The cabin sat tucked behind a wall of cypress trees, too quiet for what was unraveling inside. The lake out front barely moved, its surface still and silver, like a mirror frozen in ti.
It should have felt peaceful. Instead, it felt like sothing was about to snap. rlina’s eyes darted to the corner of the room, just for a second.
The last ti she was here, there’d been warmth, even if it was confusing. Craig had made her coffee she didn’t drink, sat beside her without saying too much. Back then, the silence had felt different. Charged, sure, but not dangerous. It hadn’t been this sharp.
Now the air felt tighter. Like the cabin itself was clenched tight, waiting for the truth to drop.
She sat stiffly on the edge of the leather chair, hands curled into her sleeves. Three hours had passed since Craig had made a call and told her simply, "He’s on air. ETA: 2 hours." She didn’t ask further questions.
Now Miles, a lean, sharp-eyed man with fingers quicker than thought, was hunched over a laptop at the dining table. He’d walked in, nodded, taken her phone, plugged it in, and gone to work.
Craig stood by the window, arms folded, watching the lake like it might shift and offer so clarity.
rlina crossed the room and stopped a few feet away from him. "You flew a Tech Sleuth into Belford. Should I be impressed or concerned?"
Craig turned. "Both."
Their eyes locked.
No smile. No quip. Just a breath shared in silence, heavy, tender, and impossibly close.
Then Miles spoke.
"Okay. Got sothing."
rlina blinked and looked away, pulse quickening. Her chest tightened.
This is it, she thought. Finally. Answers.
Miles didn’t look up from the screen. "The last ssage you received ca from a private proxy, but it pinged off a local router right before hitting your phone. That kind of slip? Rookie move. The location... Belford Campus. Dormitory. Female residence."
rlina’s eyes widened. "My dorm?"
"I can narrow it down," Miles said. "Give a second."
He tapped a few keys, muttered sothing under his breath, then spun the laptop around. A dorm number blinked on the screen.
"That’s the hall next to mine," rlina said. "I know that wing. Mostly Mass Comm girls."
Craig was already reaching for his jacket. "Let’s go."
Room 206.
rlina’s heartbeat thudded against her ribs as Craig raised a fist and knocked once, sharp and firm. They had taken the narrow back entrance and slipped through the door quietly, careful not to draw any attention.
The door swung open a few seconds later. A petite girl stood in oversized glasses and a faded graphic tee that read DIA IS TRUTH. Her eyes squinted behind the thick lenses.
Then she blinked, eyes widening as their faces registered. "Craig Lesnar and rlina Sanchez?" Her voice trembled with disbelief. "No way."
rlina frowned. "Lizzie?" she asked, then turned to Craig. "I’ve seen her once before in an Ethics test we both took."
Craig didn’t waste ti. "Can we co in?"
Lizzie stepped back. "Y-yeah. Sure. Of course. Co in."
They walked past her into a room that looked like a shrine built from obsession. Printouts, news clippings, and candid photos were taped to the wall—Craig’s face, Conor’s, even a blurry shot of rlina at Eclipse Club.
Then it dawned on rlina. She had been the figure recording? The night she t Conor Lesnar.
"Okay, okay, don’t freak," Lizzie stamred, holding her hands up when she saw them staring at her wall. "I didn’t an any harm, alright? I swear. It was a project. A stupid Mass Comm assignnt. I was working on a docuntary concept, kind of like a deep-dive exposé thing, and I got carried away."
Craig’s jaw tightened. "Carried away?"
"I an, co on," Lizzie said, voice trembling. "The Lesnars, you guys are like campus legends. Your family, your scandals, it’s insane. I started following your brother’s case with the Marjorie thing last sester. And then she showed up," she nodded toward rlina, "and suddenly there’s even more to uncover. You’re basically a walking docuseries."
The Marjorie thing? The nerve of people in this school.
rlina’s brows furrowed. "So you’ve been the one sending those ssages? Threatening ? That’s also part of your exposé?"
Lizzie blinked. "Threatening you?"
"The warnings," rlina said, stepping forward. "Don’t play dumb. You’ve been texting since I got to Belford. You know things about my mom. About what happened."
Lizzie paled. "No. I didn’t—what?"
"You sent this." rlina scrolled through her phone and pulled up the ssage where it said, ’Be careful who you end up in bed with.’ "That was you, right?"
Lizzie stared at it, her lip trembling. "That was . I sent it as bait, you know? Just fishing for a reply, hoping you’d say sothing that would give more to work with."
Craig took a step forward. "So you admit it?"
"I only sent that one, I swear," she said quickly, almost pleading. "If she’s been getting threats, that’s not . I was at the club. I saw you," she pointed to rlina, "with Conor Lesnar. I fild that. I thought it was sothing. And then I saw Craig go into your dorm room on his birthday, and I only took a video before he—"
Craig cut in. "Delete them. Now."
Lizzie froze.
"I’m not asking again."
She didn’t hesitate. She moved to her laptop, opened a drive, and dragged a folder labeled Lesnar Project into the trash. Then she emptied it.
"All of it," Craig said.
"I swear that’s everything I had," Lizzie replied, her voice shaking. "Please. I just wanted a headline, not this. The threats she’s been getting, that’s not . You can have my phone, my laptop and see for yourself."
rlina didn’t answer.
