Phish NET Stalkings

by Denise Robbins

  She fidgeted, not meeting his eyes. “Yes.”

  “Both personal and professional schedule?”

  She glanced in the direction of the doorway, over his head. She was looking at the clock, stalling. “Yes.”

  “You use this computer for both? You use this at home? You log onto your home network and then log onto your work network from there.”

  “She VPNs into the office,” Carl offered for Jane. “The woman works all kinds of hours,” he muttered from behind the computer monitor. “The VPN is secure, but I don’t have a clue about her home network.”

  “Shut up, Carl,” Jane demanded.

  David laid a hand on Jane’s arm. “He’s only trying to help. Come on, sit down. Tony brought some tea.”

  “With a shot of Jameson’s on the side in case you decided to go for the Irish,” Tony added.

  “Thank you, Tony. I’m sorry for snapping at you, Carl.”

  “Don’t worry about it boss. When security is breeched we all go a little nutso.”

  “Ahem,” David said under the guise of clearing his throat.

  Carl clamped his lips into a thin line.

  David took a seat beside Jane on the sage green sofa and he sat in a chair the color of dark jade. At least that was what he thought Jade looked like.

  “Why were you late?”

  “You’re like a dog with a bone, aren’t you?”

  “Just doing my job.”

  Through lowered eyelids, he noticed Jane glance down to his waist and back up again.

  “My badge is in my pocket. Do you want me to get it out?”

  “No!” She practically screamed and hopped out of her chair before she pulled her extended arm back to her lap and answered again. “No. I know you’re a police officer.”

  He could have corrected her about his rank, but somehow he didn’t figure that would be any more comforting to her.

  “Jane,” David implored, “tell Cooper where you were this morning.”

  She turned her head in David’s direction and he saw the set of her jaw, the reflex in the muscles. She didn’t want to tell him.

  “Carl.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you check Jane’s calendar and tell us where her appointment was and with who this morning?”

  Carl peered over the computer screen, scratched his thinning hair, and eyed him with abject terror written all over his face that had gone pale. “Ma’am?” He swallowed.

  “Don’t worry about the police chief, Carl. He’s just trying to get my goat.”

  And succeeding, he thought.

  “Stop harassing my employees.”

  “Then answer the damn question.”

  In a huff of frustration and fear, Cooper tossed the notebook and pen onto the gorgeous coffee table, jumped out of the chair, and thrust himself in front of Jane. In the next instant, he had Jane’s shoulders captured in his palms, squeezing them. He wanted to shake her, to throttle her, to tell her he loved her.

  Whoa! With a shake of his head, he cleared his mind of such nonsense and appealed to her. “Listen to me,” he beseeched in a low whisper so only she could hear. “I am a good guy. I’m here at David’s request because he believes I can help. Maybe it’s in the capacity of the police chief, maybe it’s as a friend who just happens to be an ex-FBI cybercrimes specialist, maybe it’s as a man who has feelings for you. Hell, for all I know it could be for all of the above. It doesn’t matter. I’m here and you have got to trust me.”

  Without taking his gaze off her face, he saw the other men leave the room. When the door clicked shut, he released Jane. “I’m sorry,” he said as he strode away, raked fingers through his hair.

  “I was at a tattoo parlor,” Jane murmured.

  He spun back toward Jane not thinking her heard her correctly. “Say that again.”

  “I was at a tattoo parlor.”

  Coop tossed his head back and laughed. “That’s the deep dark secret you couldn’t share?” He laughed again. “If you wanted a tattoo I would have taken you. Hell, I bet Tony would have offered up some advice.”

  It wasn’t until he noticed Jane worrying that lower lip of hers and twisting her hands that he realized something else was up. “What? What are you leaving out?”

  She glanced at the door. “You want David in here?”

  “I’d like everyone in here. I’d like to keep focused on the issue at hand.”

  “Your tattoo parlor trip has nothing to do with this morning or last night?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” she assured him.

  “Fine,” he nodded, “but you will share the details from that trip later. You got that, Cleopatra?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  If he had thrown ice water in her face, he couldn’t have shocked her any more than that one word. Her name. The name reverberated around the room like echoes of her past come back to haunt her. As Jane’s heart burst and her lungs fought for air, she searched the room for an escape route. Panic struck her when she looked toward the door and saw Cooper.

  “My name is Jane. Jane C. East.”

  “I don’t think so. I know who you are, Cleopatra.”

  “Ho—” Fear squeezed her throat and she couldn’t voice her question. She fought for control, fought to think when he crossed the room in three long strides. With every step he took, the room got smaller and smaller until she thought she was going down the rabbit hole.

  “Don’t,” she warned in a breathless voice, holding out her hands in front of her to stay his distance. “If you come near me I will scream.”

  “Scream?” He took a step forward.

  “Uh.”

  “Fine. Have it your way.” He halted, stuffing his hands into his front pockets, and glared at her with piercing blue-gray eyes. “How did I find out? Simple. It’s what I do. I investigate.”

  His nonchalance about the subject of her identity did nothing to put her at ease. If anything, it caused her hackles to rise even higher and her fists to clench at her sides.

