front galley just in time to see the flight attendant glance again in her direction, Jaycee casually reaches up to block her face under the pretext of finger-combing her bangs, careful not to knock her wig askew. Then she pulls a sleep mask out of her pocket, places it over a good portion of her face, and turns her head away.

Leave me alone. Please. Just leave me the hell alone.

Home at last, Detective Crystal Burns is greeted at the door of her West End Cincinnati town house by Ginger, her Chesapeake Bay retriever.

“What’s up, Gingy?” She tosses her keys and badge onto the counter and bends over to pat the dog. “Did you miss me? Huh?”

Panting and obviously thrilled to see her, the dog follows her into the living room, where Crystal’s husband, Jermaine, is snoring on the couch. Presumably, he’d also have been thrilled—if not panting—had she arrived home many hours earlier, in time for their planned candlelight anniversary dinner.

They were married two years ago today. Well, technically, two years ago yesterday, since midnight came and went a few hours ago.

Jermaine—fellow cop by trade, amazing chef in his spare time—finally had the day off on the heels of a grueling sting operation.

He went out and picked up a couple of steaks this morning, plus all the ingredients for Crystal’s favorite garlic truffle mashed potatoes, asparagus with hollandaise, and fresh strawberry shortcake in homemade pastry shells.

That was before she got bogged down in the case she’s working.

“It’s okay,” Jermaine said when she told him she wouldn’t be home in time for dinner. “I get it, baby.”

“I know you do.”

That he gets it is the beauty of this second marriage.

Crystal’s first husband worked in corporate insurance and not law enforcement, and thus failed to understand that when you’re working a homicide, the case—and the endless paperwork that goes with the territory—has to take precedence over just about everything, including anniversary dinners.

Despite her many differences with her ex, she hung in there for almost twenty years of that first marriage. Long enough for their only child to graduate high school and join the military. Sometimes she wonders if she hadn’t filed for divorce before her son was killed in Afghanistan two years later, would she ever have done it? Leaving that marriage had been hard enough as it was. The man wasn’t just clingy and possessive; he was all but helpless when it came to running a household without her.