Guilty as Sin (12 page)

Her entire body felt flushed, hyperaware. If she was honest with herself, she had to admit that if Tommy made a serious attempt to seduce her, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to resist.

And that could only lead to disaster. While Tommy was a living reminder of one of the happiest times in her life, he was also a living reminder of how a seemingly small lapse in her judgment could have tragic consequences.

Kate had been stupid for a guy exactly twice in her life, and both times with horrific results. She needed to remember that even as her body tempted her to go in for round two with Tommy Ibarra.

T
ommy strode down the hall, grateful for the chance to get away from Kate and get his shit together. He was on the verge of losing control.

Which was pretty fucking ridiculous, considering his time in the Army had taken him to some of the worst hellholes on earth that required him to sit stock still, hours on end, no matter that a bullet might scream by your head or the mosquitoes might chew you to hamburger. But Kate, with her big sad eyes and soft, trembling mouth, had him straining against the urge to pull her into his arms, kiss her mouth until the sadness was gone and all that remained was pure heat.

He flung open the door for CJ, who gave him a wary look. “Did you hear something?”

Tommy shook his head, confused. “No, why?”

“You look like someone just fed you a shit sandwich. I was afraid somewhere between the car and your door someone found a body.”

Tommy ran his palm down his face to smooth out the scowl he hadn’t even realized was there. “We’re still going through Tricia’s chat logs,” he said, and started back down the hall to his office. CJ’s heavy work boots
thunk
ed on the slate floors as he followed. When he entered Tommy’s office,
he let out a low whistle. “Shit, this really is like command center at the Bat Cave,” he said as he took in the multiple computers and monitors.

He and Kate exchanged quick greetings while Tommy worked his way back through the chat log archives.

“What is this site, anyway?” CJ said as he read an exchange Tricia had with another person three months ago. “ ‘
My dad is so messed up. Sometimes I wish he was the one who died. Not because I don’t love him but because I think Mom could have handled it better
,’ ” he read, frowning.

“It’s a chat room for kids whose parents have died,” Kate said, her voice tight. “Tricia started going on there about seven months ago, a couple of months after her mother died.” She looked to Tommy for confirmation.

They were quiet for the next several minutes as they read through Tricia’s cyberconversations. After her initial posts, she interacted primarily with two different users.

Mari1999’s profile said she was a fifteen-year-old from Nashville whose father had died last year. Coldust20 was a seventeen-year-old boy from Miami whose mother had committed suicide eighteen months ago.

To Tommy, the conversations, while sometimes heartbreaking, looked harmless. “I’ll get their IP addresses to make sure they check out,” he said, “but none of this strikes me as a predator posing as a lure.”

Kate nodded. “Usually in cases of online stalking, the sexual innuendo escalates pretty rapidly. And usually you’ll see requests to meet in real life happen quickly if that’s the predator’s end game.”

“Isn’t that always the end game?” CJ asked.

“No,” Kate said. Though her voice was soft, there was no disguising the note of disgust. “Some sick freaks get a thrill from the interaction, imagining the underage girl or boy on
the other side of the conversation while they describe deviant sexual acts or send them explicit pictures and videos.”

Revulsion tightened Tommy’s stomach. “Jesus, I’ve seen some bad places and bad people, but I can’t imagine how sick you have to be to get off on something like that.”

“There are people so sick you almost believe they’re another species, not even human,” Kate said, her eyes flashing with emotions. And she was determined to hunt down every single one. Tommy could see it in her face, in the way her soft mouth pulled into a tight line, in the set of her shoulders. In the way she seemed to cast off the horrible images that were no doubt flooding her mind and focused on the task at hand, motioning him to continue scrolling through the logs.

Tommy felt an unwelcome tug of admiration in his gut. Sure, he’d admired the way she’d given herself to a cause she was passionate about. But his opinion had always been colored by their past, by the way she’d turned her back on him to save her family from a scandal.

Wealthy, snobbish, image conscious. Though he couldn’t deny that Kate had helped a lot of children and a lot of families, a small, petty voice had always whispered that she’d become the spokesperson for St. Anthony’s for her own selfish reasons. To keep up a positive image of herself as a do-gooder and boost her family’s profile by association.

To help wash away the stain of the guilt she no doubt felt about the night Michael was murdered.

Even if all that did play into her motivation, he couldn’t deny that Kate was far more than just a talking head, the pretty mouthpiece they trotted out onto the TV shows to help boost press coverage for a case. If Tricia’s case was anything to go by, she dug into every single case with dedication and tenacity.

And she didn’t shy away from the gory realities of what the victims were subjected to.

Kate was tough. It wasn’t a word he ever would have imagined using to describe her. Certainly not the beautiful but reserved teenager he’d been so determined to coax out of her shell.

And not the girl he’d seen after Michael died, broken down, teetering on the brink of destruction from her brother’s death and her family’s accusations.

Kate hadn’t just grown up, she’d grown strong. She would have had to, dealing day in, day out with the victims, sharing the soul-numbing grief of the families.

And, he thought, recalling the earlier news report, dealing with the guilt when things went horribly wrong.

Great. Now on top of everything else, you’re starting to admire her.
As if it wasn’t enough that the inexplicable chemical reaction his body had to her was as intense now as it had been at nineteen.

“Tommy?” Her voice snapped him out of his daze. His eyes locked on hers, and he realized he’d been staring at her for who knew how many seconds, leaving Tricia’s conversation with Mari1999 up for far longer that it would have taken her and CJ to read it.

Tommy quickly paged to the next screen. He cleared his throat, hoping his olive complexion hid the fact that he was blushing like a goddamn schoolgirl.

