by Kate Anders
This place is a mess. There is no rhyme or reason for anything. I’ve taken over a corner of the office and quickly gave up trying to sit next to a table to start going through things. No, now I’m on the floor. Sorting boxes of paperwork into piles. It seems like his only sorting system for all the paper he has in this place is where the nearest pile is when he sets something down. There are huge date jumps from sheet to sheet, cases that aren’t related to each other are sometimes paper clipped together, pages and pages of notes with no kind of identifying information, so I have no idea what these notes are actually about. I’ve taken to making piles of receipts, client information, copies of documents, and the rest by periods of time.
Will was right. This is going to take forever. And honestly, if this is going to be this much work, I might as well digitize everything so we can get rid of the paper forever.
Swiping the sweat off my brow, I finally give in and ask, “Seriously, Will, how do you work like this? How do you find anything?”
“I don’t.” He shrugs without looking up.
“Wait, what?”
“I keep the important stuff on the desk until it isn’t important anymore, then it goes to a pile. If I end up needing something that made it to a pile, I normally just try and acquire it again.”
“You don’t even look?”
“Nah, too much effort, got better things to do.”
“Then why don’t you just throw all this stuff out?” I’m beyond confused, this whole place is basically a hot mess for no reason at all.
“It’s work product. You can’t throw out work product. What if I have to testify or something? Plus, receipts are in here, and you never know when you are going to get audited. Better keep it to be safe.”
“What good is any of this stuff going to do you if you can’t find anything?”
“Eventually I was going to get around to hiring someone to work the office.” He paused before turning to look over at me on the floor. “I’m sure eventually you will find the ad I was going to place looking for an employee.”
“Will, that’s ins—”
The door to the office slams open and in stomps the tiny elfin pixie who looks like she’s been painted black. Literally. I think she painted her clothes black. You can see swatches of the original color peeking through. Not even going to try and figure out what the point of that is.
“You’re going to want to see this. Now.” She stomps through the office before rounding the desk and moving all of the stuff Will was working on out of the way before placing her laptop down in front of him.
“I was working on that,” Will protests.
“Not anymore,” Blake informs him.
“Did you get everything unencrypted?” I ask from behind them.
Blake jumps up at least six inches, I guess she didn’t see me on the floor when she barged in. “Goddess, you scared me!” She glares at me accusingly. “And it’s decrypted. The word is decryption.” She starts muttering under her breath, but I can still make it out. “Unencrypt, who says unencrypt?”
Will barely manages to suppress a chuckle but still looks my way and smirks at me.
“So, did you decrypt it, then?” I ask, standing up to see what she brought for us.
“Mostly.”
“Mostly? I’m guessing you found something interesting?” I prod.
“Would I be here if I didn’t?”
Man, it’s like pulling teeth.
A few more keystrokes and she steps away, leaving the screen open for Will and me to look at.
The screen has several documents open on it, placed far enough apart that you can see them all at once. It’s clearly some kind of report, but multiple variations of it. There are three in total and it takes a second before I realize what they are. Campus security reports.
I can’t stop the gasp from escaping when I realize these are all reports of stalking. I keep reading, only to find out a detailed history from these girls about how someone had been sending them what they thought were harmless messages for weeks. Until they took a turn. Soon it became apparent that someone was following them, messages about how the stalker didn’t like what they were doing, and eventually photos of them started to be emailed.
“The photos,” I whisper to myself.
“That’s what I thought,” Blake affirms before moving to sit in front of Will’s desk, letting us continue going through everything.
“We should talk to them.” Will grabs a Post-it Note off the corner of his desk and starts writing down the girls’ names on it.
“Can’t.” Blake crossed her arms and stares right at us.
“Why not?” I ask, terrified of the answer.
“Look at the other documents,” she explains.
I can’t bring myself to look, instead I’m frozen just looking at Blake. She has this look of pity in her eyes, like she knows things that are going to break me.
“Jesus,” mutters Will. “You sure about all this, King?”
“Positive.”
My head bounces back and forth between Will and Blake. “What? Positive about what?”
“Each girl withdrew from school. Blake tried to track them down and couldn’t find them,” Will explains.
“Maybe they’re hiding, they had stalkers. People with stalkers sometimes hide to get away,” I try to bargain with Blake.
“True. But they aren’t good at it. Almost no one is good at disappearing, the electronic trail is too much to overcome.”
“But maybe—”
“I would have found something. There isn’t anything. They were there, and then” —she snaps her fingers— “and then they weren’t.”
“Will—” The panic closed my throat. Next thing I know, Will has his arms around me and is guiding me to the chair next to Blake.
Crouched down in front of me, his words are clearly trying to give comfort, but his eyes don’t believe it. “It might be nothing. We don’t know it has anything to do with Clara—”
“Yes. We do,” Blake says softly.
Will turns and looks at her. “Lay it out for me.”
Blake’s eyes dart my direction as if asking if she should in front of me.
