I hardly needed to analyze my dream. I knew what it meant.
It meant that Hannah wasn’t mine, not truly, and that my best efforts to bring her to me were failing. It also meant that I couldn’t live without her, no matter what I’d thought. Wanting Hannah plagued me all day. Now it invaded my dreams.
And it wasn’t enough, getting off miles apart. It wouldn’t be enough, seeing her this weekend. I needed her with me—always.
That evening, I tried to get back into my writing, but the scene was closed to me. I flipped to a clean page and sketched Hannah.
I checked my phone periodically.
“Melanie, Melanie.” I sighed. “Where the fuck are you?”
She’d better be busy erasing Night Owl from the Internet—at least insofar as she could. I doubted Shapiro and Nate would go after torrents and forum posts. No e-book, no case.
I messed with my sketch a little more, and then, hurriedly, as if I could convince myself that I wasn’t doing it, I keyed in a Google search: Night Owl by W. Pierce.
I hit Enter.
The search results loaded with agonizing slowness. Agonizing because I had plenty of time to realize I was making a mistake. Sure, I read news and reviews of my other books, but Night Owl wasn’t like my other books.
Night Owl was about Hannah and me. It was precious.
Google found four hundred thousand results. I smirked and scrolled down, my eyes jumping from one link to the next. I saw Facebook pages, fan pages, forum posts, blog reviews, and URLs from Goodreads, Amazon, the iBookstore, Barnes & Noble. Damn …
And there was a link to the e-book, which wasn’t supposed to exist. I clicked it. Still available, still ninety-nine cents. I balked. Night Owl was number thirty-five on the digital bestseller list. It had six hundred reviews and a 4.6-star average rating.
My cursor hovered over the one-star reviews. I clicked.
The first was a refund request with “pornographic quotes.”
TERRIBLE, said another reviewer. Pure porn, no story!
The negative reviews went on like that, attacking my plot, my writing, my person. I was mentally disturbed. I was single-handedly sending women back to the Dark Ages.
By the time I got to the last one-star review, my hands were shaking.
“Hannah,” I said aloud. Her name was a talisman.
I forced myself to read the last review. I always twist the knife.
Don’t waste your money, it said. Matt is a psycho and Hannah is nothing but a slut.
My eyes widened.
Oh, it was one thing for me to call Hannah a slut. She was my slut. She was a slut for me. When we went mad together, when she got on her knees … only I called Hannah “slut.”
But this? This was a backhanded slap—a stranger calling my lover a whore.
I slammed my laptop shut. I nearly snapped my phone in two as I opened it.
When I rose, my chair tipped over with a crash. I found Mel’s number in my recent calls. “Answer,” I snarled as soon as I hit Send. “Answer!”
“Hello?”
At the sound of Mel’s voice, my anger erupted.
“Take it down, you bitch!” I snarled. “I told you to take it down. Take it down. Take that fucking book off the Internet now. Now!” Flecks of saliva wet my lips.
“I did!” Melanie’s voice was tiny.
“You. Did. Not.” I spat the words into the phone. The heat of my rage scalded my throat.
“Calm down,” Mel bleated. “It takes—it can take up to t-two days for the—”
“No!” I shouted over the small voice on the phone. “Don’t you try to fucking handle me! You have twelve hours—twelve fucking hours—”
My threat broke into silence. Twelve hours, or else what?
I ended the call.
My phone began to ring. It was Mel. I ended the call. It rang again. I hit End. Again, then again. Ring … end call, ring … end call.
I set the volume to mute.
The screen lit up. I ended the call. It lit again. She called again. Again and again, and I couldn’t walk away. Leave me alone!