LET ME GO (Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Book 5) Read online

  “So, you’re filing a civil lawsuit,” the anchor said.

  “Yes, and last night I just received word that the case will go to trial. Meanwhile, I am arranging a demonstration in Washington, D.C., and I urge everyone to come out and join me. It’s time we stop this from happening. We can’t just watch while our sisters and brothers and our children are being shot down in the streets. This must end now. We demand action right now. We can no longer rely on our justice system. We will take matters into our own hands if necessary.”

  “Thank you, Amal Bukhari, for joining us,” the hostess said and looked directly into the camera, addressing the viewers, while adding:

  “The protest will take place on January fifteenth. Anyone who wants to know more can follow Amal on social media where she will be updating about the event.”

  Chapter 36

  THEN:

  FanTAUstic345: I need your help.

  DeVilSQuaD666: Sure. What’s up?

  FanTAUstic345: Having some trouble with someone.

  DeVilSQuaD666: With who?

  FanTAUstic345: Someone who’s getting on my nerves. SlayerAlpha32.

  DeVilSQuaD666: What’d he do?

  FanTAUstic345: He owes me money. Refuses to pay up. I asked him about it, and then he killed me in the game. Took everything I had.

  DeVilSQuaD666: I hate those types. You shouldn’t let him get away with it. You want to strike back?

  FanTAUstic345: What do you mean?

  DeVilSQuaD666: I know how.

  FanTAUstic345: Really?

  DeVilSQuaD666: Sure. Tell me who he is, and I’ll make sure he’s punished properly.

  FanTAUstic345: You sure?

  DeVilSQuaD666: If you pay me.

  FanTAUstic345: How much?

  DeVilSQuaD666: 1000 bucks will do.

  FanTAUstic345: That’s a lot of money.

  DeVilSQuaD666: You want it done or not? You won’t have to lift a finger. No one will know it was you.

  FanTAUstic345: I don’t want to do anything illegal.

  DeVilSQuaD666: Don’t worry. You’re just teaching this guy a small lesson. Nothing bad.

  FanTAUstic345: Okay. If you say so.

  Chapter 37

  I watched the interview with Amal Bukhari on Good Morning America on my computer. The kids had taken off for school, and I was holding my warm coffee between my hands. Matt was rummaging around the kitchen, getting himself some breakfast, while my mom was filling the dishwasher. The kids had been arguing all morning, and I had ended up yelling even louder to get them to shut up. Now I felt awful and wished I could go back and just hold them tightly in my arms instead or at least speak like a normal person and not yell. The atmosphere had been horrid when sending them off, one kid more furious with me than the other.

  Elijah had stayed out of it and not said a word. The kid was smart, no doubt about it. There was something different with him and Matt since I got back. Much to my surprise, Elijah was actually speaking to him. Not many words, but a few here and there, and sometimes even an entire sentence. I was pleased to see that their relationship was improving. I had noticed that Matt no longer treated him like he was fragile, and he was actually telling him what to do, like this morning he had told him to put his cereal bowl in the dishwasher after he was done eating. I had watched in awe as the kid actually did as he was told and put the bowl in the dishwasher. My kids didn’t even do that.

  “What are you watching?” Matt asked as he came into the living room, holding a bowl of Cheerios in his hand that he ate, standing up, slurping the milk. It was like watching a child eat breakfast.

  “Amal Bukhari. She’s arranging some sort of protest demonstration soon.”

  “Protest? Against what?”

  “Police brutality.”

  “She was the one that was shot on the airplane, right?”

  I nodded and sipped my coffee. “She thinks it was because of her skin color. That they reacted erratically because she’s of Pakistani descent.”

  Matt shook his head. “An awful story. I feel for the officer who accidentally shot her. Not only was he fired, but he’s also being charged with attempted murder. That is serious stuff. The guy’s life is ruined.”

  “So is hers,” I said. “She’s had a ton of surgeries. Had all kinds of organs removed and patched up. Her body will never function properly.”

  “I guess there are no winners in these types of cases. The guy was just trying to do his job. The way I see it, it could happen to any of us. I’m not even sure you have to be racist to shoot someone in a situation like that.”

  I nodded and drank more coffee. Even though I had met my share of racist colleagues in blue, it didn’t really have to have anything to do with that. Situations like these could so easily escalate and end badly.

  “But he hasn’t tried to kill her again, has he?” Matt asked and finished his breakfast by drinking the rest of the milk from the bowl. A few drops escaped and ran down his chin, which he wiped with the back of his hand.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re saying that this was the Swatter, right? The guy who called in the bomb threat that led to her being shot? That it was the same guy as in the other cases.”

  “I have reason to believe it was, yes, why?”

  “She didn’t die. Do you think he’ll try again?”

  “That’s a very good question,” I asked. “If he does come for her, then he might also come for Jamal. But I’m not sure that’s his motive if you know what I mean. I’m not sure that killing the person that he swats is the actual purpose. I think he chooses them carefully because of their popularity or because their death will obtain media coverage. He doesn’t have an outstanding issue with the person or any other specific motive for killing them. At least none that I have found.”

