by Jami Alden
The only bright note was that Kara had posted again late last night. The message was as vague as the last, assuring everyone she was fine but containing no details.
Toni had checked the source IP address. The last two messages had been posted from Kara’s computer. So why was her spidey-sense on high alert, sensing something off about the last two messages? Why couldn’t she buy the notion that Kara was holed up somewhere with a friend and posting messages to let everyone know she was okay?
Toni contacted several members of the V-Club individually. With over three hundred members, many of them living out of state, Toni had focused on the most active members who lived closest to Northern California. None of whom knew anything.
Toni looked at the phone sitting on her desk, willing it to play a snippet from “Wish You Were Here,” signifying the arrival of a text message from Kara.
Nothing.
For now, Toni was stuck slogging through a long debate among V-Club members about whether a girl who’d had anal sex could still be a member of the V-Club. There were a lot of strong opinions.
You’re just trying to make excuses for acting like a whore. Laurie Friedland added her two cents. “Letting a guy fuck your ass is the same thing as your pussy. You’re exactly like Kstar90, trying to give in on a technicality. Either you’re a virgin or you’re not. No middle ground.”
Intrigued, Toni did a search on Kstar90. She’d been added as a friend by Kara several months ago but banned from the group a month later. After a quick scan through her messages, Toni understood why. Kstar90 was all about technical virginity, full of all kinds of advice about how to get yourself and your boyfriend off without giving up the goods.
Toni’s mind fairly boggled at the possibilities.
Kstar90 had engaged in several flame wars with the other members before finally being kicked out of the group. Kara had come to her defense and tried to talk the other girls out of banning her but had been overruled by the cybermob.
As she read through Kstar90’s posts and Kara’s, Toni started to get a tight feeling in the pit of her stomach. She clicked on Kstar90’s member page. According to her profile she was eighteen and lived in nearby Menlo Park. Her photo showed only a woman’s topless torso, her hands cupped playfully over her breasts, her face cast in deep shadow, unrecognizable.
She was about to click the link to additional photos when a sharp knock interrupted her. She peeked through the peephole, frowning when she saw Ethan Taggart standing outside her door.
Kstar90’s comments careered through her head, and her brain filled with images of herself, naked, doing all the things Kstar90 recommended for keeping your man satisfied without having actual sex. God, she could tie Ethan to the bed and keep herself busy for days.
Don’t even go there, she thought, purging her brain of the lust-inducing images. She considered pretending she wasn’t home, but Ethan quickly nipped that plan in the bud.
“I heard you walk to the door, Toni. Open up.”
Not for the first time, Toni cursed the thin walls of her cheaply built apartment building.
She slid open the chain and reluctantly opened the door. “What do you want?”
He stepped inside without an invitation, his tall, broad-shouldered body seeming to suck up the space in her postage-stamp-size apartment.
He gave her a quick once-over, taking in her threadbare T-shirt and khaki shorts that had seen much better days. His sharp turquoise gaze lingered for a moment on her bare legs, and Toni felt a lick of heat low in her belly, followed by a surge of embarrassment to be found looking like such a slob.
His full lips cocked into a half smile. “Nice outfit.”
“I’ve been working,” she snapped, turning on her bare heel with as much dignity as she could muster.
She felt the heat radiating from his chest as he walked up behind her. “Jesus, no wonder you’re so angry all the time, spending so much time in a place like this,” he said.
She didn’t have to follow his gaze to know exactly what he was seeing. He didn’t miss a detail of the kitchen, with its cheap Formica counters, faux oak–finish cabinets, and ugly linoleum. Instead of the hardwood floors of the old Victorian, her boxy one-bedroom apartment had cheap, industrial carpet in the living room and bedroom. The only view from the minuscule patio was of the parking lot. Still, that didn’t stop her hackles from rising at his reaction.
“I’m not angry all the time,” she huffed.
“Okay then, generally pissed off at the world.”
“How would you even know? You’ve known me for less than twenty-four hours!”
“Living in this dump would make anyone depressed.” He walked into the tiny living room. “Even if you’re not making any money with your investigations, surely you can afford to upgrade.”
“When’s the last time you looked at housing prices?” It was on the tip of her tongue to jump to her own defense and blurt out that it wasn’t her fault her savings had been depleted to the point where she was stuck in this dump until she could save enough to move back home. Her mom’s short but valiant battle with ovarian cancer had wiped out her own and Toni’s savings. And her ex-boyfriend John deciding to dump her while she was still struggling to get her investigation business off the ground hadn’t helped.
Still, she couldn’t hold John entirely responsible for the emotional and financial disasters she’d suffered recently. She was the one who’d been itching for a change, who yearned for a life outside her cubicle. And when he had offered her an escape to a new life in sunny California, Toni had jumped at the chance. Her knight in shining Prius.
She should have learned from her mother’s experience that depending on a man for anything was a recipe for misery. She’d always been so careful not to leave herself vulnerable. In work and in love, she’d always been careful and cautious, always choosing the safest route, ignoring the little voices inside her that clamored for more passion and excitement.
