She wasn’t surprised to see Maia’s name repeatedly listed under missed calls. While Gina couldn’t let herself be sidetracked from work or she’d lose focus, Maia seemed to thrive on multitasking. She called or texted while she was doing other things, sharing snippets of her life and scraps of newly forming ideas with Gina even though she knew answers wouldn’t come until Gina’s allotted rest time. For all of her thousands of followers and acquaintances across the social media world, Maia was one of the very few who shared a more personal relationship with Gina. The fact that Maia lived in Nashville and they had never met in person didn’t change the fierce way Gina loved her friend.

  Instead of listening to Maia’s voice mails or reading the texts, Gina sent a request to videochat, hoping Maia was at a good enough stopping point in one of her many projects to be able to talk. Sure enough, her image popped onto Gina’s screen almost immediately.

  Gina had felt buoyant, prepared to share whatever good news was happening on her sites with her friend, but she felt her smile fade in an instant. Maia looked like her normal workday self, with expert makeup and her tightly curled hair coiled into perfect ringlets, but Gina knew from her tense expression that something was wrong and launched into questions, forgoing any traditional greetings and pushing aside her curiosity about her own online situation.

  “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

  Maia shook her head slightly. “I’m fine. But you haven’t checked any of your socials yet, have you.”

  The latter was spoken as a statement of fact, not a question, and Gina felt her stomach clench with tension. Maia was okay, but somehow Gina herself wasn’t. She had been certain the volume of alerts from her phone was a positive signal—numbers were good, weren’t they? The higher the better. She pulled her laptop in front of her again and opened YouTube to her most recent video. A cursory glance showed her subscriber number holding steady. So far, so good. “No, I haven’t. I just posted some photos, and I was going to respond to comments after lunch. What is…oh, fuck.”

  “Yep,” Maia agreed. “Fuck is the right word.”

  Gina lowered her phone while she blinked through a haze of disbelief and read the comments raging across the page. She was vaguely aware that Maia probably had an angled view of her fridge now, but she felt too weak to continue holding the phone at face level.

  She was accustomed to rude comments by now—no one who was in the social media spotlight could escape them—but she’d never experienced anything like the venom in these posts. Even on a good day, her face, her hair, her voice, all were considered fair game by a small minority of the followers who watched her videos or saw her posts and pictures. Those comments were sometimes hurtful, sometimes too ridiculous to merit more than a roll of the eyes, but all were survivable. Was this survivable?

  Her address, her license plate and make and color of her car, a list of places where she did her banking and shopping. Her social security number. The public display of those personal details was bad enough, but the inciting statements were so much worse. Threats to hurt her, burn down her house, and more were spelled out in graphic detail. Disbelief warred with a tremor of primal fear, and the time when she had been concerned about the placement of feathers or the layout of a pretty coffee tray seemed so far away as to belong to a different lifetime, not a mere five minutes before.

  “What do I…How can I…” Gina’s voice faded away, as she was unable to articulate her questions, let alone decide on a course of action. She was familiar with doxing, of course, but only in an abstract way. As something that happened to other people, to bigger names, but not as something that would ever happen to her. Her fingers, usually so confident and comfortable as they connected her to her online world, hovered over the keyboard with uncertainty.

  “Don’t just delete them,” Maia’s voice warned, as if anticipating Gina’s instinct to make the comments disappear.

  Gina lifted the phone again and took some comfort from Maia’s sympathetic expression. “I can’t leave them,” she argued.

  Maia shook her head. “Remove the comments from view but take screenshots and report this. It’s all on Instagram and Unify, too. Just don’t get rid of any evidence, just in case.”

  “In case what?” Gina asked, cringing at the note of terror she heard in her voice. “In case someone really tries to…do any of those horrible things to me?”

  “Just be smart. Keep the evidence and clean up your accounts. Close the threads so no one else can post comments until you’re ready for them.”

  Gina sat still, numbed by the thought of how many accounts she had that might be compromised. How many tendrils of herself she had spread across the internet that might have been infected. Wouldn’t it be better to quit and delete her accounts? Find something else to do, some other way to make a living. But what could possibly replace this world she had worked so hard to build?

  “Gina, stop,” Maia said, as if aware of the thoughts rampaging through Gina’s mind. “Put me down on the table and get this done. I’ll be right here with you the whole time.”

  Gina managed a brief nod, and then she set her phone down and got to work. With Maia calling out encouragement and advice, Gina steadily slogged through the violent words on her screen, capturing every hateful comment, submitting detailed formal reports to each site’s admin hosts, and changing her settings to keep new posts from appearing while she struggled to remove the ones already there. As her mind started to clear, she was able to recognize the initial doxer’s screenname as someone she had conversed with briefly in the comments section of an earlier video. One of the dozens of followers who thought they knew her well enough to want to meet in person, hinting at a relationship she knew was never going to happen. She had responded in what she believed was a friendly way, clearly setting a boundary around her private life, but apparently this person had been more offended than she would have thought possible by her refusal. She searched for the original interaction and added it to her growing list of screenshots.

