“He’s dead. He needed dealing with before we could concentrate on finding Billie. You’ll never need to worry about him again.”
Her shoulders slumped as relief washed over her face.“Did you do it? Did you kill him?”
I pressed my mouth to hers again, unable to resist the pull of feeling her lips on mine.“I’ll tell you what happened later,”I whispered against her mouth. I had no intention of lying to Kiera; from now on, there’d be no more secrets between us.“But let’s focus on finding Billie. Tell me what happened. From the start.”
Kiera relayed what happened, right up to the point Willow bashed him over the head several times with the saucepan. Kudos to Willow; she’d alwaysseemedso meek and timid, but when it mattered, she’d stepped up.
I’d have to thank her when she stopped crying.
“Do you know how he arrived here? Or how he got in?”I asked when Kiera fell quiet.
She shook her head.“No, I asked how he got in, but he didn’t answer.”
Releasing Kiera from my grasp, I crouched down next to Alec’s body, feeling his sides, and careful to avoid splatters of blood. Our cleaning crew were going to be earning a fortune from James and me today.
“What are you doing?”Kiera asked, her beautiful face contorted into disgust as I felt up her dead fiancé.
“Looking for-”I paused at finding a small lump in Alec’s pants pocket. Reaching inside, my hands curled around the object, and a satisfied grin pulled across my face.“Bingo.”
Standing, Kiera’s brows furrowed at the phone in my hand. I tapped at the screen, a message flashing up requesting a password.
“Great, another dead end,”Kiera muttered.
“You have little faith,”I replied, smirking.“This isn’t a Smarttechphone, this is a crappy, old phone. Give me five minutes, and I’ll have bypassed the password.”
She followed me as I headed to James’ office. He might not have been the tech guru I was, but he had some of the equipment I needed to break into the phone. Kiera watched in silence as I connected the phone to a small device, tapped a few buttons, and waited.
It took less than a minute for the phone to unlock.“And we’re in.”
Kiera rounded the desk to where I sat, peering over my shoulder as I clicked through the phone.
No messages.
No incoming or outgoing calls.
No IP data I could trace back to a location.
Fuck.
Not wanting to disappoint Kiera, I clicked into the gallery app on the off chance there would be something there, my brows lifting at finding a single picture. The image was blurry, but not enoughthatyou couldn’t make out a dark room with a scared little girl sitting in the middle.
“Billie!”Kiera shrieked, snatching the phone from me.“Oh, my baby. She looks terrified. Where is this, Jackson? Please tell me you can find out where this picture was taken?”
“I can try if I have the phone, Kiki.”I held out my hand to her, and sheepishly, she placed it in my open palm.
With the phone still connected to the hacking device, I navigated through different options until I found the one I needed. Clicking on it, I held my breath as the software scanned the photo, hoping like hell it would be able to find the coordinates of the location where the photo was taken.
No data found.
The message flashed up on the device screen, and my shoulders slumped.
“Thatcan’t be it, can it?”Kiera asked, her bottom lip wobbling as she battled to hold back her tears.
“No,”I replied, standing with the phone in my hand.“I’ve got other kit at my placethatis better and more intrusive. Let’s go.”
I grabbed Kiera’s hand, pulling her out of James’ office and stopping to peer into the living room. Willow and James were still on the couch, only now, Willow was sitting across James’ lap, her head resting against his chest, and her tears had stopped.
“She doing okay?”I asked, nodding my head to Willow.