  “So, killing Jamal’s mother or simply hurting Amal Bukhari will be enough for him?” Matt asked. “Because it gets the coverage he wants?”

  “That’s my theory, yes. He has some sort of higher purpose that I have yet to figure out. But once I do, he won’t be able to hide from me anymore.”

  Chapter 38

  Every inch of the four walls of my bedroom was covered with everything I could possibly find online about the Swatter’s victims. And that was a lot. Some of them were big celebrities in the gaming world and had millions of followers, while others were smaller gamers, but all used Twitch for their live streams. And then there was Jamal’s mother. Twelve people so far had been killed by the hand of this guy. All looked like accidents from the outside, unfortunate incidents.

  Boy, this guy was good.

  I’d been Googling for hours on end all day, and now I was staring at the collage on my walls and the many yellow post-it notes plastered on top of it. I had tried to find a connection between the victims, anything beyond the fact that they played Call of Duty and live-streamed on Twitch. I was hoping that there would be something else…that there was something I had missed. Anything that could direct me to this guy’s motive for doing these things, for killing these people.

  Did it have something to do with the game?

  Matt had left for work, and my mom had gone to Orlando for the day, so I had the house to myself, which was good for thinking. I didn’t even notice when Alex came home from school in the afternoon until he flew through the door to my room, a big smile on his face.

  “Hi there, buddy. How was your day? Come here and give me a hug,” I said.

  He made a face like it was the worst thing in the world. “Mo-om!”

  Then he ran back out. I stared in his direction. Was that it then? No more hugs from my little man? Had he already grown out of snuggling?

  I wasn’t going to let him go that easy.

  “I’m hungry!” he yelled from his room.

  I went to the kitchen and pulled out the bread to make a couple of peanut butter sandwiches when my phone rang. It was my dad.

  “Hi there. What’s up?”

  I had asked my father to hel
p me with the case since he knew everything about computers and gaming. At least a lot more than I did. He worked in cybersecurity and could gain access to almost anywhere online. I enjoyed working with him, and I sensed he did too. Working together on this made us closer, and I liked that. We had been apart for thirty-six years until he suddenly popped into my life a few months earlier. That was when I learned that I also had a younger half-brother, Adam.

  I had asked my dad to play Call of Duty for me for a few days so I could take time off to dig deeper into my research. I needed him to keep an eye out for FaZeYourFeaRs.

  “Did he show up?” I asked while smearing peanut butter on the bread and holding the phone between my shoulder and neck.

  “He did,” my dad said. He sounded strange. I put the knife down and grabbed the phone in my hand.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s…everywhere.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand?”

  “He’s teaming up with many different players. He’s been doing this for the past twenty-four hours, and I’m just trying to keep track of him, but every time I find him, he’s teamed up with someone else.”

  “He’s changing the game,” I mumbled. “He knows we can’t warn all of them.”

  “I’ve been trying to keep track of each and every one of them and finding their real-life names and addresses, but there are so many now.”

  I sat on a stool, my pulse quickening. What was this guy up to now?

  “He’s telling us he knows we warned Jamal. So he’ll just change it up, so we can’t do that anymore. He wants us to watch from the sidelines,” I said. “He’s cornered us.”

  “Sounds almost like it’s Game Over for us.”

  I exhaled and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Yeah, well, we’ll just have to up our game too. Send me the list of names you have so far, will you? Defeat is not a word in my vocabulary, as he’ll soon learn.”

  Chapter 39

  She was burned out. She knew it, and so did everyone who knew her. Susan ‘SSweatpea’ Johnson stared at her computer screen and her headphones lying next to it.

  “You don’t have to do it, Susan,” her husband Rob said, coming up behind her. He put a hand on her big stomach and smiled cautiously.

  “It stresses you out, and I don’t want that. Not in your condition.”

  “But I’ll lose all my sponsors. We’ll be poor.”

  He shrugged. “So what? With the money you’ve earned already, we can make it pretty far. The house is paid off, and we’ll come up with something. I still have my job.”

  “You’re an elementary school math teacher, Rob. You make no money.”

  “We’ll figure it out, Susan. I don’t want you gaming sixteen hours a day and stressing yourself out. You have to face the fact that it is over, honey. And you can’t do it once the baby arrives anyway. You’ll be busy taking care of our little girl. She’ll need to eat often and have her diaper changed. There’s no extra time when you take care of a baby.”

  Susan sighed, exhausted, knowing Rob was right. She had known for quite some time now. She had no idea that being pregnant would be this tough. She had thought she could at least continue until the baby arrived. But she felt so tired and so emotional that there was no way she could keep up in the world of professional gaming anymore.

  Susan was one of the veterans in the gaming community. Before becoming a professional video gamer in 2009, she had been an ordinary high school student, working at the local post office in the summers. Her parents were poor, and they never had much while she was growing up. She always had to wear her brother’s old clothes, which made her look like a boy since her mother insisted on keeping her hair short too, cutting it herself to avoid getting lice or anything else that might cost them a fortune.

