Page 69 of Accidental Murder
After browsing the entire site, Kayla needed a breather. She opened Facebook and, this time, logged on to her personal account. As a matter of habit, she clicked the messaging icon. To her surprise, she had one hundred and fifty-two messages. She hadn’t been inspired to clean out her box since Ashley died, plus she’d been worried the police would figure out her identity if she did. Now, she tossed caution to the wind. Vital information might exist in those messages. There might even be one from Eve.
But there wasn’t.
Kayla spied a message from Jacob. It had come in around seven o’clock the night Ashley died. She opened it:Kayla, we need to talk.Tuesday, after she’d serviced the computer at GLU, he’d told her he’d encountered a glitch on his home computer. She’d told him she would fix it, but she hadn’t because . . . because life had come at her fast.
She keyed in a reply:about what?
His response appeared instantly, meaning he was online:who are you?
At the same time, a message appeared from Sara Simmons’s account:Knock, knock. Who’s there?
Kayla gawked at it. She couldn’t imagine Taylor Simmons being so coy. The message must have been sent by Sara’s daughter, Cici.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The collarof Fitz’s polo shirt was drenched. Moisture ran down his chest and gathered at the waist beneath his belt. With Ashley on the run, he was feeling the pressure of time. If she botched up his plan . . .
No. That would not happen.
“Any luck?” he asked the computer hacker who was focused on the computer in Fitz’s office at Bledsoe.
“Nope. It’s early.”
Fitz cursed. He could not abide failure. But he wouldn’t let his frustration show. Unrest and disappointment had been drummed out of him years ago the day he cried at his brother’s gravesite. Their father, in typical contemptible fashion, slapped him hard.Never reveal yourself like that in public again.
That single event had molded Fitz’s personality more than any other. Years passed with him living in shutdown mode. His father would talk. Fitz would grunt a response. Miserable high school athletics, with more time spent sitting on the bench than actually participating, did nothing to release the pent-up frustration. Only money, with its non-emotional perfection, brought the peace he sought. Not his current career. Not people or things. Money became his god. Thanks to his high-paying career, when he’d made enough to buy out his father’s flagging business and kick his father to the curb, he had felt sheer, unadulterated joy. After that, the most blissful event he experienced in his life was taking up his brother’s dream—preventing weakness by infusing strength.
GDDS,his project at Bledsoe, would reap success soon. In short order, it would earn world recognition. However, with Ashley Macintyre at large, the program was in jeopardy. If Sara had told Kayla about the project and Kayla had clued in her sister, then Ashley was a liability. Had Fitz underestimated her? Her ability to elude his men at the Hyatt Hotel screamed of inventiveness. Not to mention, Ashley seemed to be heading up her own investigation. Troy said she’d been running a search on her computer before dashing from her townhouse. Could she be as deft with the computer as her sister? In her haste to exit, she’d left the laptop, but Troy, the misanthrope, hadn’t thought to take it. His failure to capture Ashley should have been reason enough for dismissal, but when SFPD’s IT expert didn’t unearth results from the seized computer, Fitz let it slide. For now.
However, if Ashley was as resourceful as Fitz was coming to believe, she would find another way to complete her search. When she did, he intended to pinpoint her location.
“Anything?” he asked the hacker.
The kid, who reeked of pizza with onions, sat hunched over the keyboard, his fingers whizzing across the keys. Didn’t teens bathe anymore? It wasn’t like they didn’t have expendable cash to pay their water bills. Last year the government had paid this particular teen one hundred thousand dollars to find out who was breaking into its computers. When Fitz offered a salary increase, the kid dumped the government’s plum job in a nanosecond.
“Yes, Sir, we have port activity.”
“By whom?”
“Jacob Feinstein and Taylor Simmons.”
Fitz grinned.Talk about a surprise.
“Ashley is using her sister’s account.” The hacker started typing again.
“What are you doing?”
“Pinpointing where she’s using Wi-Fi.” A second later he lifted his fingers off the keyboard. “She’s at Happy Times 24-hour Diner.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Kayla weighedthe Facebookmessages on the computer screen. Respond to Jacob? Replay to Cici?
As before, Jacob typed, in lowercase letters:not funny whos using kaylas account?
An event poster on a billboard Kayla saw on the way to the motel came to mind. She keyed in:let’s meet ski show cow palace in an hour.
Jacob responded:who r u?
