A 16-year-old romantic, looking for comfort and kinship online, meets an older woman who shares his love of role-playing video games.

He doesn't fit in at school, she's disenchanted with her marriage.

They connect through World of Warcraft, in the fantasy world of Azeroth.

For the next year, as their Internet courtship goes on, he's looking for a simpatico soulmate; she's looking for, what? Escape?

Their role-playing romances blur into reality when the woman flies across the continent to meet the boy, who, both enthralled and defiant, disobeys his parents and runs off with his elder admirer for a romantic rendezvous.

On one hand, it's the stuff of schoolboy fantasy.

But for the family of Andrew Kane, the Barrie teen who ran away on a two-day sojourn with a 42-year-old Texas woman, it was a living nightmare.

"I don't know how to explain it to you, but perhaps this will show you not only the commitment we have to each other, but also that your fears of her are ill-found," Andrew wrote to his mother in a letter left behind in the boy's bedroom.

Heartfelt and earnest, the letter acknowledges his mother's fears and pleads for understanding.

"This letter tells me he's concerned that I'm going to be worried," said Marlene Kane, the boy's mother.

She found the note shortly after hearing the front door of the family home close around 1:50 a.m. Wednesday. She ran, frantic, shouting her son's name up and down the dark and empty streets.

Barrie police asked for the public's help to locate the teen, who was believed to be with a woman named Lauri Price, a married, mother of four from Houston, Tex.

They alleged Price rented a gold 2009 Toyota Corolla from Pearson airport on Monday and drove to Barrie to meet the boy the next day.

The pair were located Thursday at an Orillia movie theatre.

"She was under the impression he was 20," said Barrie Police Sgt. Robert McLeod, adding that Andrew apparently lied about his age and Price only became aware of it after being informed by police.

Both Andrew and Price were cooperative McLeod said, and no charges will be laid in the case.

Kane, a stay-at-home mom who, at 43, is a year older than the woman with whom her son was linked, sounded exhausted and desperate Thursday afternoon, a few hours before Andrew was found.

She said she became aware of the online relationship in September 2008 after reading chat logs.

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"We've talked to Andrew about it many, many times and discussed the dangers of Internet relationships," she said. "We got him into counselling, but he said she was his soulmate."

Kane said she and her husband, Gerard, did everything they could to discourage the relationship, but nothing worked.

Tuesday evening, around 5 p.m., Kane said Andrew asked her and his father to drive him to Midland – about 55 kilometres north of Barrie – to meet Price, who he said had travelled from Houston to see him.

"He didn't try to hide it at all," his mother said, adding she kept open lines of communication with him.

It's not a crime for a 16-year-old to have a relationship with a 42-year-old, "but the circumstances are certainly unsavoury, at least from a moral standpoint," said Sgt. Robert Allan, of the Barrie Police.

Price apparently has a history of online relationships.

Brian Stewart, of New York, said he had an online relationship with her over the same Warcraft game in 2008, but never met her in person.

"She was very sexual, emotional and `clingy' during our months of in-game contact," Stewart wrote in an email to the Star.

Attempts to reach Price were unsuccessful.

With files from Gail Swainson and Tamara Baluja