by LENA DIAZ,
He didn’t.
“And your websites? Why put the ghost icon there? That’s fairly unusual.”
“It’s my signature. My way of signing each website that I create. I know it’s not commonly done, not in the business world. But I don’t have any other way to claim my work since I’m keeping my company secret. It makes me smile. Pride in my work. None of my clients ever said anything about it. If they had, I’d have taken it off.”
“Why isn’t it trademarked? We checked and you haven’t registered it. You were trying to keep it a secret that you were the one who’d designed those websites.”
“Well, sure. I work for an IT company as a programmer. Developing websites on the side is a conflict of interest. They’d fire me if they found out. I’m no murderer. This ghost stuff is a coincidence.”
“And it’s a coincidence that several of your clients are criminals?”
She tightened her fists beside her. “Yes. It is. I never knew they were criminals until yesterday, assuming that wasn’t another lie on your part. Why are you—”
“The murder list. The killer leaves a piece of paper attached to each victim. It didn’t make sense at first, because that first victim had their own name written down on the paper, then crossed off. But when the second victim was found with their name and the name of the first victim crossed off, the connection was made. The list grows with each victim. But we haven’t been able to get ahead of it and figure out his next planned kill in time to save the person’s life. That’s what most of the team is working on, desperately trying to get ahead of the killer so we can prevent the next murder instead of playing catch-up.”
His gaze locked on hers with the intensity of a laser. “We call the killer The Ghost because that’s how he signs each murder list. But this time, it was different. This time, he included a hand-drawn picture.”
He held up the phone. It showed a piece of yellow legal pad paper with five names. The first one was Bethany Miller. It was crossed out with a red streak that could have been ink or blood. Each of the others were crossed out the same way. And at the bottom was a picture. Of a ghost.
She pressed her hand to her throat. “That picture, it...it’s—”
“Exactly like the icon you use on your websites. Exactly.” He started the engine, then punched the gas.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hayley sat in the conference room at Camelot, the same one she’d been in the day before. But this time the only person with her was Dalton. As if to reassure her that she wasn’t a prisoner, he’d left the door open.
But the way he was badgering her with questions, interrogating her, made it seem like they’d lost all the ground they’d gained between them. Had he completely changed his mind about her and now believed she was guilty of...something? At best, helping criminals? At worst, he thought she was a killer? The tables had definitely turned. And she didn’t like it one bit. It was so exasperating and infuriating that she was either going to start crying soon or grab his gun and shoot him.
She motioned toward the website on the laptop’s computer screen. “I already told you that I built that website. And I gave you my client list. How was I supposed to know they weren’t legit?”
“Don’t you vet your clients, research them, before taking them on?”
“Oh, please. I’m not a cop or a private investigator. Before I started looking into my friend’s murder, the best I could do in that arena was an online search. Even now, I’m not much more skilled than that. And I assure you, if you perform a search on my clients’ companies, they pass the smell test, nothing fishy at all. Why would I expect anything else? Obviously if I’d known they were criminals, I wouldn’t have done business with them. But that’s not anything that ever occurred to me.”
“What about the secret web pages you create for them? You don’t connect them to the main websites. And you set up each client to use Tor when using the hidden pages. Why would you do that?”
“They wanted the access through Tor because it helps ensure privacy and security for things they didn’t want the public to see, proprietary things. I created the hidden pages so web crawlers couldn’t discover them, set them up with Tor, end of story. If they’re doing something else after I set up their websites, it’s nothing I know about.”
“You didn’t think they were using Tor and your hidden pages for something illegal?”
“Why would I? There’s a ton of legal stuff that goes through Tor. It makes it easy for international companies to use Bitcoins to purchase goods. Even some banks use Tor and Bitcoin. These questions might make sense to ask now, given the ghost thing, and that you’re telling me my clients are using my websites for nefarious purposes. But none of that was on my radar when I was struggling to pay my student loans. I just thought the secret pages were something different and neat. A new challenge for my programming muscles.”
He turned the laptop and typed a few keystrokes, then turned it back to face her. “What do you see?”
She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “My ghost icon on one of my websites. And before you ask, no, I have no idea how it ended up on that so-called murder list today. Why are you treating me like this? If you think I’m the killer, have the police put me in jail and be done with it. Don’t keep hurting me like this.”
He glanced at her, and she could have sworn she saw a flicker of regret. But then he motioned toward the computer. “Show me these secret web pages.”
Every command, every sick insinuation, was cracking her heart just a little more. But it was also making her angry enough to spit. She’d give him whatever information she could just in case it could save a life. But not a second more than that.
A moment later, she waved to the screen. “There. See the title? And the pictures down the side? It’s clearly internal company policies and things like that. Boring stuff outside clients have no desire or business seeing.”
“That’s just the main hidden page for that particular client. There are more. Bring them up.”
