Property Of (29 page)

Bo barked out “Pack your bags. We’re leaving tonight,” as Finn headed for Kasey.

I just stood there staring at Dallas and tried to make him say, “She was out of town.”

He didn’t cooperate.

Dad drew mom into a hug, Kevin tried to calm Angela down, and Jake was rocking Kristina while she sobbed, and I just stood there thinking that this was the worst joke Janeane had ever pulled. How dare she put us through this for a laugh?

My laughter mixed with tears silenced the room. Everyone turned and looked at me as I gasped for air, leaning over to catch my breath at the hilarity of this cruel joke. Dallas moved toward me, but I put up my hand to stop him. He, of course, didn’t listen because he had to play his part, you see. Even her mother had been in on it. I couldn’t believe she’d do something so cruel.

When he was in arms reach, he yanked me forward until I fell into his chest. “I’ve got you,” he whispered in my ear as he tightened his hold.

“This is a cruel joke,” I cried out, trying to break away from him, my hands pushing at his chest then lashing out at his face.

“It’s not a joke,” he whispered in my ear as he pinned me to his chest. “I’ve got you and I won’t let go.

“It’s a joke,” I shrieked.

“It’s not a joke,” he lied again holding me tighter, holding me up lest I crumble to the floor.

Shaking as if I’d been set outside in snowstorm without a coat, I stiffened and cried out, “NO!” when three sets of hands pulled me reluctantly away from Dallas. Looking up, I found Angela, Kasey, and Kristina with matching expressions of devastation. I shook my head no, but they ignored my denial. They pulled me toward them until we’d wrapped our arms around each other and our heads were pressed together. With deep shudders and broken cries of anguish, the four of us held on to what was left of our sisterhood of friends.

***

Life is short, people say. Live each day likes it’s your last. Those who are young don’t understand the meaning of those words because their whole life is in front of them, their dreams yet to be realized. Those who are old or aging quickly understand it well, for in a blink of an eye their best years are behind them. Those who are dying from some disease that ravages their bodies, shortening what should have been long and fruitful lives, understand those words with every breath they struggle to take. And some, unfortunately, understand it all too well when a heinous monster takes what doesn’t belong to him, ending the life of someone close to them who never hurt a single soul in her entire life.

These were the thoughts running through my head while I sat in an interrogation room with Angela, Kasey, and Kristina. If I had a pen and paper in hand, I’d be furiously writing down my thoughts, my feelings, and the anger that boiled inside of me. Once the shock had worn off, the anger came, and all we could think about was how to find this bastard— this devil who’d stripped us bare and ended the life of someone we loved.

Bo had tried to whisk me off to Oslo, but there was no way in hell I was leaving. I owed it to Janeane to help hunt down this monster,
we
owed it to Toni and Melissa as well because clearly their lives ended because of something one of the five of us knew or did. Therefore, after the tears had stopped for a moment we turned to Dallas and said, “How can we help.”

“Start at the beginning,” agent Parker asked as he opened a file and pulled out a pen. “You were at Gypsy’s having coffee when Miss Webster came in.”

“Right, I worked with Melissa,” Angela replied.

“So she came over to say hello, correct?”

“Right,” we all agreed.

“Was there anyone who seemed like they were watching you, watching her?”

I thought hard before answering, but couldn’t recall a single person so I shook my head along with the girls.

“Did she sit down with you or was it a brief encounter?”

“She sat down,” Kristina jumped in.

“How long before you left?’

“Maybe twenty minutes, we were all on our lunch hour,” Angela explained.

Tapping his pen against his paper, Parker took in the four of us and sighed. He leaned back into his chair; one arm slung over the back, casual, relaxed, just a friend having a conversation. But his green eyes were working overtime, taking in our posture, our expressions. He was reading our body language while he looked for telltale signs that we were lying or holding something back that could be important. I knew this because I was a people watcher as well. I studied those around me because I tried to write human nature as authentically as I could.

“What did you discuss?” he threw out before leaning forward and writing something in the file.

I looked and Angela, trying to remember, then over at Kasey as she also tried to recall.

