by Sara Shepard
Clicking out of Google, he leaned back in the chair and cracked his knuckles. Now on to the real reason he surfed the internet. He looked right and left, making sure Joseph, the head librarian who acted like he was a force to be reckoned with, still had his nose stuck in a Le Carré novel. He did. Smiling, Brett typed in the link to Case Not Closed.
The site came up quickly. Brett signed in under the new handle he’d created, JCoin—a little twist on BMoney, get it?—and watched as the screen loaded. It was comforting how the old, badly designed homepage never changed. Neither did the losers who weighed in on the cases.
He clicked on a tab, then found himself staring at Helena Kelly’s name. Case Closed, read a red stamp over the thread. He clicked to Collette Frazier next; Seneca must feel so good that her mommy got a shiny new Case Closed sticker, too. The thread was still open, though, and he clicked on the thread, scrolling all the way to the bottom. Some of the regulars had weighed in after Brett had been arrested—and the press had made public that he’d been posting on CNC as BMoney for years. HE’S NOT ONE OF US, some bitch named MizMaizie wrote in all caps, peppering the post with skull emojis and a GIF of a burly dude pounding his fist into his palm. I hope that guy rots in hell.
Sigh, Brett thought. You couldn’t please everyone, could you?
His gaze drifted to the little message window in the corner. There was no number superimposed over the image, meaning he’d received no new messages—no one knew who JCoin was, and no one cared. He hadn’t weighed in on any cases yet. He was dying to, though. There was a girl in Arkansas who’d been found in a barn, slashed from throat to belly button. There was a set of twins who vanished from their Texas home and cleaned out their parents’ doomsday prepper’s stash of gold bullion in the basement. There was a missing little girl in Phoenix, a murdered college student in New York, a brand-new housewife found dead in her trailer in Michigan and her husband nowhere to be found. Every day, dreadful things rolled onto this site, too many cases, too much work for the cops, deaths and disappearances that got shoved in a closet and forgotten about because there were just too many of them in the world.
Of course he wanted to dive into one of them. And hell, maybe he could be helpful. An insider’s perspective, if you will. But it was kind of lonely to solve cases by yourself. What Brett really wanted was a team.
He opened a new message window and hovered the mouse over the recipient line. Going for it, he typed in TheMighty. Her name autofilled in the space, which meant her handle was still active on the site. Brett felt a little tingle in his bones. That was a good start.
I miss you, pal, he typed. And then, because he was afraid to write anything more that might give him away, he pressed the little blue SEND button. The message disappeared into the ether; Brett imagined it scrambling up, zooming through electronic tunnels, only reshaping once it reached Seneca Frazier’s inbox. It was a pleasure to shut his eyes and fantasize the first moments she read the note. Would she instantly know who it was, or would it take her a moment? Would she be afraid…or maybe a little bit thrilled? And most of all, would she write back?
Brett hoped she would. He really did. The world was much more fun when they were playing the game.
THE AMATEURS TRILOGY has been a fun ride, and I am hugely grateful to those at Alloy Entertainment who helped hammer out this world and the mystery, characters, and much, much more from start to finish, to really make this series shine: my old friends Lanie Davis, Sara Shandler, Josh Bank, Laura Barbeia, and Les Morgenstein.
Kieran Viola, your editorial input really elevated this novel from an entertaining read to something I’m really proud of. Thanks also to the rest of the Freeform group: Mary Mudd in editorial, Whitney Manger in design, Holly Nagel in marketing, and Cassie McGinty, my tireless publicist, for your attention, support, and enthusiasm. And I’m lucky to have Andy McNicol on my side to shepherd this series to a close. I’m so happy to have such a great team.
Also thanks to my father-in-law, Mike Gremba, who has provided a lot of behind-the-scenes police procedure details that I otherwise would have made up (and gotten wrong). Much love, too, to Michael, Kristian, and Henry. And of course Clyde, for eating out of my trash can while I wrote this book.
And finally, thank you, all my readers, for enjoying, commenting, discussing, posting, blogging, Booktubing, Bookstagramming, and messaging me about what you think about this story. Connecting with readers is one of the best parts of this job, and you guys make it all worth it.
SARA SHEPARD is the author of the Amateurs trilogy, as well as the New York Times best-selling series Pretty Little Liars and The Lying Game. Her duology The Perfectionists is now a TV show on Freeform. She graduated from NYU and has an MFA from Brooklyn College. Visit her online @sarabooks on Twitter and Snapchat, and @saracshepard on Instagram.