She just stood there, frozen in the middle of the room, staring at the screen Lizzie had just cleared. The photo wall. The pins. The threads. The absence of her mother’s na. It didn’t add up. Her obsession was less about rlina or her mother and more fixated on the Lesnars.
If Lizzie wasn’t the one sending the threats, then who was?
Her throat tightened. She couldn’t speak. Her thoughts wouldn’t line up. Just scattered, jagged pieces spinning in place.
Craig stepped a little closer and leaned toward her, voice low. "Do you believe her?"
rlina blinked, still staring. "I... I don’t know."
He didn’t press her. Instead, he reached for his phone and stepped back, dialing.
"Miles," he said as soon as the call connected. "She claims she only sent one ssage, the last one. Says the rest weren’t her."
A pause.
"Yeah. Check it."
rlina watched Craig as he listened. His eyes didn’t move. His jaw locked tight.
A few minutes passed in silence.
Then his phone buzzed again. He checked the screen, then looked at her.
"She’s telling the truth," he said quietly. "Miles confird it. The last ssage was the only one that ca from her IP. The rest, different server, different source."
rlina exhaled, sharp and empty, like her lungs had been holding sothing she hadn’t even realized.
So Lizzie wasn’t the only one trying to break her. She wasn’t the one who knew about her mom.
Without another word, Craig turned toward the door. rlina followed him out, casting one last glance at Lizzie, who looked like she might collapse under the weight of her own nerves.
Back at the cabin, dusk had started to settle outside, streaking the lake in ribbons of gold and navy. At the far end of the room, Miles was still hunched over the table, typing like the keyboard owed him answers, brows furrowed in fierce concentration.
rlina stood near the fireplace, tucked into a quieter corner of the room, just out of earshot, just far enough. She curled her fingers into her sleeves, the chill in them finally catching up to her nerves. Craig lingered nearby, leaning against the wall, hands shoved deep into his pockets, eyes never straying far from her.
Silence hung between them, heavy and fragile.
Eventually, he stepped closer and asked, voice low, "You okay?"
She nodded, but her hands were trembling.
He noticed.
Without a word, he reached for one, gently and cautiously, as if she might vanish if he moved too fast. She let him hold it, for a second, maybe two, long enough to rember. His thumb moved across the back of her hand in slow, soothing circles.
A glance held between them, charged with sothing they both recognized, too familiar and dangerous.
Then she pulled her hand back, inhaled shakily. "We can’t do this."
The loss of his touch left a silence even louder than before.
A sharp breath slipped through her lips as she blinked hard, steadying herself. "Everything about you is...intense," she continued. "You show up at my room once and it’s recorded. I speak with your brother at the club and I get fild."
Craig didn’t move. Just watched her. His stare was deep, filled with sothing tender and unsaid, and his body leaned the tiniest bit forward, drawn without resistance.
She looked down, then back up, eyes rimd with everything she wanted to say. "I can’t live like this, where I’m being recorded every ti you walk through a door."
He stepped closer, quieter now. "So that’s what this is about now?"
"It’s that and more," she said, voice nearly breaking. "It’s all of it."
Craig opened his mouth, gaze softening, sothing surfacing behind his eyes, sothing vulnerable, sothing that looked a lot like care.
"rlina," he said.
But she didn’t let him finish.
"You once said you didn’t want to complicate things." Her voice was soft and shaky. "Well, this, us...it’s more than complicated."
She exhaled, blinking fast, her eyes glassy now, like the weight of it all was finally pressing in.
"I’m trying to survive everything with my mom, the lies, the warnings, the threats." Her breath hitched. "And then there’s this," she gestured vaguely between them, "whatever this is."
The seconds dragged on, weighty and slow. Her voice cracked. "I can’t carry all of it, not while there’s Louis, not while you have a girlfriend."
Her shoulders dropped like surrender. "It’s too much, Craig. It’s breaking ."
Craig stepped forward, slow but certain, like he couldn’t hold himself back anymore. He gently cupped her face, his thumbs brushing her cheeks, as if trying to ground her.
"I just want to be there for you," he said, voice rough with feeling.
rlina blinked up at him, eyes glossy. "You can’t," she whispered. "Because I feel things I shouldn’t be feeling when I’m around you."
They stayed like that, inches apart, suspended in a mont ant only for them.
Then—
"Guys," Miles called from the end of the room. "I’ve got sothing."
They turned, but their bodies didn’t move right away, like the mont was still clinging to them.
rlina was the first to pull away, giving her head a small shake before walking off. Craig lingered a beat longer, then followed slowly, his hands now back at his sides.
Miles started the mont he saw them. "You’re gonna want to see this. The earlier ssages... they didn’t co from a student server. They were routed through a secure line."
rlina blinked. "What does that an?"
Miles swiveled in his chair, eyes serious now. "It ans whoever sent those ssages has access to staff-level servers. They’re hidden behind secure encryption walls. Only accessible from inside Belford’s faculty or administrative networks."
Her heart dropped.
"You’re saying... it was a Belford employee?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Miles nodded. "No student could’ve sent those ssages. The trail ends at a secure staff server."
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