A Fool To Think

Chapter Twelve

"Ok. So is there anyone else that you can think of that would want to ruin your relationship with Martin?" Danny asked Sam as they sat in her apartment. They had a pizza sitting on her coffee table and were sitting on the floor eating and talking.

Danny had come over to her apartment on this Wednesday evening so that he could gain some more facts about the website since Sam had agreed to let him investigate it. So far, they had just gone over the basic facts that she had already told him about. The clues all pointed to Martin being the one behind it, but something just didn't feel right about this whole thing.

"I don't know…" Sam sighed as she took a drink of her water. "I didn't have many friends, yet alone enemies."

"What about Martin?" Danny questioned. "Is there anyone who would want to sabotage his relationship with you in order to hurt him?"

Sam was quiet for a moment as she thought back to that time. Martin had a lot of friends through the fraternity and also because he was a very outgoing person. He also had dated a lot of women before he met Sam. Any one of them might have wanted to get back at him for dumping her but she doubted that any of them would go to this kind of extreme for payback. Except…there was one woman that stuck out in Sam's mind.

"About a year before Martin and I started dating, he dated someone else that wasn't completely mentally healthy. I think she had bi-polar disorder or something. She wasn't emotionally stable and he mentioned something to me about how she wouldn't leave him alone after he ended things with her. She called him a lot and refused to give up on him no matter how many times he told her that he was done with her."

"Do you have the name of this woman?" Danny asked, getting his pen ready to write down the name.

"Amber. Amber…gosh I can't think of her last name anymore." Sam sighed. "I bet Martin would know what it is though."

"Ok." Danny wrote down Amber's name and then a question mark to signify that he needed to ask Martin for the last name. "Anyone else?"

"Alex Silverman." Sam told Danny. "You might want to look into him too. Alex had a grudge against Martin."

"Why would he have any kind of grudge against Martin? Did Martin steal his girlfriend or something?" Danny joked.

"Actually, it was something like that." Sam replied quietly, picking up another piece of pizza and placing it on her plate. "I'm going to warn you that this is kind of a long story."

"That's ok." Danny assured her. "I like stories."

Sam smiled before continuing to tell Danny the whole story of the night she was attacked by Alex and how she met Martin. "Martin finally convinced me to report Alex to the campus police about a week after it happened. I filed a report and there was an investigation. During the investigation, about twelve other girls came forward and admitted that Alex had done the same thing to them—only they weren't lucky enough to have someone like Martin come to their rescue."

"So this guy had done this to twelve other girls on campus?" Danny was shocked and appalled by Alex's behavior. He would never understand how someone could do that to a woman.

"Yes, and he might have done it to more girls. Who really knows? There were only twelve that spoke up but that doesn't mean that there were others that were too ashamed or scared to come forward." Sam explained.

"So what happened to Alex?" Danny was curious.

"Well first he was kicked out of the fraternity, and then two weeks later he was kicked out of the college. They forbid him from even stepping foot on the campus ever again." Sam told him.

"And Alex blamed Martin for all of this?" Danny guessed.

"Yeah. He did. He was really angry with Martin." She started to recall their last encounter with Alex all those years ago.

Martin and Sam walked along the sidewalk. It was a nice day and they decided to go for a walk. Since their first meeting, they had grown to be really good friends and she couldn't help finding herself wanting to be more than just friends with him. But she didn't know if that's what he would want too.

"I want to ask you something." She told Martin as they were walking. "And I want you to answer honestly. Ok?"

"Ok." Martin agreed. He just hoped this wasn't one of those 'does this pair of jeans make me look fat' questions. There was no good answer to that.

She took a deep breath before laying it all out on the line. "Would you ever consider going on a date with me?"

He was surprised by her question, but in a good way. To be completely honest, he was trying to find the right way to ask her out on a date without seeming like he was trying too hard. He didn't want to seem like he was hitting on her like Alex did. He stopped walking and faced her. "Really? Are you serious?"

"Well, yeah." She was nervous but her question was out there, dangling in the wind. She couldn't take it back now.

"I'd really like to date you." Martin admitted. "I just didn't know if you'd want to."

She couldn't help but smile. "Oh I definitely want to."

"Great." He smiled back at her. "So how about Friday? We could go out to dinner?"

"Sounds good." She couldn't believe her luck. He actually wanted to date her. She was so happy that she felt like kissing him. Without thinking, she leaned in and placed a kiss on his lips.