Until the one time she’d taken a chance in her boring, rule-following life, and look where it got her. Nearly broke in a crummy apartment that looked even worse as she saw it through Ethan’s eyes.
But she hardly needed to justify her living situation to him, especially when he was the one who had barged in on her. Speaking of which, “How did you know where I live, anyway? My information is unlisted.”
He turned and smiled, the hard angles of his face thrown into stark relief by the fluorescent lights of her kitchen. “Toni, I’m a private investigator. How do you think I found out?”
Anger settled like a hot weight in her chest. Toni was by nature an intensely private person, not prone to sharing her personal information or—God forbid—feelings with someone she barely knew. She wasn’t hiding any big skeletons, but the thought of anyone, especially Ethan Taggart, snooping into her business pissed her off.
“How much do you know?” she demanded.
“Worried that I came across some deep, dark secret?” he taunted.
“How much?” she repeated, her hand itching to smack the self-satisfied smirk off his face.
“For a woman who makes a living digging into other people’s lives, you sure are defensive.”
“The irony is not lost on me,” she snapped.
“Relax, Toni, I only have the information available on a standard background check. I wanted to see who I was getting into bed with,” he said with a wink.
“I didn’t have you checked out,” she said, though she saw his point.
“Maybe you should have,” he shot back. “So, you want to tell me what you’ve found out so far?”
Ethan could see Toni trying to keep a rein on her temper. He’d caught her off guard, and she didn’t like it. He’d given her a hard time about her casual-bordering-on-sloppy attire, but he found it almost as sexy as if she’d opened the door wearing something from Victoria’s Secret.
Her outfit revealed nothing and everything. Her T-shirt was gray, worn thin from hundreds of washings. It clung to the high, r
ound curves of her breasts in a way that made his palms itch.
He forced his eyes away from the perfectly cuppable curves emblazoned with the slogan “Property of the MIT Computer Science Department” and his eyes slid lower as she walked into the minuscule kitchen off the entryway and reached into a cabinet for two glasses. His mouth went dry as he recognized his mistake. He’d noticed her legs immediately, and they looked even better bare. Sleek with firm, muscled calves and nicely defined thighs. Thighs he could almost feel clamped around his hips as he rode her long and hard. Her skin was smooth, pale, tempting him to run his tongue along every inch.
Even her feet were nice, narrow and slender, toes painted a surprising hot pink with a little white flower design. Who would have pegged Toni as a fancy-pedicure type? Heat flooded his groin as he imagined propping her feet on his shoulders, sucking her toes into his mouth as he pumped her hard.
He shifted on his feet, willing his cock down before she turned around and noticed the pup tent that was forming at the fly of his pants. As casually as possible, he crossed his hands in front of himself.
“You go first,” she demanded, filling the glasses with ice and water.
“Not much,” he admitted. “Most of Kara’s friends are out of town, away at summer camps or on vacation. The ones I did manage to connect with claim they haven’t hung out with Kara in quite some time.”
“Did you look at Kara’s FacePlace page?”
“A little. Didn’t find much to go on. But who knew there were so many degrees of virginity?”
Toni didn’t acknowledge the comment, but he could see the flush of color creeping up her neck.
“I always thought it was cut-and-dried,” he goaded. “Insert tab A into slot B.”
“I don’t want to discuss your thoughts on sex or virginity,” she said. But he could tell from the deepening pink of her cheeks that she sure as shit was thinking about it, and thinking about it with him. “Anyway, it’s not funny. Girls talking like that attract all kinds of creeps and pervs.”
Toni’s mouth was tight with concern. For whatever reason, Ethan was compelled to ease her fears. “I noticed she posted again. That’s good news.”
“Maybe.” But she didn’t seem to share his optimism.
“What makes you think differently?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging him off. “The posts were both made from her computer, but…” she trailed off.
“What?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like her.”
“How can you tell? They’re two sentences each.”
She shook her head. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid. Anyway, I found something right before you got here. I don’t know if it’s anything yet.”
He let her change the subject. For now. “Show me.”
She motioned him over to the corner of her living room that apparently served as her office.
Piled in the small space were a desk, printer/fax combo, and of course her computer. Papers littered the desk in semi-cohesive piles. More papers peeked out of the drawers of an overstuffed file cabinet and out of the tops of boxes.
Ethan thought of his own spacious office with its giant desk and state-of-the-art computer system and couldn’t help but wince. “This is how you work?”
Her shoulders tensed. “Not all of us can afford fancy office space. Besides, I have everything I need right here.”
He held his hands up in a supplicating gesture, snagged one of the two rickety wooden chairs from her kitchen table, pulled it over to the desk, and settled in next to her.
As he leaned over her shoulder to see the monitor, he caught her scent in the sultry air. A mix of shampoo, laundry soap, and pure female hit him like a ton of bricks. Sexier than any perfume, it had heat pooling low in his belly.
She popped open a window on her browser. “I went back a few months in the archives and came across this girl.”
Ethan took in the naked torso, bare breasts barely covered by the girl’s own hands, and shifted his gaze away. Sure, her profile said she was eighteen, but he still felt like a dirty old man looking at her.