  With each keystroke, she felt a sliver of her fear chip away and get replaced by a cold shard of anger. By the time she had finished, when neither she nor Maia could find any more threats to eradicate, Gina felt as if her formerly terrorized self had been replaced cell by cell. She shook out her fingers and clenched her hands into tight fists, not sure if the tingling sensation she felt was due to her furious typing or the fury coursing through her.

  The phone trembled in her hand when she picked it up so she and Maia could see each other again. She braced her other hand against her wrist to keep the cell’s camera steady.

  “Why would someone do this to me?” Gina asked. “I live in a tiny apartment and write about books and gardens and how to paint old bookshelves. Having me turn down a date can’t be such a big deal—it’s not like I’m a celebrity.”

  “Well, you are, in a way, although that doesn’t give anyone the right to dox you. This person probably thought they meant something to you and got angry when you made it clear you didn’t feel the same way. Unfortunately, the anonymity of the internet gives cowards the ability to say things they’d never say in person.”

  “So you don’t think I need to overreact?” Gina asked, sagging in her chair with relief. She had initially been ready to run away, but she couldn’t let one cruel person take away the unconventional career she had worked hard to develop. The internet was her home, maybe even more than this apartment. It was the only place where she felt safe and free to express herself without the awkwardness she felt when she came out from behind the computer screen. Where she had felt safe, she amended internally. “I’ll be more careful from now on and check my comments all the time. I can set up the comments so I can review them before—”

  “Stop,” Maia said. “I said the person probably wouldn’t follow through on their threats, not that they definitely wouldn’t. Or that another person might not read what they posted and try to hurt you. You need to take this seriously and get somewhere safe. Out of the city.”

  “Leave my home?” Gina asked, stunned by the vehemence in Maia’s voice. She wasn’t sure which would be worse, having to leave Seattle and the apartment she adored or erasing her online presence. Both were too tied to who she was to be easily severed from her life.

  “Kirk and I talked about it, and we’d like to have you come here and stay with us for a while. Spend as long as you want with us and look for a place of your own if you decide to stay in Tennessee. You’d love Nashville.”

  Gina sat in stunned silence as Maia enumerated the many great qualities and attractions available in Nashville. Her speech had a slightly rehearsed sound to it, and Gina guessed she had been working on it all morning while she tried in vain to reach Gina. The idea tempted her more than it should—an entire unknown city to explore, with plenty of opportunities for fresh photo stories and video ideas. A friend nearby to help her bear this awful and unexpected burden of hate that had been dropped on her shoulders. Her mind ventured a few yards down the path of planning a How to Make a New City Your Own blog before she shook her head and returned to reality. She would just be exposing herself, giving away her new location and potentially putting not only herself at risk again, but Maia and her husband, too.

  “No,” she said, interrupting Maia’s flowery description of the Nashville music scene that could have been made into a tourist brochure. “I’m not letting one hateful person destroy my life, and I’m not bringing these threats to your doorstep. I’ll be careful, but I’ll deal with this on my own and not put anyone else in danger.”

  Maia opened her mouth, looking prepared to argue, but Gina’s resolution must have shown on her face. Maia visibly sighed. “You’ll at least go to the police?”

  Gina nodded. “Yes, of course. I’ll—”

  A shriek of laughter interrupted her, making her already tense body startle before she felt a shudder of relief when she recognized the sound. It was only Tara, her landlord’s daughter, playing in the yard. The fleeting and acute sensations of being frightened and then relieved were replaced by a heavy sense of acceptance that Gina felt would never go away. Maia was right—she had to go. If she stayed here, in this home where she had felt more creativity and freedom and happiness than she ever had in her life, then she might be leading her internet abusers directly to Tara and her family. Gina couldn’t bear it if anyone so much as threw an egg at the house, let alone hurt any of the people inside it. This might be her fight, but she wouldn’t be so selfish as to put anyone else in danger.

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” Maia said, apparently able to read the expressions on Gina’s face as she experienced each one in turn. “What are you going to do?”

  Gina’s mind was accustomed to making plans, and it took over even now, when most of her wanted to curl up and hide from the world. Now, though, instead of planning exciting outings for her blog posts or a way she could convert her daily projects into viral how-to videos, she was organizing her escape. Her way out of the life in which she desperately wanted to stay.

  “Talk to the Andersons first,” she said, ticking the boxes on her mental checklist and starting with the family who had opened their home to her. “Then the police.”

  Then what? Gina sat on the phone for another hour with Maia, going over her options and formulating a graceless exit from her comfortable world. She’d have to revisit every social media site and platform yet again, leaving posts that made it clear she had moved out of her home and city. Her departure had to be as public as possible, but her destination couldn’t be. She’d make arrangements to move her belongings into storage and herself into a cheap hotel until she could find an interim place to live—somewhere out of the way and private that she could use as a temporary base until she felt ready to establish herself somewhere permanent again.

