by Lorie O
As the pizza was ordered, Kylie glanced at the notes she’d taken so far.
“I want to ask you something,” she said without looking up. “And any of you or all of you can answer. What’s the most common way you talk to your friends? On the phone? Text messaging? Instant messages?”
“All of those are the same,” Dorine said, laughing.
“She means instant messaging on the computer,” Diane offered. “Like AIM or Yahoo! And for me it’s probably mostly on my phone.”
“We don’t have a computer at home anymore,” Dani said. “But you can text-message or instant-message on the phone.”
Kylie nodded. “I actually knew that one,” she said, pulling her cell phone out of her purse and holding it up before dropping it back into the bag again. “So you think most kids between the ages of twelve and eighteen use their phones to talk to their friends? But do most of them talk on them? Or do they type on them?”
“I never thought about that.” Denise turned on Diane’s lap. “I think we text-message more than talk. And Diane can text-message without looking, even when she’s driving.”
“No. She can’t,” Perry growled from across the room, his back still to all of them.
Diane slapped her sister’s leg. “No, I can’t,” she stressed to Denise, who looked appropriately chastised.
“How many people do you talk to by texting on your phones?” Kylie asked, putting her notebook on her lap and writing: Check ISPs; if there aren’t any, then phone records.
“Dani talks to so many that Mom had to put unlimited messages on our phone plan. But Dorine never talks to anyone because she doesn’t have any friends.”
“Speak for yourself, brat,” Dorine snapped. “Not all of my friends have cell phones like Dani’s rich-bitch friends.”
“Watch your mouth, Dorine,” Diane snapped, and glanced over her shoulder at her uncle.
“Okay. Okay.” Kylie held her hand up in the air with her pen between her fingers. “I want to talk about online relationships. How many of you have met guys you’ve talked to online?”
The room got quiet and each girl glanced down at her hands. Perry turned around, watching them as well, a frown planted on his face. Kylie shook her head at him, silently willing him to stay quiet. He had demanded she not discuss anything sexual. Kylie would simply argue that relationships at their ages, or at least of the ages of the younger three, probably weren’t sexual. Either way, she prayed he wouldn’t interrupt her line of questioning.
“It’s okay, girls. Everyone does it today, right?”
“Have you ever met anyone you’ve chatted with online?” Dani asked.
“Sure have,” Kylie said without hesitating. She didn’t add that they were fellow agents and the discussion was work-related. Her private life was just that. But gaining the girls’ confidence would let them open up to her and help her gain more knowledge of what they knew. “So let’s assume that each of you has.”
“I haven’t,” Denise offered.
“And you’d tell on any of us if we agreed to meet anyone,” Dani snapped, chastising her younger sister.
“I would not,” Denise denied the charges, but focused on the ground, her long hair streaming over and partially covering her face.
Kylie smiled at the twelve-year-old. She was very thin and in a year probably at the most would start filling out. If she followed suit like her sisters, she would be drop-dead gorgeous in no time.
“How do you know the person you’re chatting with is who they say they are?”
“And not some pervert,” Dani said, nodding. “They’ve talked to my friends, or there are pictures of them on Facebook that are taken around town and you can tell that they are from around here.”
“Have you ever talked to anyone who’s chatted with someone that they think is not for real?”
Dani and Diane leaned forward. Diane pushed her little sister to the floor and rested her elbows on her knees.
“A friend of mine has,” Dani said.
“Yeah, same here,” Diane offered, lowering her voice. “He said he was going to school with us, but when we read his messages there were things he didn’t have right.”
“So what did you do?” Kylie asked.
Diane turned and gave her uncle a pointed look. “I’m not going to answer her questions and risk you yelling at me,” she said, sounding cross.
Perry turned from the group and pulled open the sliding glass door. Kylie managed to keep her expression relaxed. She’d fought with that damn door forever this morning and wasn’t able to make it budge. He opened it as though he did it every day. Without saying another word, he disappeared into her backyard.
“He’s so moody sometimes,” Diane said, looking at Kylie and sighing.
“Mom says he just needs to get laid,” Dorine offered.
Kylie quickly cleared her throat and refused to allow the image of Perry’s buns of steels to form a clear picture in her head. All that mattered was gathering intel from these girls that could help her clear a path toward the pervert stalking children online.
Someone knocked on her front door and her alarm buzzed. Perry was back inside in a second, proof he hadn’t wandered too far. Kylie stood, grabbing her purse, and walked over to the peephole she’d drilled herself when Paul had set up her computer system. The pizza guy stood there holding a large black bag in front of him.
Opening the door, she grinned at the young, pimply-faced kid. “How much do I owe you?”
“Forty-three dollars,” he said, pulling the Velcro strap and then sliding out several pizza boxes.
Kylie pulled the bills from her purse and paid the kid as the girls came to the door to help. “Looks like you all ordered a lot of pizza. Sure hope you’re hungry.”
“Starved,” Dorine said, eagerly taking a couple of the boxes.
Diane stood in line to take the third pizza. Kylie watched the girls hurry to the table with three large pizzas and a couple smaller boxes that she guessed contained bread sticks.