  “B-but no one…”

  “I had a little talk with David last night,” he interrupted.

  David? She shook her head, blinked. No. That couldn’t be true. David would never talk. He just wouldn’t. He knew the cost if someone found out. Her stomach sank and her knees buckled. Cooper’s words of betrayal poleaxed her.

  Before she hit the floor, Cooper grabbed her arms and held her up. “Don’t pass out. David didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already figured out on my own. He just helped me connect a few dots. He didn’t betray your trust. Believe me. More than anything that man wants to protect you. He loves you. You’re his daughter. Maybe not by blood, but by choice and love.”

  Daughter. Tears blurred her eyes. No. She couldn’t let him do this to her. She had too much at risk and no time for whining. With a stiff upper lip, she shrugged off Cooper’s hands and took a step in retreat. “I’m not going to faint.”

  “Looked pretty close to it,” he muttered.

  Anger shot through her and quelled her immediate fear. “What did David tell you? What did you find out? How?”

  “I had already determined that your mother was killed.”

  Her sharp gasp of shock and pain jolted her and her shoulders snapped back. “But how?” Why couldn’t she think? Why couldn’t she enunciate?

  “You slipped the night we had pizza together, but you caught yourself, just not before I heard. I’m trained to listen, to pay attention.” He shrugged. “I do.”

  No shit, she thought. A little too closely.

  “Last night when you were attacked in your store, I decided I needed to know more about you, and who might want to hurt you. I knew you wouldn’t tell me so I stopped at David’s after I left the boutique.”

  “You should have come to me.”

  “You wouldn’t have told me the truth.”

  “The shop incident was a burglary gone bad,” she insisted.

  Cooper took a step toward her. Jane wanted to retreat, but held
her ground.

  “I told you then and I’m telling you now, last night was personal, not an everyday burglary.”

  “Fine,” she grumbled and spun away, tossing her hands above her head. “Believe what you want to believe.” She moved toward the tiny wet bar. She needed a drink. Opening the refrigerator, she pulled out a bottle of water, unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow. When she finished, she turned to him and pitched a bottle without any warning.

  Cooper snatched the bottle out of the air without even flinching.

  Bastard.

  “Thanks.”

  “You should have come to me and not put David in the middle.”

  “Were you going to tell me that you were born Cleopatra Jane West? Or that your mother was Cassandra Jane West, a computer forensics specialist who worked for the Dorchester police department. That she was involved in a drug deal gone bad and was murdered.”

  “My mother did not do or deal drugs.” She slammed her bottle onto the bar. “She would never do drugs. She barely kept cold medicine in the house.” Her voice cracked.

  “You were a kid. How would you know what your mom did or did not do? The cops say it was.”

  “Ha!”

  “All the evidence leans in that direction,” he continued. “Tell me why you think they are wrong?”

  “Because I was there,” she wailed.

  It was her turn to watch Cooper reel backwards.

  “You were there?”

  Without hearing his question, she went on. “I saw the badges of the two men who were there. They were there when she was alive and then she was dead.”

  She remembered hearing the sound of the gun and how the blast scared her half out of her skin. If not for the fear of someone finding her, she would have toppled over into her mother’s shoes. Then the smell. The awful, pungent odor of blood and waste and… She shoved the memory aside, held her fisted hand to her queasy stomach and pressed.

  “She did not deal drugs,” she reiterated through gritted teeth. “She did not do drugs.”

  Badges. That was why she had an inordinate fear of badges. Holy shit!

  “You were there?” he repeated and this time Jane heard his question.

  She let out a long breath. “I was hiding in the closet.” She picked up the water bottle and took a deep drink.

  “Sit down, Jane.”

  Her head tilted back, she eyed him with dark eyes over the bottle.

  “Please.” He touched her arm. She had held that secret too long and now she looked as if she were about to break, splinter apart into a million pieces if she didn’t let it all out.

  After helping her to a chair, he knelt in front of her, laid a hand on top of hers and prodded again. “You were there? You saw what happened?”

  Jane shook her head. “Not all of it. I was hiding in my mother’s closet. She made me promise to stay there and be quiet until she came for me. I heard yelling. I could only see a little through the slats, but I saw enough to see police badges.”

  Now it was his turn to shake his head. He shoved away and stood, raking fingers through his hair. “You’re telling me police killed your mother. It doesn’t make any sense. She worked for the police. By all accounts, she was good at her job and well respected.”

  “She loved her job. She used to say the only thing she loved more than her job was me. To infinity and back.” A small smile lifted the corners of her lips. “She loved me to infinity and back.”

  “Why would the police murder your mother?”

  “I don’t know,” she yelled, getting to her feet. Her head bumped his and Coop teetered before he righted himself. “But they killed Granny Pearl too.”

  Cooper spun back on his heels and faced her. “What? Who is Granny Pearl?”

  “Ah.” Jane offered him a grim smile. “Didn’t do all your homework did you.”

  “Jane,” he warned.

  “Granny Pearl was a close neighbor who took care of me after school and when my mother had to work evenings. She is the one who found me and took me away, hid me from the police. From my mother’s murderers.”

