“As a matter of fact, it is. I was sick to death of the Prius.”
Jase bit back a laugh. He could imagine Kathryn driving a Prius but not Kate. As she continued down the hall, he took in her perfect round ass in the tight-fitting jeans and ignored a rush of heat that went straight to his groin.
Her office décor mirrored the sleek ivory and black of the living room. She sat down and booted up her computer, brought up Google, and they went to work.
“Let’s start with Christina,” Jase suggested. “She was in high school before she ran away. Her social media might still be on the web.”
“It is,” Kate said. “I checked periodically to see if she’d posted something that might give me a clue where to find her.”
“That was smart.”
“She never posted anything after the day she left home.”
“She didn’t want to be found.”
“No. She hated living in Rockdale. She wanted to be a city girl.”
“I guess she got her wish.”
Kate glanced away. Exhaling deeply, she turned back to the computer and pulled up her sister’s Facebook page. The photo of Chrissy looked exactly as Kate had described her. A young, fresh-faced blonde with big blue eyes and a wide, innocent smile.
They checked her Twitter account, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, everything teenagers liked to use. The postings on those accounts all stopped two years earlier, when Chrissy had run away.
“You got a good firewall on this thing?”
“Exceptional,” she said. “I’ve seen what can happen to a business that doesn’t keep up with the changing times.”
“Let’s look up Tina Galen.”
Kate started typing. Tina Galen wasn’t hard to find. She had a webpage with a photo of her nearly naked, nothing but a little red swatch of lace that barely covered her.
“Oh, God.” Kate looked up at him and her eyes filled. “I can’t believe that’s her.”
“We can stop right here, Kate. You don’t have to do this. You can let the police handle it.”
She wiped away the tears. “You really think the cops will find the killer?”
“They might get lucky.”
“That’s it? They might stumble onto something?”
“I won’t lie to you. The death of a drug addict and prostitute isn’t a high priority. So, yeah, that’s about it.”
Kate released a shuddering breath and sat up a little straighter. “Then we keep going.”
“Check out her contact information,” Jase said, hoping for something new, but the phone number listed on her page was the same one Benson had given him. They kept searching, went back to Facebook. Tina Galen had a page there, too. In her profile picture she was wearing a skintight sequined red dress that just covered her ass and plunged so low only her nipples were covered.
Kate reached out and touched the picture on the screen. “Chrissy was always so pretty. She looked like the girl next door, you know? Like the cheerleader she was in her freshman year. Here she looks ten years older.”
“Drugs will do that.” And the brutal work done by a prostitute. But he didn’t mention that. “Your sister had a tattoo on the side of her neck, just behind her left ear. It was red, like the lipstick mark from a kiss.”
“I didn’t notice it that day at the morgue. I’m sure it wasn’t there the last time I saw her, a couple of weeks before she ran away. My mother would have gone ballistic.”
“I’ve got a friend who does ink. Tomorrow I’ll go talk to him, see if there’s anything he can tell me about it.”
“Did he do the eagle on your biceps?”
“Yeah. I got it after I got out of the service.”