“Hey, Jimmy,” Dani said, offering a limp wave. “She tip you good?”
“Hi, Dani.” Jimmy blushed so brightly his acne stood out. “Yeah. She did.”
“Good.” Dani walked to the open door and stood next to Kylie. “Any more word on Olivia?” she asked.
“Nothing, dude,” Jimmy said, lowering his voice. “She’s like totally disappeared. Word is she is like dead or brutalized or maybe sold into slavery.”
“God, Jimmy. Don’t be sick,” Dani said, sounding serious. “She probably flipped on her parents and skipped town.”
“Without her car?” Jimmy challenged. “Dani, grow up. You’re as hot as she is. Someone stole her cute ass, and you could be next.”
“Yeah, right.” Dani seemed to have lost the fight in her. She turned noticeably pale and didn’t say anything else, nor did she move.
“Man, sorry, Dani,” Jimmy said, and backed up down the sidewalk. “I’ve got your back, though.”
“That’s what we all have to do,” Dani decided, her spunky, confident tone returning. “If someone stole her and he wants to steal one of us, we’ve got to stop him.”
Jimmy looked at Kylie, and Dani did, too. “I’ll see you at school,” she said, backing away from the door.
Kylie closed the door and turned to look at Dani. The teenager scowled as she walked over to the boxes of pizza with her sisters and Perry. Kylie followed, her mind spinning with the conversation she’d just been privileged to hear.
“Do you know someone who is missing?” Kylie asked.
Kylie shrugged. “We were in the same grade. She was my ride home. Mom threw a fit until Uncle Perry vouched that she’d disappeared.”
“Who are we talking about?” Perry asked.
“You said her name was Olivia?” Kylie focused on Dani. “She didn’t get along with her mom?”
“God, no!” Dani shoved half a slice of pizza in her mouth and then spoke with her mouth full. “Everyone knew she hated her mother. B
ut her mom was as uncool as they came, demanding to know everything her daughter did and reading her text messages and just smothering her, you know?”
“Do you have other girlfriends like that?” Kylie asked.
“Like what?” Dani frowned.
“Whose mothers, or parents, are smothering them.” Kylie was very aware of Perry watching her but kept her attention on Dani.
“Like everyone, dude. Most adults don’t have a clue.”
“If her mother read all her messages, though, she probably wouldn’t complain to her friends in chat messages about it, though, would she?”
“Why not? It wasn’t her fault her mother was a prude. Might do her mom good to read that she needs to back off.”
“Okay. So she would.” Kylie didn’t like the picture forming in her mind. “And a sympathetic guy, like Jimmy out there, would offer to protect and help her out of her misery when her world is caving in on her.”
“Jimmy’s harmless. Besides, he works two jobs. He’ll be a millionaire by the time he’s twenty.” Dani stuffed more pizza in her mouth and waved her hand dismissively toward the door.
“That is the kind of guy you want,” Diane pointed out.
“You can have him.” Dani snorted and reached for more pizza.
Kylie walked into her kitchen. The profile of her victims was the same as it always was. Her online predator hunted teenage girls who weren’t happy with their home lives, and who were pretty, and who somehow had the ability to get out of their houses on their own. The girls who’d disappeared so far were sexy, had an independent nature, drove their own cars, and were intelligent and leaders among their peers.
Her stomach twisted painfully and the smell of the pizza was nauseating. She’d only known Dani a short time, but the girl was very easy to like. She didn’t have her own transportation, but that didn’t stop her from getting around town without the help of an adult. Other than that, she fit the MO perfectly. Kylie needed to narrow down her list of suspects quickly. The thought of Dani being lured in by a sexual predator wasn’t a thought Kylie wanted to dwell on.
Chapter 5
Kylie finished putting dishes in the dishwasher and started it. The instant humming sound it made was rather comforting. Made the place feel like home. It was the first time she’d started it, and she took a moment to soak the new sponge behind the sink and then wipe down the countertops and then the coffee table. She might have run a vacuum, gotten all the little pizza crumbs off the floor, but she didn’t have one. The temporary housing provided for her compliments of the Bureau was designed only to make her rental appear like a college student’s home. She wasn’t here to play domestic goddess.
“Lord,” she groaned out loud. God forbid she ever felt a strong craving for that role.
Although as she dried her hands on the sides of her dress and headed down the hallway to the middle bedroom, she admitted to herself it was nice having all the girls here, even with Perry in the background, his brooding expression dark and distracting.
Usually when she handled a case, the opportunity didn’t arise for her to get close to the victims. Kylie got to know the town, walked the streets where the victims had lived, and then stalked her predator, enticing him to make her his next victim. Then she struck, taking the perp down and putting him where he belonged, behind bars, where no teenager would be hurt again by his disgusting brutality.
Kylie went to the last bedroom, her bedroom, and opened the top drawer to her nightstand and pulled out the small key that unlocked the doorknob to the middle room. After unlocking it, she returned the key and made herself comfortable at the desk Paul had helped her set up the day before.
“He’s going to come back,” she whispered, chills rushing over her flesh at the same time a heat swelled inside her. “Even if he doesn’t have the evening off, or possibly it will be tomorrow, but you know he’s going to show up here again.”