She blinked. “What? Why? Those are private. I can’t just show them to you.”
“You said that you’d do whatever it took to try to help.”
“Revealing my clients’ private information is unethical.”
His jaw tightened as he punched some keys on the keyboard. “I figured out your algorithm for how you named your hidden pages for this one particular client. So I was able to find a lot of their secret pages. I’ll bring one of them up right now.” He punched a few more keys then turned the screen around to face her. “Tell me, Hayley. What exactly is ethical about this?”
She looked at the screen, then sucked in a sharp breath. “What is that?” Her voice was so tight she could barely speak.
“Seems pretty clear to me. One of your secret web pages, filled with crime scene photos from this morning’s murder. Notice your ghost icon on the page, clearly marking it as your work? And that—” he pointed to the yellow image on the right side “—is the murder list. You do this kind of work for all your clients?”
She stared at him in horror. “You think I did this? Posted these...these...” She gestured toward the screen, then snapped the laptop closed. “I didn’t do that, Dalton. I swear.”
“Who else would do it? You said your clients don’t have their own programmers.”
“I don’t know. But I didn’t do this. How could I? I’ve been with you for most of the past few days. Even if I wanted to modify that page to put those images on it, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity.”
“Those pictures were from when the crime scene was fresh, before the body started to decompose.”
She swallowed hard, trying not to gag. Then she shoved back her chair. “I’m leaving.”
He grabbed the laptop and punched more keys, then turned it toward her as she rounded the table. “What about that one?”
She stiffened but hes
itated at the open doorway. In the outer office, Brielle stared at her from over her computer screen, an accusing look on her face. Behind her, at another desk, one of the others—Bryson maybe, the former FBI profiler, if she could believe what had been carved into that round table—gave her the same suspicious, decidedly unfriendly look.
“We’re not done, Hayley,” Dalton called out. “I haven’t figured out the algorithms to bring up the addresses for your other clients’ pages. Are you going to show them to me? Or are you afraid I’ll see what else you’ve been doing for the criminals that you work for?”
She slowly turned around. The anger vibrating in his voice had her chest tightening. This was the Dalton Lynch she’d expected when she was following him around. But after seeing how kind he really was, instead of the monster she’d envisioned, and the way she’d thought their relationship had changed these past few days, it was crushing to see him like this. She’d thought he genuinely cared about her. God knew she cared about him, even now, even though he was ripping her heart out.
“I told you that I didn’t know that any of them were criminals.”
“And yet, every single one of them is exactly that, a criminal. That’s not looking too good for you.”
She drew a deep breath before she could trust herself to speak. “After that first website, my client referred me to the next client. And so on. I had the bad fortune of my first client being a criminal, so it makes sense that anyone he referred to me was also a criminal. There. That’s probably how so many of my clients are bad guys, okay?”
“You expect me to believe that? Ghost?”
She sucked in a breath at his cruelty. Unshed tears burned at the backs of her eyes, making her hate herself for letting him hurt her this way. She fought to keep them from falling, and stepped to the laptop. Then she punched in a web page address for one of her other client’s hidden pages, determined to prove that the rest of them were simply boring proprietary data.
Except that wasn’t what came up on the screen.
She stared in horror at the graphic pictures of yet another murder victim, a murder list on a yellow legal pad and the ghost icon. Her ghost icon.
Her hand shook as she pulled out a chair and sank down into it. “I didn’t do this. I swear.”
He said nothing. He simply sat there with the same judgmental look that the other Seekers had when she’d stood in the doorway.
Pulling the laptop closer, she brought up every hidden page that she’d ever created. Ugly photographs of various murders showed up on several of them.
“God help me,” she whispered, before shutting the lid on the computer. “I never go to those pages. There’s no reason for me to do that. And even if I did, why would I post those awful pictures? Why would my clients post them? It makes no sense.”
“Proof of death. You post them on specified pages as you do the dirty work for each client so they’ll know the job is done. They probably wire your fee for your real work to an unnumbered account you have offshore.”
“Are you kidding me? You think I’m some kind of killer for hire?”
“Are you?”
She blinked back the burn of angry tears that wanted to fall. No way would she let him see her cry. “When Bethany was killed, I was in Pigeon Forge at my day job. The police verified my alibi a long time ago.”
He shrugged. “Maybe the medical examiner was wrong about time of death.”
She tightened her hands on the arms of the chair. “When was the second victim killed?”
He told her, and she checked her phone’s calendar. Thankfully she had a verifiable alibi for that date and time, too. They volleyed back and forth until she’d dispelled, at least in her opinion, any possibility that she could have killed these people.
