EB:
I don’t understand.
CM:
Will isn’tinmy class. He’s … he’s the professor.
Katrina
THE DAY OF
It took a couple hours for Ahmed to get back to me. If he’d noticed the texts’ content, he didn’t say a word.
It’s an actual burner phone. Not an app.
Ok. That’s a dead end, then?
Not necessarily. I can do a little more “digging.” I think I’ve got someone who might have better access. If I can get a point of purchase, will send ASAP … You’re welcome. And you owe me.
An actual burner phone purchased in an electronics store with security cameras? Darden security would never make such an amateurish mistake. Phil Beaumont had made this point back in Mark’s office and it had stuck with me. Darden would surely use some kind of app, which would be far harder to crack than a physical phone, even a disposable one.
What if Phil had been telling the truth? If Darden hadn’t been sending me those messages, then who—Kyle? He was furious, but he didn’t have the savvy or the commitment to dig that deep into my past. Which left … whoever was in the hall that night at Haven House. Silas presumably. What I’d suspected from the start. But why now, after all this time? Something about the timing didn’t make sense.
Or maybe the timingdidmake sense—but not for Silas.
Aidan. I’d been trying to avoid even considering the possibility. Quite a coincidence that the amount the blackmailer was demanding was almost exactly the amount Aidan needed. And while I’d never told him the details, I’d alluded to how they’d shuttled me out of Haven House like smuggled contraband. It wasn’t all that difficult to imagine a scenario in which a desperate and frustrated Aidan could have gone poking around, and eventually tracked down Silas or whoever had been on the scene that night and found out the whole story, or enough to threaten me with it. He was lazy, but he could be surprisingly resourceful when it came to getting the things he wanted. But threatening Cleo, even as a ruse? That would be a new low.
I could barely contain my relief as I looked down at the old-school burner Jimmy handed me when he showed up in Park Slope unannounced a few hours later. A burner meant no cloud, no Find My iPhone app. Just as I’d hoped. “Thank you. And thanks for the house call. I really appreciate it.”
“There’s something you should know, though,” he said, pausing halfway back down the steps.
“I feel like I probably would rather not.”
“Guy woke up on my way out,” Jimmy said, ignoring me. “I had a mask on, but he saw me. He said, ‘I’ll fucking kill that bitch.’”
“Shit.” Did he mean—me or Cleo? She was a much easier target.