“We were discussing your book,” Kristina finally jumped in.

“That’s right. You’d just come up with the title and we were telling her about the plot,” Angela mumbled.

“And that Dark Prince guy, remember? Wasn’t that the day we all rushed over because he’d sent a new message and we didn’t know how to respond?”

“Right, Janeane called me and I was with Kasey griping about . . .”

“Griping about?” Parker asked quickly, fully alerted to my pause.

Jesus, me and my big mouth.

Looking at the girls, I sighed. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter anymore. This information wouldn’t help catch the killer, but I doubted he would move on until I told him. Therefore, I leaned in, hoping I could keep this between him and me. “I was griping about Dallas because I thought he was married and he’d flirted with me,” I whispered.

“So you were griping and then what happened?” Parker asked with a grin pulling at his lips. When he looked over my shoulder at the two-way mirror, I knew Dallas was behind the glass listening.

“We went to Gypsy’s to wait for the girls to arrive, then Janeane read the message he’d sent.”

“And this, what did you call him? Prince?”

“Dark Prince,” Angela explained. “Nicola is writing a book and we were online looking for catfish to interact with.”

“So this Dark Prince was a catfish?”

“No,” I shook my head, “he’s a dominant we interacted with on Sub Seeking Dom. We’d messaged with him the night before, but he was too demanding for our research, so we cut him loose.”

“Demanding how?”

I looked at my friends with wide eyes, then took a deep breath and explained how we’d made up a fake woman to attract men of a certain type and how we’d pretended to be a submissive looking for a Dom. We told Parker about the request he’d made and that Janeane had stripped down to her bra so we could send him a picture.

“So you severed ties with him because he demanded more than you were willing to give?”

“That’s right. He wanted Taryn, that’s the name we’d given the fake woman, to, um, masturbate for him, and take a picture.”

Parker stopped writing when I replied, and sat back in his chair. He was fascinating to watch when the wheels started turning. You could see him assimilating the information we’d just given him in the blank stare he directed over our shoulders.

“Give me your screen name and password for the account,” Parker asked suddenly his face no longer blank, the wheels spinning rapidly behind his eyes.

I looked at the girls expecting one of them to answer, but we all looked back at each other.

“Janeane set up the account she never gave us the passwords,” Kasey explained.

“Did Janeane communicate with this man again?” he asked swiftly.

“Not that I know of, but we only plotted the book at Gypsy’s. She wouldn’t have had any reason to talk to him again. In fact, we haven’t talked about the book since last week Friday.”

Parker’s eyes shot to the two-way mirror for an instant before he leaned in and with a deadly calm, asked, “Let me get this straight, Janeane signed up for the account, communicated with this man and on the day you broke ties with him, Melissa was killed and now Janeane is dead. Tell me ladies,” Parker asked sharply holding each of our eyes before continuing, “on the night that Toni Roseneau was killed, did you happen to meet at Gypsy’s?”

Eighteen

“Did you find Janeane’s computer?” Dallas asked Reed as they exited the surveillance room once Parker finished his interrogation.

“Tech guys have it now,” Reed answered.

Parker exited the interrogation room with eyes on Dallas as he headed for his office. Both Reed and Dallas followed, none of the three men speaking until Parkers door was closed. Rounding the desk, Parker pulled off his jacket, and sank into the chair while moving the mouse to bring his computer to life.

“Tell me, Vaughn,” Parker asked without out taking his eyes off his computer screen, “did any of the Shallow Grave victims have accounts on Sub Seeking Dom?”

Dallas looked at Reed then back at Parker, immediately following his train of thought.

“If this sonofabitch is the Shallow Grave Killer then he’s changed his MO.”

“If he’s Shallow Grave he’s had access to all five women’s addresses since last Tuesday when they gave their statements, assuming he knew they gave them. However, it doesn’t seem likely since I’ve had my tech guys monitoring the server for remote access into the system. My guess is, whoever this killer is, and I’m leaning toward Shallow Grave, he’s been stalking them from the coffee shop.”

“Remote access?” Reed asked in confusion. “Are you saying that Shallow Grave has been accessing our system?”

