“We’ve come across this guy before. He preys on lonely women, convinces them to take him home, then drugs and robs them.” The senior constable on the scene held his notebook in front of him, shaking his head in pity. Pity that was directed at me, the ‘lonely’ woman. Could I possibly feel any worse? “It’s been in the news.”

“It has?” I balked. I never was one to pay attention to the news. I preferred Netflix to reality, so I missed it. Ugh.

Alesha played with the gold cross at her neck, sliding it from side to side. “You say he drugs and robs them. Does he ever do anything else?” she asked in a small voice.

“Nothing has been reported.” The officer’s eyes shifted from hers to mine with concern. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Taking a deep breath, I shook my head. The fact he slept with me didn’t necessarily mean anything. Like me, the other women could’ve been keeping that detail to themselves out of embarrassment.

“They had sex,” Alesha squeaked, and I shot her a look that said shut up!

The officer’s brows shot halfway up his forehead. “Consensual?” he directed at me.

“Of course. I would be reporting a rape otherwise.”

“You’d be surprised by the number of women who don’t report sexual assault. He didn’t force himself on you at all?”

“No,” I insisted. “We met at a karaoke club, we talked, we came back here and… we had fun. It was consensual, and I was sober-ish the whole time. Everything was as it should be until I woke up to the empty house.”

“Did he use a condom?”

My cheeks flamed. “Of course! I’m not that stupid.” I felt genuinely offended that he’d ask such a thing.

“Do you remember what he did with that condom?”

“Threw it out when he went to the bathroom?” I shrugged because I honestly had no idea.

Using two fingers, he beckoned another officer over then asked them to check the rubbish in the bathroom.

“This guy never leaves any prints, so it’d help if we could get a DNA sample to see if he’s in the system.”

I nodded my understanding then watched the bathroom door to see if they found anything. The officer stepped out and shook his head.

“It was worth a try.” The senior constable looked at his notebook then sighed. “You said you were sober-ish. Do you remember much about him?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think you could sit down with a sketch artist? We have a very vague description so far. He tends to choose women who’ve had a bit too much to drink, so their memory is always hazy. They report getting home and offering him a drink, then passing out shortly after. It seems he’s changed his MO with you.”

“Because he slept with me? Maybe he was just randy last night,” I offered, laughing a little even though there wasn’t anything funny about the situation. At least he didn’t steal my sense of humour.

“Your detailed description of him could really help our investigation.”

“Of course.” I could recall every inch of that man in vivid detail. My cheeks heated as I thought of the most prominent part of his body. I wasn’t going to have to describe that too, was I?

We organised a tentative time for me to go to the station and work with a sketch artist, and I gave him Alesha’s number since I no longer had a phone of my own.

With a set of keys to my apartment in the thief’s possession, I felt it best to stay at Alesha’s until I got the locks changed. Once there, the rest of the day was spent cancelling my credit cards and phone, dealing with my insurance company and organising a locksmith. There was so much work involved, so much that needed replacing. If I ever decided to take a man home on the first night again, I hoped someone would slap me in the face to knock some sense into me. There was a reason a lot of girls had a three-date rule.

Alesha set a glass tumbler on the table next to me with orange juice in it. “It’s laced with vodka. I thought you could use it.” I’d set myself up at her kitchen table with her laptop and phone so I could work through my to-do list while periodically groaning into my hands.

“Thank you,” I said appreciatively, gulping at the cool alcoholic beverage and closing my eyes. “I just can’t get over it, Leesh. He was… amazing. He said all the right things, did things to my body I never imagined liking. He made me feel special, wanted. But it turned out that all he really wanted was to clean me out.” Draining the glass, I set it back on the table. “They completely maxed out my credit cards. There’s a freeze on my line of credit now, but still, there could be some woman out there already pretending to be me. I hate that I was so easily duped.” I was trying so hard not to cry about it.

She pulled out the chair beside me and sat down, placing her hand in the centre of my back. “He was very convincing, Holland. It could’ve happened to any one of us.”

“But I should’ve known, right? I mean, you saw him. As if a guy like that would ever be truly interested in me.”

“Don’t sell yourself so short. You’re amazing. Anyone who gets to know you for more than five minutes knows that.”