Nearly an hour later, CJ started pacing around the room. “If someone was cyberstalking her, it sure as shit wasn’t through this forum,” he said. “I say we move on. Read back through her emails, go back over her Facebook—”

“Wait,” Kate said, and Tommy’s finger stilled over the mouse.

The room was silent as they read through a three-page-long
conversation between Tricia and a user they didn’t recognize. It was from five days ago.

“That’s a new friend,” Tommy said.

“Scroll back, see when the first contact was made.”

“A week ago.” Moto98 had joined the bulletin board that day and immediately tried to start off a conversation with Tricia and her friends.

“The day after Jackson and the girls got here,” Tommy said. The conversation was innocent enough, as Moto98 introduced himself as a fifteen-year-old from Boulder whose father had recently died of leukemia. There was nothing in the conversation to make Tommy suspect he wasn’t who he claimed to be, but he couldn’t deny that tingling feeling between his shoulders, that strange gut instinct that told him something just wasn’t right.

He continued to read as the new member tried to engage Tricia. Not that she had taken to the new friendship immediately. After a few polite exchanges, Tricia continued her lengthy exchanges with her regular crew, with Moto98 interjecting occasionally, only to be ignored. At one point, Tricia and Coldust20 pointedly excused themselves to go chat privately.

The new guy didn’t push it but continued to follow Tricia’s conversations and comment over the next couple of days. Then, five days ago, Moto98 made a comment about how his older brother was being a total dick, partying all the time and not even seeming to care that their mother had just died.

At that, Tricia unleashed the floodgates, telling him how awful her sister had been to her, especially in the last week since their father made them go to some dumb lake house in Idaho so they could bond.

My dad is so clueless. Like forcing us to leave our friends is going to make us actually like each other.

The conversation ended abruptly, as Tricia wrote
Speaking of, I gotta bail because bitchface just got home from the lake. Can’t let her catch me on here—not after I left my computer logged in here and she put a bunch of stuff on Facebook
.

“That’s cold.” Tommy winced.

“Sounds like typical big-sister behavior,” CJ said with a shrug. “Kelly used to torture the hell out of me,” he said with a wistful half smile.

“I remember the time she pantsed you in the middle of Derek Swanson’s birthday party,” Tommy replied, and felt a pang of sadness for the beautiful, wild young woman who loudly claimed that getting knocked up was the best thing that ever happened to her.

“Lucky for you she didn’t have Facebook or Twitter to share the pictures with the entire planet,” Kate said as she continued to read down. “ ‘
She still snoops, but I know better than to leave anything for her to find
,’ ” Kate read aloud.

“That explains the shredder program for deleted files,” Tommy said.

The last conversation with Moto98 was on Thursday evening, the night she disappeared.

I hate being here
, Tricia complained.
And get this. I met a guy at the beach yesterday—his name is Ben and he is OMG so hot. Like that guy from Vampire Diaries but with blue eyes. And he was totally flirting with me! And then you-know-who comes along with her boobs practically falling out of her bathing suit—she was wearing the one I told you about, the one where the bottom practically goes up her ass crack, the one Mom never would have let her buy, much less actually wear. So anyway, yeah, she shows up, flipping her hair like she’s having a seizure, and next thing I know Ben’s practically got drool running down his chin.
He’s going to be here in like five minutes to take her to one of those dumb bonfire parties they have all the time. And I’m going to spend the night here on the computer all night like a loser.

Who are you calling a loser? ;-)

Sorry. You know what I mean. At home I have friends, stuff to do. Before, I didn’t want to go out and do anything, but now I want to be with people.

So go out.

Right, I’m going to just go wander the streets and try to find a friend.

No, dummy, go to the party.

I can’t go. My sister will kill me.

Who gives a shit if your sister gets mad? Wait, I’ve got it. You wait till she leaves, and then you put on the sluttiest thing you can find and you go to that bonfire and give that man-stealing bitch a run for her money. :) :):) :)

OMG, I totally should!

“And that’s exactly what she did,” Kate said softly.

Tommy felt like a boulder had settled in his stomach.

“You think he targeted her?” CJ asked.

“We won’t know until I go back through the chat logs and get a lock on Moto98’s location when the conversations took place. But this is all looking a little too coincidental to me,” Tommy replied.

“Check to see if he’s been on the board since that night,” Kate said, her voice tight.

A few quick keystrokes was all it took to verify that he hadn’t. Tommy’s mouth pulled tighter. “It’s going to take me awhile to get into the accounts and figure out where that user was when these conversations took place.”

“How long?” Kate pushed.

“Depends. If we’re really dealing with a calculated predator
who knows anything about covering his tracks, could be several hours at least.”

Kate rubbed a weary hand over her face. “I don’t know if I can last that long.” The words had barely left her mouth before her stomach let out soft roar.

“You eat anything today?” CJ asked.

Kate’s brow furrowed and she looked up at the ceiling as she went back through the day.

“I think I had a piece of toast before I went to the airport this morning,” Kate said after several seconds.

“I need to talk to Jackson about this,” CJ said. “Why don’t you come with me and afterward we’ll grab a bite.”

Kate nodded and rose from her chair.

“I should go with you,” Tommy said, rising too. “Jackson will want to know all the details—”

“And as the lead investigator on this case, I think I’m capable of giving him the information,” CJ said. Though they’d known each other most of their lives and had always been friendly, there was no missing the challenge in the sheriff’s voice.

Tommy struggled to keep the bite out of his reply. “He might ask some technical questions that may be beyond the skill set of a county sheriff.”