  Part of Gina’s calculations included her meager savings account. She’d have to get her sites going again as soon as possible because she couldn’t afford to live any other way. She couldn’t go far from this city, where she had sponsors and connections she had worked so hard to develop because she relied on them for a lot of her income. The only thing she knew with certainty as her world crumbled around her was that she was never going back to her old home in eastern Washington or anyplace like it, no matter what.

  Chapter Two

  A chorus of songbirds serenaded Wren Lindley as she tackled her morning chores. Only a month earlier, she had trundled the morning feed carts from paddock to paddock in the dark, following the gravel paths that were ingrained in her muscle memory as easily as if they were lit by spotlights. Now, even though the early morning air was still chilly enough to require a thick sweater, the late March sun was casting a gray light. Soon it would be high enough in the sky to bring color to Wren’s farm, as well as brightness. The washed-out ground of the pastures would become a lush carpet of brilliant emerald grass, and the dark and spiny branches of the apple trees that lined the outdoor arena would reveal the new growth of soft, mint-colored leaves and tightly budded pink and white blossoms.

  For this magical hour, though, Wren enjoyed the blurred dullness of the world around her because it made her feel isolated—alone in the quiet of predawn when life was still enough for the chirps of birds and gentle munching of the horses to fill the space. She pushed one cart, which was filled with portioned-out buckets of grain and supplements, and pulled the second—saving herself an extra trip—that was piled high with flakes of hay. Low nickers greeted her as she approached each pen, and contented crunching followed her after she doled out the feed and moved on to the next horse. Her two dogs gamboled along the path ahead of her, the new beagle puppy trying valiantly to keep up with the taller, more agile Great Pyrenees as he flitted, ghostlike, through the shadows.

  By the time Wren got back to the barn with her empty carts, the day had brightened considerably. The sky overhead was blue and clear, but Wren could read the low-lying clouds over Liberty Bay well enough to expect rain by afternoon. She figured the sunny weather would last long enough for her to ride—three training horses, plus her own gelding—and teach the single lesson she had on the day’s schedule. She fed the dogs and cleaned stalls while the horses finished eating and digesting their breakfasts, and then she brought her horse Sea Foam into the grooming stall.

  She took her time getting ready, brushing mud and dust from the gray horse’s coat until the near-perfect circles of his dapples were visible again. She brushed his thick tail gently, painstakingly picking out tangles by hand to keep from pulling any hairs loose. He enjoyed rolling in the plentiful spring mud every chance he got, making the task of keeping him clean a constant work in progress. Wren didn’t mind. If the business of running the stable didn’t get in the way, she would happily spend most of her waking hours fussing around her horse.

  She wrapped his legs in protective black bandages and then put a clean white pad and her black leather dressage saddle on his back. She buckled on a matching black bridle with a bit she had polished to a bright shine after her last ride. Wren stepped back and checked to make sure everything was in place. Clean, simple, elegant. She smiled as she put on her gloves and helmet. Putting this much effort into her horse’s turnout for a routine schooling session might seem like overkill to some riders, but to Wren this ritual of getting ready was as much part of her riding as anything she did while on the horse. Every small step in her routine connected her to the long chain of riders and trainers who had come before her.

  Wren climbed on the mounting block and swung into the saddle. If early morning feeding time was her favorite part of the day, then this first moment of contact with the saddle and horse was definitely her second favorite. She walked Foam down a gentle slope and into the arena. Her dogs trailed behind, lying down on the grassy hillside to keep guard while she rode.

  The thick tanbark footing muffled the sound of the gelding’s hooves as he and Wren walked and trotted around the outdoor arena. A low white railing, only a few inches off the ground, delineated the regulation-sized twenty-by-sixty meter rectangle, and letters were placed at intervals along the four sides. Wren moved her horse from letter to letter, making circles and serpentines until he felt supple and balanced. A slight shift of her weight brought him from a canter to a walk, and she reached forward to pet and praise him as he stretched his neck, dropping his nose low to the ground as he relaxed after the workout. Wren kept her reins long and loose as he cooled out at a walk, but her mind stayed active, analyzing the session and planning tomorrow’s ride. Their first competition of the season was coming up soon, and Wren wanted him to be ready for the move up to the Intermediate levels.

  The next three horses she rode were far below Foam’s level, but Wren put the same amount of effort into grooming and schooling them as she had with her own horse, as if they were about to enter an Olympic-level show ring. They would be competing at the upcoming competition, as well, with two of Wren’s junior riders and one of her adult students.

  Wren was just finishing her last ride on Jasper when the dogs leaped to their feet and ran toward the parking lot at the front of the barn, the deep barks of Grover, the Pyrenees, accented by the shriller yips of the pursuing beagle. Her horse shied at the sudden noise, and Wren soothed him with a quiet voice, pushing down her own irritation at the interruption. The visitor was most likely Dianna, Wren’s friend and the student she was expecting for a lesson, and Wren was always glad to see her. Still, she found the transition jarring as she had to move from the privacy of her morning to the busier, more public, afternoon.