“That’s what he said in his stupid note,” I scoffed, shaking my head and sniffing, my eyes burning with unshed tears.

“He left you a note?” I nodded. “Why didn’t you show the police?”

“Because I flushed it. I was annoyed that he gave me the brush-off in a letter. I hadn’t even seen the empty apartment yet.”

“What did it say?”

“It said that he was sorry, I was amazing, and he wished things were different but this was just what he did. I took it that he regularly fucked women and then left during the night. I didn’t realise he meant that he stole everything they owned.”

“Do you think he felt bad about what he did to you?”

“What? Who cares. He still did it.”

“Yeah, but he slept with you first. The officer said he didn’t do that normally.”

“Don’t romanticise this, Leesh. Maybe the other women were just keeping it a secret?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Either way, what difference does it make? Am I to be so grateful for the awesome sex that I view his taking my stuff as payment for services rendered?”

“I don’t know, was he that good?” Her eyes shone and her mouth twitched on one side. It was never too soon to make a joke about something in Alesha’s world.

“Worth the entire contents of my house?” I closed my eyes and thought about how amazing having him inside me had felt, the way my body had shattered from his touch. “Hmm, if he’d just taken my car… yeah. But I think I’d need a bit more from him to make what he took fair payment.”

“Still, being worth your car, he must’ve had a golden cock.”

“Not golden. Just huge.”

“How huge?”

“Crazy huge.” I showed her with my hands and watched her eyes widen.

“Wow. What was it like?”

“Better than I could’ve imagined. But the memory is just so tainted now.”

“He seemed so genuine,” she mused, pulling a grape out of the fruit bowl in the middle of the table and popping it into her mouth. “What if it wasn’t him? What if he left, and then someone came in and robbed you?”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Besides, you heard the officer. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Robbing desperate women is obviously how he makes a living.”

“You are not desperate.”

“Aren’t I?” I locked eyes with her, daring her to object. We both knew my romantic history. I’d had exactly two boyfriends in my thirty-two years: one while I was at uni that lasted less than six months, and one a few years ago when I’d had some weird on-again off-again relationship with a parent of one of my students that ended rather badly. Apart from that, I’d had a handful of sexual partners that lasted anywhere from one night to a couple of months. Primarily, I was single. Painfully single, and longing.

“Are you really going to try and find him?”

“Yes. I need that hairpin back.”

“Is that the only reason?”

I stared at her for a long time, annoyed that she was suggesting I could have any other motive. “Of course it is.”

“Can’t you let the police do their job? I don’t think this is a good idea. We don’t know if he’s dangerous or not.”

“The police?” I scoffed. “Considering they’ve known about him for a while and they haven’t caught him yet, I’m not holding my breath.”

“Maybe they’ll do better with your description of him?”

“And maybe Brad Pitt broke it off with Angelina because he realised he was meant for me. Honestly, Alesha, I don’t think they’re looking hard enough. You heard the way that officer spoke to me. He made a point of telling me that he preyed on ‘lonely’ women. He was mocking me. They probably think we get what we deserve for being so gullible.”

“He wasn’t mocking you, Holland. He was just stating the facts.”

“Then maybe they’re not looking hard enough. The man is huge. Surely he can’t be too hard to find.”

She sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “Fine. Let’s say you find him. Then what are you going to do?”

“I’ll kick him in that big dick of his, then demand he give me the hairpin back while squeezing his balls so hard he cries like a baby.” I mimed the motion with my hands, imagining him falling to the ground in pain and promising to do anything I wanted to make me stop. He wouldn’t be rocking anyone’s world for a long time once I was done with him.

“And how are you going to get close enough to do that? He could see you and run, or he could overpower you, hurt you. You’re not thinking this through.”

Turning my lips downward, I folded my arms and shrugged. “I could do it.”

“Holland, I’m being serious.”

“So am I. I could do it.”

Pressing her lips together, she released a heavy sigh. “Just consider letting the cops do their job, OK? I don’t want to lose my best friend because she went all Veronica Mars on me.”

“Hey, Ronnie is my girl. She always comes through. And she’s a teenager. I’m a grown woman. I’ve totally got this.” My best friend needed to have more confidence in me.