Page 111 of Sexting the Boss
By midday, I’m sick of sitting still, and I’m sick of waiting for the next hit to come from an angle I didn’t predict. I do the one thing I avoided for months because it felt like opening a door in a room I’d kept sealed on purpose.
I log into LinkedIn.
My profile looks the same, and my life doesn’t. I scan the notifications and see three profile views I don’t recognize, all with thin accounts, barely-there work histories, and photos that look like they came from the same image pool.
I don’t pretend that’s normal.
I turn the screen toward Ethan. “These.”
He steps in behind me, and he doesn’t touch me, but his presence fills the space anyway. He reads, then his gaze lifts, and the calm in his face doesn’t change, but the focus does.
“Don’t click anything,” he says.
“I wasn’t going to,” I reply.
He nods once and makes the call.
“Harrison,” he says when the line picks up, “run three LinkedIn accounts for open-source indicators, and I want pattern analysis, not guesses.”
Harrison answers on the first ring. “Understood.”
Ethan ends the call and looks at me. “If they’re real people, they’ll have a footprint. If they’re not, they’ll share habits.”
“Habits like what?” I hate that my stomach is already tight.
“Same sign-up window,” he says. “Same image sources. Same posting cadence. Same clusters of engagement. It’s hard to fake a person perfectly without copying something.”
My phone buzzes before I can answer, and my heart kicks hard for no good reason, because my body hasn’t accepted that danger doesn’t get a free seat at every table anymore.
It’s a message request on Instagram from an old college friend I haven’t spoken to in six years.
hey stranger! guess who’s in town? let’s grab a drink. :)
I stare at it then hand the phone to Ethan without speaking.
He reads it once, then twice, then looks up at me. “That’s not your friend.”
“It’s not,” I agree, and my throat feels dry.
“But it’s a hand she’s using.” His voice stays flat like he’s talking through a checklist.
I type one word back.
When?
The reply comes fast, which is the first tell, because my actual college friend never responded quickly unless it involved a group chat and four people shouting over each other.
Tonight. Your pick. :)
Ethan’s phone buzzes a second later, and he doesn’t even glance down before he says, “Harrison just linked two of those profile views to the same burner contact pool we flagged after the deli, and the third is tied to a recently created email that’s been used to set up meetings under other names.”
I swallow. “So it’s Sabrina.”
“It’s an approach,” he corrects. “Sabrina does the approach, because she’s the one who can sit across from you without setting off alarms.”
I let out a short breath. “You think she’s testing me.”
“She is,” Ethan says. “She wants to see if you’ll bite, and she wants to see how alone you are when you do.”