Will’s warm hand surrounds mine as he takes my hand in his before he nods at Blake.
“Okay.” And then Blake turns my world upside down. “Clara wasn’t the first. The folder is full of copies of emails from whoever was watching her. They start out like nothing, just annoying flirting type behavior, like from someone who doesn’t know how to tell a girl he likes her. She ignored it. As it escalated, Clara started tracking him. Trying to figure out who he was. She did everything I would have done. His tracks were covered. So she started looking in the real world. If I had to guess, she figured a cyber stalker that good didn’t just wake up one day and become a cyber stalker, he must have done it before.”
“Good thought,” Will mutters. His thumb’s steady strokes against my thumb is the only reason I’m not hyperventilating at this point.
“She found these reports, which I assume she hacked.” Blake looks at me for confirmation.
“Yeah, she could have hacked it, she went to Nullcon last year to try out some new programs and when she came home, she was really excited. She said they performed better than she expected.”
“I need to meet this girl,” Blake says with a smile. “Anyway, she found four people—”
“There were only three reports,” Will interrupts.
“No. I only put three up on the screen,” she says with a stern look. “There was a fourth girl, a girl Clara made contact with, they were planning on meeting up, but Clara went missing before that ever happened. I checked campus security this morning. The fourth report isn’t there anymore. It’s been wiped from the system.”
“We need to talk to this girl.” My heart rate starts increasing and I look at Will with what I am sure are panicked eyes.
“Kenzie, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he tells me while wrapping both of my hands
in his.
“What do you mean? She was planning on meeting Clara, she has to know something!” My voice is starting to turn into a screech, but Will’s eyes never falter from mine. His hands stay steady around mine. A rock against whatever is coming next.
“Because I think Blake is about to tell us that the fourth girl is missing too.” He looks over to her for confirmation and out of the corner of my eye, I see her nod. Will squeezes my hands in his and then turns to look at Blake. “The girl, her name is Jenny, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
I check out after that. I can hear Blake and Will talking to each other, but it’s like my brain won’t process the sound. I can still feel Will’s hands around mine, but what felt like a warm comfort on my skin a few moments ago now feels like dull numbness.
The reality that this is bigger than I could have ever imagined is just too much for me to take. Four other girls. Four. And Clara knew this whole time. She never said anything. She never told me. I would have helped her. I would have done anything for her, didn’t she know that?
The lights in the office aren’t really enough to combat the darkness that has set in outside. I’ve made myself a nice little corner in the back of the office on the floor. I printed everything. Nothing escaped my reach. From every mundane email that only said something innocuous like, “I liked your answer in class today” or “did you do well on the pop quiz yesterday” to the escalating “I love you in that purple shirt” and the talk about how Clara always orders peanut butter raspberry smoothies on Tuesdays. I print all of it.
I keep trying to understand why Clara didn’t say anything to me, and honestly, after a while, I kind of get it. She would have seen this as a challenge. Something fun to do with her spare time, trying to track down a secret admirer. She probably figured it was someone in her program, an awkward guy with skills to match hers. She was always looking for a challenge and ways to improve her skills. This wouldn’t have fazed her at all.
But then I get to the parts where it becomes clear this isn’t a guy with a crush. This is a guy with a problem. There are the emails with the photos of her and Collin. I think at this point he must have really been watching her, because his messages start talking about Clara needing to stop or how it might not be Clara who reaps the consequences. He never comes right out and says it, but it’s clear he’s referring to me in the later emails.
At least now I have some kind of answer as to why Clara decided to go at it alone and not involve me. Besides, it’s not like I’ve been in a good place lately, she probably didn’t want to stress me out any more than I already was. I wish I could go back in time and tell her how much I wish she would have stressed me out. How it wouldn’t have been stress if it meant keeping the two of us safe.
After looking through the emails, it’s the last couple that really leads me to believe I know why Clara disappeared. She was getting too close. She reached out to Jenny, made a fake email and everything. The two of them were going to compare notes but didn’t want to do it online, Clara clearly thought a guy with these skills was probably watching electronically.
She was probably right.
Clara never made the meeting and a few days later Jenny was gone.
The girls before them also went missing, but none of them were reported missing like Clara and Jenny were. As far as Blake could tell, they all withdrew from school and then no one ever heard from them again. I asked her to get me information about the girls, and honestly, they remind me a lot of Clara and me. No one on paper to report them missing. One girl grew up in foster care and aged out, another girl was raised by her elderly grandmother who died the year before, another had a detailed online history talking about her estrangement from her family. The outlier here is Jenny. Jenny had family, and they reported her missing. The police took the report seriously and are actively looking for her.
I just don’t understand how this could be going on for three years without anyone noticing. Okay, I do get it. It was spread out, no family, they formally withdrew after clearly having a hard time on campus, so it made sense they would leave. And as much as universities love to deny it, women on campus are targets for all kinds of things, this probably didn’t even raise any alarms until Jenny.