“She was a member of the V-Club,” Toni continued, “invited by Kara, but she got kicked out after a month.”
“She doesn’t look like their typical member. Guess I don’t have to ask why they kicked her out.”
“The girls were cool at first, but then”—Toni’s blush, which had barely subsided when they sat down, returned in full force—“Kstar90 started giving the other girls tips.”
“Tips?” He arched a brow, waiting for her to continue.
He didn’t think it was possible for her face to go any redder, but her flush deepened from dark pink to full-out magenta. “Tips on how to keep their boyfriends happy while staying technically intact.”
“Really, like what?” He felt a grin tugging at his cheeks even as heat gathered in his groin. Damn, he loved watching her squirm in her seat.
Her withering glare lost its impact under all that pink. “I’m sure you would know better than I,” she said, presenting him with her profile as she turned back to her screen.
Damn straight. “I’d be happy to demonstrate any and all of them.”
Her mouth gaped as she gave him a disbelieving look. “Are you seriously hitting on me while we’re talking about the sexual habits of teenage girls? Could you be any more inappropriate?”
He held up his hands. “The offer was made purely out of professional courtesy.”
She shot him a glare. Licked her lips. Shifted in her seat. Yeah, for all her offense, she was thinking about it.
“All right, so Kstar90 got kicked out of the virgin club for being too skanky,” he said, letting Toni off the hook for the moment. “Besides the V-Club, what do you think her tie is to Kara?”
Toni clicked on a link to additional photos. Ethan sucked air through his teeth. He thought the picture of Kstar90 on her home page was bad, but these had crossed the line from racy to lewd. There were half a dozen, showcasing Kstar90 in various states of undress, every body part displayed for anyone with a Web browser to see.
All except her face, which had been painstakingly blurred out.
Toni’s mouth got tighter and her jaw took on a hard set as she clicked on one of the photos and called up another program. A separate window popped up with a grid full of data and a smaller version of the picture. But this time the subject’s face was clear.
Kstar90 wasn’t connected to Kara. Kstar90 was Kara.
“Fuck,” Toni swore, echoing his own curse.
She quickly clicked through the remaining photos and ran them through the same program.
“That’s an EXIF viewer?” Ethan asked.
Toni looked shocked that he had any clue what she was doing but nodded.
“My brother Derek is more up on digital forensics than I am, but I try to stay current. What program are you using?”
“It’s my own program,” she said, clicking back over to Kara’s main page.
Ethan was grateful. He liked a naked woman as much as the next guy—hell, probably more. But looking at nude pictures of his client’s teenage daughter with Toni less than six inches away made him feel all kinds of dirty.
Toni sat back in her chair, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “These files have been altered and compressed, so I can’t get all of the information about the original pictures.”
Ethan didn’t have in-depth knowledge of digital photo forensics but he knew that depending on the file size and type, you could find out everything about a picture, including whose camera shot it when, and, if you had a camera that recorded GPS information, where on the globe it was taken. You could also, without much effort, extract unretouched thumbnails of pictures that had been altered.
Toni propped her elbows on the desk and put her head in her hands. “I told her to be careful about what she puts out there. And she goes and posts naked pictures of herself.”
Ethan didn’t say anything as Toni scrolled down
the page through Kara’s most recent messages.
“She hasn’t posted to this page,” she said, voice vibrating with concern.
“Why would she? Her parents wouldn’t know to look here. She’s probably fine. I know this looks bad, but it doesn’t change the likelihood that she’s just holing up with a friend.”
“I want to believe that. But I never thought she’d do anything this stupid,” she said, gesturing at the screen.
“Teens aren’t famous for thinking things through. Even smart kids like Kara. Doesn’t mean she’s in trouble.” Ethan knew all about kids making dumb moves, especially kids whose home life was falling apart. When he was sixteen, he’d disappeared for a week to see if his dad would emerge from his black hole of obsession to come looking for him. In the end, his older brother Danny had found him, crashing in a rundown youth hostel in San Francisco.
He focused his attention back on the screen, where he saw the last message from Kara, dated Friday evening.
Can’t wait to see my honey tonite. He’s still pissed, but I’m hoping he’ll give me another chance.
He felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck.
“Who’s pissed?” Toni muttered, echoing his thoughts.
Ethan frowned as he read a message a the bottom of the page, dated last Wednesday. I’ll give you one last chance to make it up to me. Meet me this weekend and show me how sorry you are. This from someone with the charming moniker “T-Bone.”
His cell phone buzzed, interrupting whatever Toni was about to say. He swore when he saw his brother Derek’s number on the caller ID. “What’s up?”
“Just wanted to let you know we’re heading over to Dad’s in the next twenty minutes. He said he had something important to talk to us about, so don’t be late.” Tension dug into Ethan’s neck like bony fingers. He’d forgotten all about their weekly dinner with his dad. He’d managed to avoid the last two weeks, as he’d been working. But this week he had no excuse to blow it off.
“I wonder what new theory he’s come up with this time.” He sighed. And how much money he’s going to waste chasing after it, he thought. “I’ll see you there.”
