His real name was neither Aidan, nor Marcus, nor Ryan, nor Devon. He was twenty-six, not nineteen. He had done this to at least eleven young people that the police knew of — drained accounts, ruined credit, disappeared. Several of his victims were still untangling the damage years later. One had dropped out of school over it.
He’d chosen Tyler the way he chose all of them: a sweet, trusting, newly-out kid, away from home for the first time, hungry to be loved and a little naive about how the world could use that.
The officers were, I have to say, kind about the basement.
“Ma’am,” one of them told me quietly, “locking him down there wasn’t exactly by the book. But you recognized an active fugitive, you kept everyone safe, you called us immediately, and you didn’t touch him. Between us? Good instincts. A lot of parents would’ve second-guessed themselves right out of protecting their kid.”
