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His silence was the only reply, so I let it be.
By the time the garage door went down, Ransom was halfway inside the house. I struggled to catch up, but the door slammed to the house before I got there. Pushing inside, Ransom was in the hall bathroom with the door shut before I could say a word. Guess he wasn’t up for a chat tonight.
Tossing the dessert bag into the refrigerator, I went to my room and undressed, removed my makeup, put on a wide-necked, long T-shirt, and padded out to the kitchen. Digging around, I found the molds for ice balls. He had two molds with six balls each. Deciding we just needed good chunks of ice, I filled each side separately to make twice as many twice as fast. Then I stuck them in the back of the freezer. I set my alarm for three hours to see if they were frozen and decided it would be a good stretch break anyway.
Since it was only nine-thirty and I was wired after dinner, I wanted to do some more research on my theory about the mysterious rise in suicides among models. Popping my laptop open, I sat on the edge of the bed scrolling obituaries in New York City. Since I was only looking for young models, it was easy to check. Nothing new today. So, I checked my email. After clearing out the junk, I found one from Gigi.
Hey, Phoebe girl. Thought you’d want to know. Police are officially declaring Tatianna’s death a suicide. Her mother talked to the press adamant that it was a murder and it was only declared a suicide to save face for Harry Norman. Wish someone would find out what’s really going on. Hope you’re having fun with that hunk of man. -G
Staring at the pieces of this model suicide puzzle, it just didn’t connect. It was time to hack the security feed for Harry Norman. I entwined my fingers and stretched them until they cracked. Then I wiggled them and got to work. Pulling up a few screens that were a smidge illegal to access, I got my operational security in place. But I wasn’t doing this to steal anything. I was more of a grayhat, getting in without permission but only to see the footage from that night. I needed to look for anything the police missed or never checked in the first place. Clearly, a man as rich as Harry Norman had contacts in law enforcement. It wouldn’t surprise me if they tagged it suicide just to close the investigation.
Once I was in, I pulled up the feed from the night Tatianna attended the party. Going back to nine p.m., I worked my way through hours of footage. Searching for Tatianna’s picture, I scrolled the footage and took screenshots of others who attended. Witnesses, potential killers, people who were there and may have seen something. I felt my eyes start to droop a few times, but I kept at it. This was important. But after a few more frames, everything went black.
Had someone found me and cut me out? Then it flicked back on again with a message.
Burning Savage: You’re up late
Me: Fuck, BS, you startled me.
Burning Savage: Why do you care what happened at Norman’s place?
Me: Curiosity.
Burning Savage: Don’t fuck around with Norman. You’ll get burned.
Me: I’m not going to fuck with him. I just want to see what happened to the girl.
Burning Savage: She fell.
Me: What if she was pushed?
He sent me a link.
Burning Savage: She wasn’t.
I finally found the feed of the camera closest to the stairs. Scouring the footage, it was too grainy to tell what was happening. There were people milling in the area, then it seemed like someone slipped up the stairs. Someone else followed but hid in the shadows. There was no way to tell who that was.
Me: But someone was following her.
The alarm on my phone blared. “Holy shit!” Clutching my chest to stop my thundering heart, I closed out of the portal, closed the browser, and shut my computer lid just in case.
Then I remembered. The alarm was to check the ice balls.
Snickering at myself, I padded out to the kitchen in my fluffy hippo slippers. Turning on the flashlight on my phone so the lights didn’t wake Ransom, I made my way to the freezer. I pulled them out and used my phone to find a container for them. Bent over digging in cabinets, I popped up when the light flipped on.
“Jesus, fuck!” I screeched, spinning so fast I whacked my head on the cabinet door, then the freezer door, and crumpled to the floor.
Ransom caught me before my head hit the floor. “Raven! Are you okay?”
I groaned, feeling my forehead. “Yeah. What the fuck are you doing up?”
He scooped me up and took me to the sofa. “Couldn’t sleep.” Kneeling beside me, he tilted his head and squinted as he gingerly touched around the spot on my forehead. “It’ll probably bruise without ice.”
I felt my head wincing. “Oh, the irony.”
He brought me a bag of frozen peas with a towel. Then he went back to the kitchen and unloaded the ice balls into a container just so we could torture him with them later.
I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking about how stupid I was to be jumpy. One minute, I had a semi-famous hacker messaging me, then I was looking for a killer on a security feed, so I naturally assumed one of them was actually in Ransom’s place? So ridiculous.