  Money was tight when she was growing up, and her parents didn’t understand this new world that Susan had entered when she just started. So, when Susan told them there was money to be earned when gaming, they told her she was insane and that she needed to keep her job at the post office. Susan hid it from them in the beginning, but when she entered a tournament one spring, she won five thousand dollars. It was a heck of a lot more than she could earn at the post office over an entire summer. And as she told them this, she had her parent’s full attention. They spent the five thousand on a new gaming computer and whatever else she needed. Two years later, she signed a three-year contract with tournament operator MLG-Major League Gaming, earning two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

  Today, playing esports had become highly competitive. The prizes were bigger too. The last tournament Susan had entered, the winner took home fifteen million dollars, whereas it was only one million ten years ago. The competition from the sixteen-year-olds was fierce too. Today, Susan was sponsored by Red Bull, Nike, and Honda, who paid her millions every year. She had seventeen million subscribers to her channels, and she was still quite good at what she did. She just didn’t enjoy it anymore.

  But was she ready to retire…to turn her back on this world and all its money? To no longer be adored by fans all over the world?

  “What is it they say about gamers?” she said and leaned on her husband’s shoulder. “Get big, burn out, retire young.”

  He chuckled and caressed her stomach. “I know you were a big star, sweetie, and you always will be in my eyes and the eyes of our little princess, but it’s time to call it quits while you still can. You can’t sit through tournaments that take ten to fifteen hours anymore. The life of a pro-gamer requires discipline and perseverance like no other job. There’s no room for failure; your fans won’t forgive you if you’re not up to the game, and you only make real money if you’re the very best. It requires intense focus and demands quick reactions, much like athletic sports, which young minds and bodies are most capable of sustaining. It’s not suited for an almost thirty-year-old woman who’s having a baby. You always knew it was an all-in, all-out kind of affair.”

  Knowing he was right and that the decision was made, Susan nodded and kissed his cheek, feeling sad yet relieved.

  “I’ll just do this one last tournament this Friday, and then I’ll retire, okay?”

  Chapter 40

  Nathan looked over his shoulder as he rushed out of school, down the stairs, and toward the bus stop. He liked to be the first one there and the first one to get on the bus. Plus, the day hadn’t been very good at school. He had been bullied at lunch again by Travis and Dexter. It was a long story that ended with his lunch on the ground of the cafeteria and him starving the rest of the day.

  Nathan also had another reason for being in a hurry. Today was the day his grandmother would come over after school, and she had promised to bring him a new baseball glove, the one he had wanted for so long. Nathan didn’t know why he was getting it now since it wasn’t his birthday, and he hadn’t gotten straight As or anything, but he assumed his grandmother was just trying to be nice.

  The bus arrived, and they all got on. A kid pushed him, and he almost fell on the way up the stairs, while someone else gave him an elbow in the side and almost made him yell out in pain. But Nathan managed to get into his seat on the bus and placed his backpack by his feet. With butterflies in his stomach, he waited patiently for the bus to finally take off.

  He sat alone, as usual, on the bus, but he didn’t mind. He’d rather sit alone than be assigned to sit with someone who clearly didn’t want to sit next to him like in school. He hated those looks he always got from his classmates when they were forced to sit next to him.

  “Come on; come on,” he mumbled impatiently while his legs bounced up and down. The bus stopped, and two kids left. There was only one more stop until he was getting off. Nathan had been dreaming about getting this glove for two years, at least. He was going to play with it all afternoon, and he would most definitely sleep with it tonight.

  Maybe his dad could throw a few balls?

  His dad had been out of work for a few weeks now and didn’t have much else to d
o, as far as Nathan knew. He could definitely do it. If only he could be in a better mood than he had been in the past couple of days.

  The bus approached his stop, and Nathan rose to his feet, backpack in hand. He walked out of the bus, three other kids coming out with him. He put his backpack on his back, then began the walk toward his house, waving at the bus driver on the way as he always did. No one liked Ms. Pat much, but he did. She was always nice to him and only yelled at all the other kids.

  “See you tomorrow,” he yelled as the bus took off and disappeared. Meanwhile, Nathan sped up when a car drove up on his side and a window was rolled down. An African American woman looked out at him, then stopped the car next to him. Puzzled at this, Nathan stopped walking and stared at her.

  “Hey, kid,” she said. “You Nathan Downey?”

  The boy nodded. “Y-yes.”

  The woman opened the door of the car and got out. With her came two girls, whom Nathan recognized from his school. They were a few years older than him. The way they looked at him frightened him. Nathan backed up.

  “I…I…”

  The mother was the first one to act. She reached over and grabbed him in her strong arms and held him down. Then she yelled at her two daughters, and they came running, and soon punches were thrown at him from all sides. Nathan tried to scream and get loose, but the mother held him down, using her weight to press him into the pavement while the girls punched him again and again, harder and harder each time. A kid who was walking by pulled out her phone and began filming it. That made the mother let go of Nathan, and he stumbled to his feet, blood running from his nose and ear. As he tried to rise to his feet, one of the girls took another swing at him, punching him so hard he fell headfirst into the lamppost next to him.

  Chapter 41