She knew this beyond any doubt for two reasons. The first made her fingers trip over keys when she allowed the knowledge to sink into her brain. The physical attraction she felt for Perry was mutual. If he returned alone, she really needed to be on her toes. There wasn’t any evidence confirming his innocence or guilt yet.
“I need to know he’s innocent.” Which meant spending more time with him. Let that be the reason she wanted to see him again.
Swallowing the lump of apprehension that rose to her throat, she forced her attention to the computer, and to her task. An hour later, she was chatting with several kids and updating her Facebook page, making the kids she was chatting with her friends. At the same time, she had several other windows open to help her with knowledge of bands, movies, and other current events the kids were talking about.
She chatted with different kids from different schools, and after an hour she’d talked about everything from music and movies to sex.
Kylie worked to keep up with the fast-paced chatting without getting a headache as the kids, who ranged in age from thirteen to eighteen, openly talked about oral sex, French kissing, and whether or not they were virgins. It never ceased to amaze her how easy it was to get kids to talk openly online. And finally, when asked by a boy who was eighteen and enrolled at a local high school, she typed that she wasn’t a virgin and that sex was great.
As another private instant message box popped up in front of her, startling her with its popping sound, Kylie realized it was now dark outside. Her blinds were still open, and headlights trailed down the street when a car slowed and then parked in front of her house.
“He’s back,” she whispered, standing and closing the blinds while butterflies fluttered in her stomach. She glanced back at the computer screen and at the instant message box now sitting in the middle of her screen. “Oh, shit,” she hissed, sliding back into her chair.
The screen name at the top of the box was PeteTakesU. She stared at the message in the box: Do your parents know you like sex?
Kylie stared at the small flash drive where all her chats were being saved. Perry was walking up her sidewalk. Crap. Talk about bad timing.
Returning her attention to the instant message box, she typed: duh. PeteTakesU typed: LOL.
There was a firm knock on her door. Kylie stared at the far wall, as if she could see through it and take in the man standing outside her front door. The instant message box chimed again: You sound hot. Where are pictures of you?
On my Facebook profile. My profile is Kayla2010, same as my name here. G2G parents are near. She finished typing and minimized the chat box. Even though the program on the computer would save and log every chat she had, Kylie worked better saving her own chats. She liked being able to review them on her own, without having to head over to the field office to request seeing the logged files.
Her heart thumped in her chest when she turned off the light, locked the door to the middle room, and headed down the hall to the front door.
“Yes?” she said, placing her hand on the door handle and leaning against the front door.
“Open the door, Kylie.” Perry’s deep voice sounded all business-or pissed.
She slid the chain into place on the door and unlocked the dead bolt. Opening it as far as the chain would allow, she flipped on her porch light and watched him squint as she blinded him.
“What do you want?”
“Open the damn door and let me in,” he growled.
It was tempting to spar with him, but she closed the door, slipped the chain free, and stepped out of the way when he pushed the door hard enough that it swung open. She grabbed it before it hit the wall, staying clear when he stalked into her home.
“What were you doing?”
“When?” She watched him when he stopped in the middle of her living room and turned to face her.
“Just now. When I knocked on the door.”
She was toying with him just a bit. It was so easy to do, and she kind of liked how she could make his eyes darken with her comments.
“What do you think I was doing?” sh
e asked, turning from him and closing the door. “I was studying.”
“Where are your books?” he asked, his demanding tone pushing as he continued watching her, slowly crossing his arms. Apparently he had the night off, as he was still dressed in his T-shirt and jeans. God, he made simple clothing look deadly.
Kylie took her time answering, unwilling to spar with him full force. Already she felt the charge in the air, the sexual energy radiating off him. It was best to keep her head clear, stay focused on the fact that she quite possibly had just communicated with their killer. Although that would mean Perry was innocent, it also meant if her man was online right now, she needed to take this opportunity to get to know him.
“You heard me interview the girls. What else do you want to know?” she challenged, crossing her arms over her chest and watching Perry’s expression harden.
Perry walked toward her. If she didn’t move, he would have her cornered.
“I think you’re avoiding the answer to a simple question.” He grabbed her arm when she tried walking past him. “Where are your books?”
“I do most of my work on my computer,” she said honestly, and looked down at her arm. “Is there a reason you’re restraining me?”
His hand was large and his fingers long. His skin was tanner than hers. She watched his fingers wrap around her forearm and then his grip loosened and slid down to her wrist.
“This isn’t restraint, darling,” he drawled. “When I restrain you, you won’t be able to move.”
“That is what restraining means.” Kylie laughed, walking away from him and pulling her arm free as she headed toward her kitchen. Perry let go of her but followed when she walked around the open living room that turned into her small kitchen. “You haven’t told me why you’re here,” she said, keeping her back to him.
She grabbed a plastic cup from her cabinet and filled it with ice from the ice maker in her refrigerator. There hadn’t been time to grocery shop, so other than the leftovers from the pizza, of which all fit in one box and took up a shelf in her refrigerator, there wasn’t any food in her kitchen.