As much as I want to be in denial about this whole thing, that maybe all these women aren’t connected to Clara, Clara has made sure that that isn’t even an option. She connected the dots. She moved the needle. And she made sure the information was protected so if she couldn’t finish it, someone else could.
Clara may have started this, but I know I’m going to finish it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“AN EVENING I WILL NOT FORGET” BY DERMOT KENNEDY
There’s a warmth on my face that feels so comforting, I just want to crawl inside that warmth and not come out. I’m not ready to face reality yet, so I keep my eyelids closed while I lay motionless. I feel the gentle brush of my hair being moved across my cheek before being softly tucked behind my ear. I’m not sure exactly what is going on in this moment, but I know I like it, and that I want to stay in this moment for as long as I can.
“Kenzie.” I hear whispered toward me, the warmth of someone’s breath gently moves over my face. There’s a faint smell of scotch in the air, but almost undetectable. “Kenz, come on, sweetheart, let me take you home,” the voice whispers.
The fog of sleep is still clouding my mind, but one thing I know for sure is for the first time in a long time, I feel safe, and I would do just about anything to not give up that feeling.
Unfortunately the voice has other ideas.
I feel a hand softly grasp on to my shoulder and start to gently but firmly rub my arm before the voice starts up again. “Come on, sweetheart, this can’t be comfortable.”
Eventually I give in and my eyes slowly start to open. The fuzzy outline of a person crouched in front of me takes a moment to come into focus. It’s Will. It takes a minute to realize the reason why he’s crouched is because I apparently passed out on the floor going over everything. As I’m shifting my body on the floor, I hear the crinkles of the papers I fell asleep on. Hell, I even have one stuck to my cheek. Will chuckles as he peels it off the side of my face.
“Come on, I’ll take you home,” Will says again.
“No, it’s okay, I’m awake,” I protest as I try and fail to smoothly sit up, Will has to steady me more than once as I finally get back into a sitting position on the floor.
“You’re exhausted,” he says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world and that I’m being completely unreasonable.
Maybe I am being unreasonable, but I don’t care. “No really, I’m fine, just give me a few minutes to fully wake up and I’ll be fine,” I tell him as I yawn, earning me a glare. “Just tell me what happened while I was sleeping. Did you get anywhere with Blake?”
Come to think of it, where is Blake? I look around the office to see if anyone else is in the building, but as far as I can tell, it’s just me and Will left in the building. It’s still dark outside so at least I know it’s not Monday yet. Well, not Monday morning yet, it’s probably technically Monday.
“Blake did her best to track the emails but didn’t have a lot of luck. Or at least not a lot of luck that’s going to give us a quick answer,” he explains.
“Public place?” I manage to ask between yawns.
“Yeah, library. No requirement to register users in order to use. We’ve got time stamps and I’m sure the police can pull surveillance, but it’s going to take time, and Blake is pretty confident with this guy’s skills that we won’t find anything.” Will gives up on the crouch and moves to sit next to me up against the wall. The sigh he lets out feels bone deep. Like this is really affecting him, not just some paid case he took on.
“You okay?”
“Course. I was just really hoping you were wrong. Now we have five missing young women and there is no telling if that’s all of it.” He shakes his head before looking at me straight on. “I’m
meeting with the police in the morning. I need to lay out everything we found, they need to know what they are up against.”
“I know.”
“I figured you would want to come with me.”
My head snaps to look at him dead on. I almost can’t believe it. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Without you, who knows how long it would have taken for them to make a connection between Jenny and Clara and the rest of the women.”
I watch his face while he’s speaking. His eyes look like they are getting circles underneath them. He looks a little bit beaten down and weary. I think he’s living with this case as much as I am. It’s both comforting and not at all at the same time.
I reach out for Will’s hand, it feels a little different this time. He’s always been the one to initiate touching, and normally we are not sitting leg to leg against a wall on the floor, but I’m worried. “You sure you’re okay?”
There’s a small squeeze on my hand before he sighs and answers, “Yeah. I’m good. Promise.”
“What aren’t you saying?” I push.
“I’ve done this before. Missing women. It used to be my job.”
I raise my eyebrows but never look away from his eyes.
“Back when I was a cop.” He shakes his head like he’s trying to clear away bad memories. “I went in so naive, the belief I could stop bad things from happening to good people. It’s not how it works. Not really. You clean up the mess. If you’re lucky, you find the bad guy. But nothing is ever the same again.”
“And now?” I ask.
“Now I find people who can’t keep it in their pants or employees who can’t keep their hand out of the cookie jar. I avoid the life and death stuff.”
“But you were good at it, right?”
“I did okay.”
I get the feeling he’s being modest.
“Then why not use your skills?”
“Because by the time things actually get to you, the clock has already been running. Truth is when it comes to crime, it’s a short window. You get a finite amount of time to actually save someone, and most of the time you don’t even get that. Most of the time, it’s all over before you even get the call. Even when you win, you lose.”