  He wiped his hands over his face. He could not believe what he was hearing. “What happened to this Granny Pearl?”

  “She was murdered.”

  Her blunt statement sent chills up his spine. She really believed that a cop, an officer of the law had killed her family. It wasn’t that he couldn’t fathom it. He had seen many things, the worst of what one man could do to another human being. But he needed proof, motive, something to confirm her theory.

  “Who killed her?”

  “The police! Haven’t you been listening to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I stood outside Granny Pearl’s house and watched two men wearing badges tie up Pearl, beat her. She wouldn’t tell them where I was.” She paused, sucked in a deep breath and continued. “When she refused to tell them and she warned me off, they shot her.”

  “You saw this? Did you go to the police? Tell somebody?”

  She looked at him as if he had three heads.

  “Are you out of your mind? I couldn’t call the cops. They’re the ones who killed Granny. I couldn’t—don’t trust the police.”

  The verbal slap stung. “Jane—”

  She cut him off. “I had put all of this away. Granny Pearl saved my life, gave me a new identity, and I’m paying her back.”

  “How? By running? By having an anxiety attack every time you see someone with a badge. We’re not all bad, Jane.”

  “In my world if you wear a badge you’re suspect.”

  “Damn, Jane! I wear a badge.”

  Her arched brow told him everything he needed know. She didn’t trust him. As much as she may want to, and he believed she did, deep down she did not trust him. Could he blame her?

  Hell, yes! He blamed her. “I’m a good guy. I’m not one of them. I’m here to help. Let me help you.”

  “You want to help me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Help my team figure out who hacked my computers. Then I might believe you. Might.”

  He spun on his heel and stalked to the door. She hoped he would just march out and never come back. His hand was on the doorknob when a thought struck her.

  Was he going to tell them? After all these years of hiding, would he reveal her identity? She threw herself in front of the door before he could fling it open.

  “You can’t tell them. You can’t tell anyone who I am. Do you understand?” She grabbed his arm and squeezed for dear life. Her life. “Please, Cooper. It’s a matter of life and death. If people find out who I am, they will hunt me down and kill me. If they don’t kill me they will potentially go after my friends. They’ve already killed two people I love. I can’t let that happen again.” She took a deep breath and swallowed her fear.

  He shook off her hand and stalked away. “I’m fucking ex-FBI and a police chief. I’m not a murderer,” he ground through clenched teeth. “What do I have to do to convince you that I’m a good guy? That you can trust me?”

  He stepped toward her, a lion tracking his prey. “What do I have to do? Tell you I love you? Fine. I love you,” he announced with his arms out at his sides.

  Jane blinked several times fast and shook her head. Had Cooper just said he loved her? No. No, he had proclaimed in the middle of a crisis that he loved her. Was he certifiable? He couldn’t just do that. He couldn’t make some offhanded declaration and think that would fix everything. That she would believe him.

  Maybe it was the pulsing vein in his neck, or the way his hands were clenched at his sides as if he held himself back from throttling her, but she wanted to believe him. Part of her wanted to trust him. The hormonal and heart side of her wanted to believe he was a good guy. The logical, realistic side of her brain said it was time to cut bait, time to leave and start over.

  She could do it. She was fully prepared. Inside the same safe Granny Pearl left her identity papers for Jane C. East, she left a second set of identity papers for
Carol J. Eastman. Granny had left her two identities to choose from. She had chosen Jane because at least that was part of her old name, her real name and would be easier to remember and respond to. The name Carol would take some getting used to but she could do it. But she didn’t want to.

  She had built a life, had cultured a business, and few, but close relationships. She didn’t want to walk away from everything and everyone she loved. Again.

  Head bent, Jane tugged at her hair. What the hell was she supposed to say? What should she do?

  Cooper strode past her and jerked open the door indicating the others to join them. “Let me see the email that was sent from Jane’s email address.”

  The emphasis he put on her name told her he would not reveal her secret. Not yet. A sigh of relief rushed out of her lungs as she jumped to do his bidding. She yanked one of the sheets of paper off the table and handed it to him. The red anger that flared in his cheeks was almost enough to have her thanking him, but she didn’t.

  “So far it looks to me like the messages were all sent directly from Jane’s email address and her IP address,” Carl told Cooper as he walked into the room on his way back to her computer.

  Great, Jane thought, just put a noose around my neck, Carl.

  THIRTY

  “Spoofed,” Cooper said from behind her computer screen.

  Jane glanced up, phone to her ear. She listened to the pissed off distributor as she tried to apologize and pay attention to what Cooper was saying.

  “Someone spammed her email address and sent all these inflammatory messages from your SMTP server. Does your mailer-daemon have logging turned on?”

  Mailer demon? After ending her call with a now reassured distributor, Jane hung up and asked, “Mailer demon? Is that like some kind of cult thing?”

  Carl chuckled then lowered his head and coughed into his hand.

  “Not demon as in evil, but as in a program that runs in the background. A print spooler, a scheduler, those are all background processes. A mailer-daemon runs in the background and delivers mail.”