Jack nodded. “And one way for Lily to do that would be to fund it and then crush it.”
Yes, but that seemed like an inefficient way to hide her criminal tracks. Still, it was a possible piece that Jack and she could eventually fit into this puzzle of an investigation.
Before Jack could even put his phone away, it rang, and she saw the muscle flicker in his jaw when he looked at the screen.
“It’s Teagan,” Jack said, and for a moment Caroline thought he was going to put the call on speaker so she could hear any updates on the case. He didn’t. And he stepped away from her when he answered.
Combined with the tight jaw and his sudden secretiveness, this couldn’t be good. Nor was the fact that he was practically whispering his fast-clipped responses. She heard him say “What?” Then he followed it with some profanity.
The conversation didn’t last long. Less than a minute. But Caroline was certain that Jack had just gotten bad news.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded the moment he finished the call.
He took his time answering, which only put her more on edge. “Teagan did a scan of the laptop you used at the WITSEC house, and she found a new tracker called Geo-Trace on one of the sites you accessed. A site about Eric Lang.”
She listened carefully to each word, processing it and Jack’s dark mood that went along with the explanation. “Geo-Trace,” she repeated. “It was still in the experimental stage last I checked.”
Jack nodded. “It’s apparently operational now, and someone put it on that site.”
It didn’t take her long to fill in the blanks. “And that someone used my search to track me to the location of the house.”
He met her eye to eye. “Yes.”
Caroline groaned and pressed her fists against each side of her head. “How could I have been so stupid?”
“You didn’t know,” he simply said, and it was layered with sympathy. Something she didn’t want. Didn’t deserve. What she’d done was more than just stupid, though. It had nearly gotten them killed. “God, Jack. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t,” he warned her, and he went to her, pulling her into his arms. “This isn’t your fault. It’s the fault of the person who put the tracker on the site.”
There was something else in his voice now. Anger. And she didn’t think it was directed at her—even though it should have been.
Think, she demanded, fighting her way through the emotions that were flooding her mind. Think. Had the Geo-Trace been put on the site specifically to find her?
Possibly.
If so, she didn’t have to guess why that’d happened. The person wanted her dead, and it almost certainly went back to the night Eric had taken her hostage. Either someone thought Eric had told her something or that she’d overheard or seen it. Something that her attacker wanted to keep hidden, and the way to do that was to silence her permanently. Jack would just be collateral damage.
“There’s more,” Jack went on. “I asked the computer guys to do a reverse search to try to find out who put Geo-Trace on the site. And they found the source.”
The relief came, but it didn’t last. That was because Caroline knew that this wasn’t good news.
“Zeller,” he said, his voice clipped. “Geo-Trace was loaded on the site from Zeller’s office computer.”
Chapter Eleven
While Jack slogged his way through the list of calls he had to make, he kept his eye on Caroline. She was at a small table that he’d moved into Kellan’s office specifically for her, working on the borrowed laptop. Trying to track down Grace.
He also suspected she was trying to deal with her feelings.
Even though she wasn’t talking about it, Caroline was probably still burdened with guilt over the whole Geo-Trace problem. And yeah, she was blaming herself. Jack certainly wasn’t. He was putting the blame right where it belonged.
On Zeller.
Well, if Zeller was actually responsible, that is. Jack was trying to sort through his own feelings and questions about that.
It would have been incredibly stupid for a marshal to use his computer to install a tracking device like that. Something that could be traced right back to him. So, unless Zeller had gotten careless, it meant someone had perhaps set him up. And that was a question Jack intended to ask Zeller as soon as he arrived.
Jack checked his watch. One o’clock already. Which meant Zeller should get to the sheriff’s office anytime now. Jack hadn’t given the man a heads-up on what the visit was about, but it was possible that Zeller had gotten word about what had been found on his computer. It was hard to keep something like that quiet when others in the office would have known that the techs were running checks.
Still, it didn’t matter if Zeller knew or if he’d had time to come up with a story to cover his tracks. A face-to-face meeting would allow Jack to look into his eyes and maybe see if he was telling the truth.
Jack gave Caroline another glance before he went into the squad room to refill his coffee. Kellan was there, doing the same, and he’d no doubt take that fresh cup to the interview room where he’d been working for the past couple hours. His choice, not Jack’s. Jack had offered to move Caroline and himself into that room, but Kellan had insisted they stay in his office.
“How’s she doing?” Kellan asked, tipping his head to Caroline.
She didn’t look up at them. She kept her attention nailed to the laptop screen while her fingers seemingly flew over the keyboard. Next to it was the untouched sandwich that Jack had had delivered for her from the diner. Soon, he’d try to coax her again into eating.
Jack didn’t sugarcoat the truth when he answered Kellan. “She’s not doing that well. Way too much has happened in the past twenty-four hours, and it’s a lot to take on.”
Kellan gave a grunt of agreement and sipped his coffee. “Does ‘way too much’ include you two sleeping together?”
