Page 76 of Guess Again
“It’s ten o’clock on a Monday night, Blake. What do you think’s up?”
Lindsay smiled and raised her eyebrows.
“It’s a bad idea, Lindsay.”
“We’re grown adults. We’re allowed to make bad decisions.”
Blake said nothing as Lindsay stood and placed her glass on the coffee table. She wore a sleeveless button down shirt, the top two buttons unclasped. She took the third in her fingers and opened it, exposing her cleavage and revealing that she was not wearing a bra.
Blake squirmed in his chair. Lindsay knew he was not going to put up a fight tonight. She walked closer and climbed onto his lap, straddling him.
“Why are we fighting this?” she asked.
Her lips were close to his.
“Why don’t we just do what we’ve wanted to do all summer?”
Of course, Lindsay knew the reason why Blake had refused to sleep with her earlier in the summer. It was because he had started seeing another woman. But Portia Vail was out of the picture for the time being, and she knew Blake was going on five weeks without sex. It was likely a record for the man.
She pressed her lips to his and their mouths opened. The glass of whiskey fell from his hand and hit the ground just as Lindsay felt his hands grab the back of her thighs and slide up her shorts. This was going to be easier than she imagined.
Blake stood from the chair and lifted her as she wrapped her legs around his waist. They kissed all the way to the bedroom, where he laid her on the bed and fell on top of her. Lindsay quickly changed positions so that she was on top. She would be in control this time, taking back what he had stolen years before.
CHAPTER 78
Cherryview, Wisconsin Monday, August 4, 2025
ETHAN WATCHED OVERCHRISTIAN’S SHOULDER AS THE TECH GURUtyped at a mindboggling pace while three computer monitors blinked and registered white code against a black background.
“Ah, I see,” Christian whispered as he raced through the computer code. “That’s sort of clever, but not terribly sophisticated. Definitely something learned at a university and not in the real world. There’s a workaround . . . that. I. Think . . .”
His fingers were like lightning strikes against the keyboard and Ethan would not have believed the violence could possibly produce anything intelligible but for the fact that the computer responded every time Christian’s fingers touched the keys
“Yep, here we go! Voilà!”
Christian pushed his hands against the desk and sent himself wheeling away on his chair again.
“All yours, big boy.”
Ethan pulled a chair over and sat in front of the computer.
“What am I looking at?”
Now it was Christian who was standing over Ethan’s shoulder. He pointed at the screen.
“These are all of Dr. Larkin’s consults in the last three months. They’re listed by patient number and used to be encrypted and protected, but all you have to do now is click on the link and it’ll show you everything you need to know. Do you have the date of the anonymous confession?”
“July thirtieth,” Ethan said, scrolling down until he arrived at the correct date. There were several consultations listed that day. Ethan clicked on the ID number of the final patient of the day. Immediately, white letters appeared against the black background.
Blake Jaxson Cordis
DOB: September 4, 1993
IP: 192.458.177.296
Ethan shook his head.
“What’s wrong?” Christian asked.
