Free A Game of Murder by Elise M. Stone Page B

into its black depths to drown. She found herself reliving the news of Karl’s passing, the long trip back to New York for his funeral, the grief of losing both father and brother to too-early deaths.
    She fought off the anguish, squeezed back the tears, inflated her lungs to push the weight which threatened to smother her off of her chest.
    If Mira hadn’t so clearly been murdered, Faith might have suspected suicide as the cause of her death. She understood now what made the game so controversial. By no means a traditional text adventure, it could be seen as breaking new ground. Or it could be seen as female emotional angst. Adam probably saw the game the first way, Derek and friends the second.
    Did Cathy, by all appearances Mira’s best friend, know how Mira felt? Had she suggested therapy?
    Faith made another trip to the kitchen and grabbed a handful of cookies. She needed fortification before taking the next step. Seated at her computer again, she returned to the search page and clicked on one of the forum links. She took a bite of cookie while the page loaded.
    CRITIC TRADES SEX FOR GOOD REVIEW screamed across the top of the screen. A tirade filled with accusations that Mira had slept with Adam in exchange for a rave review of her game followed. According to the post, he hadn’t evaluated the game itself, but his experience in bed with the designer.
    Faith swallowed the remaining bit of oatmeal cookie left in a mouth suddenly gone dry. She’d lived long enough to know work was not always judged on its merits, had herself been the victim of an unfair evaluation of her work because of favoritism, but never had she seen such vitriol used in the process.
    If the original post was bad, the responses were worse. The vocabulary consisted primarily of curse words, many of them sexual references. The further into the thread Faith got, the worse things became, threatening rape and injury to a woman who dared to break the mold of what these troglodytes considered a “real” game. Several posts threatened death, either by infecting Mira with an STD or by overt violence. The cookie churned in Faith’s stomach.
    She got off that site and clicked on the second link. And felt like she’d stepped into the Twilight Zone.
    This thread grew even more vituperative, not only suggesting doing harm to Mira, but also advocating doxxing her. This must be the one Lorna told her about. One of the posters had responded less than an hour later with Mira’s home address and phone number. Links that purportedly led to naked photographs of her came next. Faith didn’t click on them to verify whether they delivered what they promised.
    Upset by the postings, she’d clenched the hand holding the cookies so tightly the last one turned into crumbs. She leaned forward and unclenched her fist, letting the crumbs drop into the wastebasket beside her desk.
    A bass drum pounded in her head. Where did that kind of hate come from? How could so many people harbor so much anger about something that was supposed to be fun?
    The list of suspects had grown infinitely longer.
    No, it hadn’t, she corrected herself. A killer still needed motive, means, and opportunity. While the number of gamers with an expressed desire to kill Mira had increased, only one of the select few at the meeting could have poisoned her salad. But which one?

CHAPTER EIGHT

    John wrestled the steering wheel of his truck, trying to keep it centered in the ruts of the dirt road that led out to his property in the desert east of town. Not always successfully. The ride was hardly smooth even when he was successful, as evidenced by the sudden drop the truck took when the front end plummeted off a rock that suddenly appeared under the right front tire.
    “Ouch!” Faith rubbed the back of her head. “I thought it was called a headrest, not a head basher.”
    John didn’t dare turn his eyes from the road to see if she was serious or joking. He needed them riveted on the dirt track, his