Jack nearly snapped that it was none of Kellan’s business, but he knew his brother hadn’t meant to pry into his personal life. The bottom line was that sex had complicated things. It had made Jack less objective—though he couldn’t remember a time when objectivity had played into his feelings for Caroline.
“It does include that,” Jack admitted. He rubbed his forehead, where a dull ache throbbed. “I love her and I want to protect her. If you can figure out a way to stay objective about that, I’d like to hear it.”
Maybe because Kellan knew that Jack was dealing with as much emotion as Caroline, he wisely held back any judgment or advice. Kellan just patted his brother on the back and headed toward the interview room. Jack went the other direction. He got Caroline a cup of coffee and brought it to her in the office.
“Thanks,” she muttered, not looking up at him, but then she stopped, her fingers still poised over the keyboard.
“Problem?” he asked, knowing there were plenty of them. He just hoped there wasn’t something new, since they were already grappling with enough.
“There’s no sign of Grace. And the phone she used was indeed a burner.” Caroline paused long enough to gulp down some coffee. “I put out feelers through old contacts. Safe feelers,” she emphasized. “I don’t want the wrong person finding her, so I only emailed people I trust.”
Good. Because they didn’t know who the wrong person was—yet. But it was possible that Grace could become a target if she surfaced.
“I also ran a deeper background check on her,” Caroline went on. “Unlike some of the other women who were kidnapped and drugged into the sex-trafficking ring, Grace was lured into it through her drug habit. From everything I’m hearing, she’s clean now, but when she was using, she was out of it. Out of it enough to turn tricks to support her habit.”
Jack thought about that a moment. “Any idea who got Grace to start turning tricks?”
She shook her head. “Nothing so far, but I think
it’s important to find that out. Maybe it was one of our suspects, and if so, we could use Grace to tie Zeller, Lily or Kingston to the rest of what’s happening.”
He was thinking the same thing. But first, they had to find Grace and convince the woman to trust them. Then he’d have to persuade her to tell all and go into protective custody. No easy feat to do that when it was obvious the woman didn’t even want to be found.
Jack slid the plate with the sandwich closer to Caroline’s hand, and she glanced at it as if seeing it for the first time. Which was probably true. Caroline tended to get wrapped up when she was doing research.
She frowned but took a bite of the ham-and-Swiss that he knew was her favorite. “There’s more,” Caroline said, chasing the sandwich with coffee. “I did some checking on Geo-Trace—”
He groaned. “Not a good idea. The Justice Department is all over that. Please tell me you didn’t hack into their files.”
“I didn’t.” She was quick to assure him of that. “I went through my own sources, and what I got isn’t proof. More of the opinion of others like me.”
In other words, hackers. Probably many of them with criminal records. Jack didn’t groan again, but that was what he wanted to do.
“Geo-Trace could be a fake,” Caroline added after she gave him a couple of seconds to rein in his temper.
Jack went still, letting that sink in. Or rather, trying to let that happen. But he had to shake his head. “But Teagan had heard of it, and it was on the computer.”
“There’s plenty of talk about it,” she verified, “but I’m just not finding the proof that someone has perfected it enough to make it do what it’s being designed to do—cull out that kind of info from an IP address.”
Jack wasn’t a computer idiot, but he also knew this was a conversation that could quickly go over his head. “Put that in layman’s terms for me.”
She nodded, paused again, this time with her forehead bunching up. “Other than the Geo-Trace that you found on my laptop and Zeller’s computer, it doesn’t show up anywhere else. That’s an electronic red flag because you can bet that someone would have used this program if it were actually available.”
Yeah, Jack could see that. Stalkers, thieves and other assorted scum would want their hands on it so they could track the physical location of someone simply because they were using a computer with an internet connection.
“I think the Geo-Trace was just a ruse,” Caroline went on. “Something designed to make us think my location had been compromised through the laptop.”
If so, that meant someone had set Zeller up.
“Yes,” Caroline said as if she’d known exactly what he was thinking.
Since Zeller could arrive any minute, Jack shut the office door so that Caroline and he could have the rest of this conversation without the possibility of Zeller coming in on it.
“It doesn’t mean Zeller is innocent, though,” she continued. “Maybe I’m wrong about Geo-Trace. It could be that he got his hands on a working program. And even if he didn’t, he might be going for some kind of reverse psychology. He might want to make himself look innocent by making us believe someone set him up.”
That was something he’d need to give more thought, but Jack could see it from that angle. “Perhaps Zeller or someone else put this fake tracer on your computer and his so it would conceal the fact that the WITSEC file on you had actually been hacked. Geo-Trace would be a way of covering up the hacking.”
She stayed quiet a moment, obviously giving that some thought. “It’s possible. But it would have taken some serious skills to set all of this in motion.”
Jack agreed, and that led him to the next question. “Who’s capable of doing something like this?” And one name instantly came to mind. “Grace?”
“Maybe. I don’t know how good she is. But I’ve been in touch with some of my old contacts, and one name keeps coming up. Scotty Milford.”
Now, that was a familiar name. “If it’s the same guy I’m thinking about, he’s a criminal informant.”