She shoved back her chair and slapped her palms on the table. “I don’t know why someone hacked into my client websites and left those awful photos. Or whether my clients really did hire some killer and that person put those pictures out there. Or why a killer would use my ghost icon on his murder list. Maybe I’m being framed. I don’t know. I leave that to you professionals to figure out. I hope you enjoyed this little interrogation. Because it’s the last time you and I will ever speak. I’m done.”
He looked past her and arched his brows. “She has an alibi for every murder. Was that good enough to convince you once and for all that she’s innocent?”
Hayley whirled around. In the doorway, Detective Sampson stood with handcuffs dangling from one hand, her other resting on the butt of her holstered pistol. Behind her were four uniformed officers.
Sampson slid the handcuffs in her back pocket, then gave Dalton a crisp nod. “Good enough. I’ll cancel the arrest warrant, update the chief. Keep me posted on any new evidence or theories, Dalton.”
“You bet.”
She gave Hayley a tight smile. “If what you said is true, then I hope you can forgive me, and Dalton. I was ready to arrest you at the park. I had a warrant already, based on the murder list and the ghost icon matching your websites. But Dalton convinced me to wait, so he could try to prove you were innocent.” She motioned to the uniformed officers. They all headed toward the front door.
Hayley slowly turned around. “She was here with a warrant, to arrest me?”
“Yes. I’m sorry I was so rough, that I put you through this. But I didn’t want you going back to jail. I told Sampson that you had nothing to do with any of the murders. That someone’s trying to set you up, as you just said. But she wasn’t buying it.”
“So...you did this...showed me those awful pictures, accused me of horrible things, because she was watching?”
Again, he nodded. “She got here right after you and I did. Mason convinced her to wait in his office.” He waved at the camera in the corner of the ceiling. “She watched the whole thing. Thankfully, you’re organized enough to know what you were doing when each murder occurred. I’m sure she was searching the internet and making calls at the same time, verifying as much as she could or she wouldn’t have left without you in cuffs. And she’ll do more, to be absolutely sure your stories check out.”
She started shaking. “I was almost arrested for murder. Oh my God.” Her voice broke and she covered her face with her hands, no longer able to hold back the tears of anger and fear and frustration.
He swore and pulled her into his arms.
A knock sounded on the open door behind them, but she buried her face against Dalton’s chest. She didn’t care who it was. She couldn’t take any more. Not yet.
“Dalton.” It was Sampson’s voice. “You mentioned at the park that you wanted me to see whether Chandler Harding had a record, that his name rang some kind of bell. I asked one of the admins to run it down. They emailed it to me and I just had Brielle print it out.” She tossed a thin manila folder on top of the desk. “He’s got a rap sheet longer than my two arms put together. But he died years ago. What’s that have to do with our current situation?”
“Probably nothing. I don’t know. Just another thread to pull.”
“Well, enjoy pulling. I don’t have time to read ancient history. I’ve got to update the chief. And make plans to attend yet another funeral.”
The door clicked closed.
Hayley pushed herself back and wiped at her eyes. But she couldn’t quite look at him. She was too bruised, too hurt, even though he had an explanation for the brutal way he’d treated her.
Suddenly her world tilted and she was in his arms, which had her tears flowing all over again. He sat down and drew her against him, gently rocking while talking to her and rubbing his hand up and down her back.
She shouldn’t have liked being held by him after what just happened, and her earlier disastrous meeting here, too. But then again, she’d treated him terribly for months. And yet he’d set up this little drama to save her. It dawned on her that in spite of everything, he believed in her.
He’d stood up for her when no one else had. He was in her corner, protecting her, helping her, keeping her safe. She couldn’t remember anyone ever doing that before.
When she was finally able to stop crying, she pushed back and stared up at him. “I’ve soaked your shirt.”
He smiled and gently pushed her hair out of her eyes. “You can soak my shirt any time if it makes you feel better.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you help me, with Detective Sampson? And why did you hold me, just now?”
“Don’t you get it, Hayley? I’m falling for you. Not just because you’re mind-blowingly sexy. I’m falling for you because you’re whip smart and sassy, and you care as much about justice as I do. That’s rare. And it’s why I realized you were innocent even before you had those alibis. I already told Mason that I was going to fight for you, hire a lawyer, whatever it took if you didn’t have any alibis. You’re a special woman. And I’m in your corner now. We’ll get through this, and then maybe we can have a first date like other couples. Something without blood or hospital threats or the police involved.”
“Or Jack Daniels?” she teased.
“Well, now. Drunk Hayley is adorable. Don’t be too hasty.”
She laughed.
His smile faded and he cupped her face in his hands. “There’s one other thing I need to tell you. I want to explain that comment you asked about, regarding the medical examiner and your friend’s death.”
“No.” She pressed her hands against his. “I can’t take any more revelations today. The only thing I want you to do right now is kiss me. Will you do that? Please?”
In answer, he cupped the back of her head and pulled her against him, then pressed his lips to hers.