Still typing, Parker didn’t look up from his screen and succinctly laid out the FBI’s discoveries associated with the Shallow Grave Killer. By the time he was done sharing what they knew about the killer, Reed was red-faced with rage.

“You’re tellin’ me this fucker has been piggybacking off our system to avoid detection?”

“Not piggybacking, remote accessing, in case he was detected, it would lead back to the department. Think of it as a ‘fuck you’ to the police. A catch me if you can message.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Reed growled.

Parker ignored Reed’s outburst as he picked up his phone and dialed Humphreys over in tech to relay to him they needed the Dark Prince’s SSD account hacked.

Dallas was searching his memory for what he knew about the Shallow Grave Killer, looking for anything that would shed light onto this new information. When Parker slammed his phone down Dallas looked at the agent and waited.

“It seems Ms. Dee’s computer has been wiped clean,” Parker stated calmly. “My guy says factory reset was initiated at nine seventeen p.m. on Thursday.”

“Tell me you can recover the files?” Reed bit out.

“Already recovered them, but it seems the Taryn Rivers POF and SSD accounts were cancelled and her history wiped clean before the reset.”

“If the time of death is before the reset, when we find this fucker and link him back to the Dark Prince account will that hold up in court?” Dallas asked.

“One way to find out,” Parker replied as he picked up his phone and called the DA’s office. As the phone rang on the other end, Parker covered the mouthpiece looking directly at Vaughn and told him, “You’re off this case. I’ve already given you more information than I should,” as he indicated with his head that Dallas should leave.

Reed slapped Dallas on the shoulder, a move to let him know he’d keep a close eye on the investigation. Dallas scowled at Parker, the frustration clear on his face, before turning and exiting the room.

***

There are five stages of grief. First comes denial: it’s a way to protect yourself from overwhelming emotions, to safeguard yourself so you don’t shutdown from the shock of loss. Then comes anger: it’s a way of redirecting your grief, also a safeguard for our fragile psyche to cope until we’ve come to better terms with the loss. Next comes bargaining: this is the “If only” stage, or bargaining stage if one is dealing with terminal illness. You bargain with God that you’ll do this or that if he will only spare your loved ones or yourself. Most of these stages are on repeat and you flux in and out of them for weeks and months. I moved to the “If only” stage once Parker left the room when it became obvious that he thought that all of this started with us communicating with Dark Prince. Though, I wasn’t alone in this, the girls also felt responsible since they’d insisted that they be involved with the book. For every “It’s all my fault,” I threw out they in turn threw back, “We forced you. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s ours.” I kept thinking back to our first meeting, and of how if I’d only kept my mouth shut Janeane would be alive. How if I hadn’t taken that stupid oath, the one that said if I broke my promise it would bring about the destruction of our sisterhood, Janeane would be here and the rest of my friends wouldn’t be in mortal danger. Deep-down I knew there was only one person to blame, the monster who’d taken all three women’s lives, but the fact remained—my book had brought about this mess and I needed to fix it.

Starting now.

Once Parker had left the room, I convinced the girls we should all leave town until Dark Prince was caught. I called Finn and he confirmed he would take Kasey and the boys to our family cabin in Durango. Angela and Kristina spoke with their husbands and both were set to leave town after Janeane’s funeral.

That just left me.

I wasn’t going anywhere.

I started this nightmare and I would be the one to draw the bastard out. With that in mind, I hugged the girl’s goodbye at the elevator as they left, and headed for my car that was in the parking garage. Dallas had driven my beetle to the station since his bike was here, so I had transportation to leave. I had one destination in mind, the only link we had to the killer—Gypsy’s.

***

“Answer your fucking phone.”

That was the third text I’d received from Dallas since my phone started ringing off the hook. I guess you could say I’d added a new stage in the grieving process; this one was labeled “
revenge.”

With a new laptop in hand and a 9mm Smith & Wesson in my purse, I was at Gypsy’s creating a new account on Sub Seeking Dom. My intent was to draw Dark Prince out and stop this maniac, who had stolen one of my best friends, my sister of the heart, before he could take any more away from me.