She nodded. “It’s the same guy. He got busted a few years ago for cybercrimes, and he’s clean-ish.”
“Clean-ish?” Jack scowled. Cursed. “Is that like being a little bit pregnant?”
The color actually rose in Caroline’s cheeks. Maybe because she was remembering that he hadn’t used a condom the night before. He was still kicking himself over that, but the kicks would have to wait. He made a circling motion with his finger for her to continue.
“My contacts are split as to whether or not Scotty is up to his old tricks again,” she explained. “He hasn’t gotten caught for anything, but he also hasn’t been as chatty online as he normally is. Sometimes, being quiet is a way of not letting others know what you’re doing.”
That was true in the world of law enforcement, too. “You think he could be involved?” he came out and asked.
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
And that was plenty enough for him. Jack took out his phone so he could get Scotty’s contact info.
Caroline stood, picking up the notepad she’d been using. “I already have his number. I got it from one of those contacts, but I should be the one to do this. Scotty would be more likely to talk to me about this than a badge.”
He didn’t have to think long and hard about that. She was right. So he handed her his phone.
“Any chance that your name and number are in Scotty’s contacts?” she asked. “Because I don’t want ‘Marshal Jack Slater’ flashing on the screen.”
“I haven’t talked to him in a while, and I’ve gotten a new number since then.”
With a nod, she pressed in the number from her notepad, put the call on speaker and waited. After three rings, the call went to voice mail. He saw the brief debate she had with herself about what to do, but she left a message.
“Scotty, this is Caroline Moser,” she said. “Call me back at this number ASAP. It’s important.”
Good. Of course, if Scotty did call, Jack would have to pass his phone to Caroline. He didn’t want the man hanging up on them before he even got the chance to question him.
Jack saved the number Caroline had dialed to call the man and put it under Scotty’s name. He was still in the process of putting his phone away when there was a knock at the door. As he’d done since this whole ordeal with Caroline started, he moved in front of her and made sure it would be easy for him to reach his weapon before he answered it. The person standing there was exactly who Jack had expected it to be.
Zeller.
And surprise, surprise, he wasn’t happy.
Jack had riled Zeller so much in the past twenty-four hours that he was going to owe him a huge apology if it turned out that the marshal was innocent. But Jack had no intentions of believing in that innocence just yet.
There was water dripping off Zeller’s hair and running down his face, and that caused Jack to glance out the front windows. The storm had moved in all right, and it was pouring.
“I didn’t put anything on Caroline’s computer that caused the location of her house to be breached,” Zeller spat out, though Jack wasn’t sure how he could even talk with his jaw muscles that tight.
“Who told you about that?” Jack immediately asked.
Jack hadn’t thought it possible, but the muscles tightened even more. “I have friends at the office, and one of them alerted me that you went behind my back and had my computer checked.”
“I did,” Jack readily admitted. “And as you obviously know, the techs found something. Care to explain how that tracking program got from your laptop to Caroline’s?”
Of course, if Caroline’s theory was right, a hacker could have made it look as if Zeller’s computer had been used. But no way was Jack going to share that with a man who might want them dead.
Zeller opened his mouth as if ready to shout out
an argument, but then he stopped and lowered his shaking head. He stayed that way for several long moments before his attention came back to Jack.
“I didn’t do this,” Zeller said, his voice weary and hoarse now. “I’m being set up, and the person’s doing a damn good job of it. I’m being investigated and people are talking. Even when I’m cleared of the computer charges—and I will be—my reputation will be hurt.”
In the beginning, it would be. Jack couldn’t see a way around that, but a bruised reputation was a small price to pay for getting away with murder. Heck, Zeller could get away with the computer charges, too, because there might not be enough evidence to pin this on him. A lawyer could argue that plenty of other marshals would have had access to his workplace computer.
“It’s either Kingston or Lily who’s doing this,” Zeller went on. “Kingston maybe because he’s carrying out some sick beyond-the-grave orders from Eric.” He looked at Caroline. “You know that Eric was capable of doing something like that.”
She nodded. “Eric was capable of a lot of things, but he liked to taunt. That’s not happening here. The tracer on the site was, well, sneaky. And, yes, Eric could have managed to get someone to do that, but he would have wanted me to know that he’d bested me even after he was dead.”
Caroline was right, but Jack could mentally play devil’s advocate and see this from a different side. Kingston could have done it as an homage to a twisted SOB that he admired. If so, Kingston might not be in the mindset of gloating and taunting.
And that left Lily.
Jack wasn’t sure if Lily had the computer skills, but the woman had enough money to hire someone. Plus, setting up Zeller and having him arrested and convicted would definitely get any heat off her.
“You were getting a warrant on the files at New Beginnings,” Zeller continued a moment later. “Lily’s stonewalling that, and it could be because she’s got plenty to hide.”
Jack could feel himself scowling. “How did you know about the warrant request?” he asked Zeller.
His Brand of Justice (Longview Ridge Ranch Book 4) Page 12