He was also surprised that she was kissing him, but wasn't about to complain. He reached up and touched her face, gently caressing her cheek as they continued to kiss.

They stayed there on the sidewalk, kissing for a few more moments before she pulled away. "Sorry. Got a little carried away there."

"Don't be sorry." He told her with a grin. "In case you didn't notice, I'm not complaining."

"But still…"

"It's ok." He assured her. "That was an amazing kiss."

"Really?" She grinned.

"Really." He nodded. "We should do that again sometime."

"Maybe we will." She teased him with a wink.

He chuckled and grinned at her. "Why don't we go get some coffee?"

"Sounds good to me." She agreed.

"Good." As they started walking, he found the courage to grab a hold of her hand. He looked to her in order to know if it was ok to her if they held hands and was once again surprised by her. She wrapped her other hand around his arm, holding him close to her. They were enjoying themselves until Alex suddenly appeared in front of them.

"Look at the happy couple." Alex exclaimed, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"What you do you want?" Martin asked defensively, glaring at Alex.

"Well isn't this cute?" Alex sneered. "The two of you out together. Out for a little stroll?"

"What do you want?" Martin asked again, losing his patience with Alex.

"I bet you both are pretty pleased with yourselves. I mean you've managed to run my entire life in less than a month. I'm out of the fraternity and out of school. That's impressive."

"You ruined your own life when you started assaulting women." Martin pointed out.

"I didn't assault them!" Alex yelled. "All of them were willing participants."

"Sam wasn't." Martin told Alex. "She didn't want you."

"But apparently she wants you." Alex scoffed. "Well that's fine. I didn't really want her anyway. But be warned. I don't appreciate the fact that you two have ruined my life. Karma will come back to you and it will make sure that you pay for what you have done to me."

"Did you press criminal charges against Alex for what he did?" Danny asked once Sam was done with her story.

"No. I didn't, but a few of the other girls did." Sam explained. "His father was a lawyer though and managed to get the charges dropped. All he had to do was complete some community service."

"Do you think that it's at all possible that Alex was the one behind the website?" The more Danny heard about this Alex guy, the more he didn't like the guy.

"I don't know." She ran her hands through her hair. "He definitely has the motive. If you had seen his eyes when he was talking to us, you would have seen the hatred he felt for us. But…he didn't have the means to get into my apartment. I don't understand how he could have planted those cameras."

"What about your roommate?" Danny asked.

"Kelly?" Sam asked, confused. "What about her?"

"Do you think that maybe she helped Alex?" Danny wasn't sure what he was saying right now. He was just letting his mind wander and trying to brainstorm possible theories.

"Kelly wouldn't have helped Alex." Sam defended her roommate. "She knew exactly what kind of scum Alex was and wouldn't have helped him. She was my friend."

"What's Kelly's last name?" Danny asked, writing Kelly's name down on the suspects list.

"Why do you want to know?" Sam questioned. "You don't seriously think that Kelly had anything to do with this, do you?"

"It's possible." Danny shrugged. "It's entirely possible that she helped Alex or I could be completely wrong about the whole thing. I'm not sure yet. But I think we should cover all the possibilities here."

"Kelly is not a possibility. Trust me, I lived with her for four years. I think that I know her pretty well." Sam adamantly told her friend.

"Well you also thought that you knew Martin pretty well too but you still think that he was the one responsible for…" he stopped himself before completing that thought, unable to believe that he just said that to her. He hadn't meant to say that and immediately felt bad about it.

She couldn't believe that he was saying that to her. She knew that he didn't believe that Martin was the one who set up the website and she had to admit that there were doubts in her mind too, but still. It was unlike Danny to throw it in her face.

"Sam, I'm sorry. I…"

"Don't worry about it." Sam shrugged. "I think that…"

"Sam, I really am sorry. I didn't mean to…" He felt really bad about what he said to her and hoped that she wasn't mad at him for it.

"Don't worry about it." Sam gave him a small smile in hopes of making him see that she wasn't mad. "Anyway, Kelly's last name was Donaldson. But I think she got married a few years ago and I don't remember what her new last name is."

"Are you still in contact with her?" Danny asked.

"No. We haven't talked to each other in a few years." Sam admitted.

"Ok." He decided to leave this subject and go back to his brainstorming.