Page 22 of If She Sensed

"Framed as logistical infomration."

"Dating intentions."Sloane looked up."That's not a coaching intake form.That's a targeting document."

"It could be both," Kate said, because she needed to say it."A legitimate program could use all of this information exactly the way it claims to.None of these fields are inherently sinister."

"No," Sloane said."But if someone with access to these records wanted to find recently divorced women living alone who were actively considering dating again, then this form gives them everything they need.Name, address, whether there are kids in the house, who their closest friends are."

"Yes. It’s…all-encompassing.”

Sloane set the laptop back on the table."We need to go back at Hale.Today, if possible."

"Not yet," Kate said.She hadn’t meant to say it so quickly, not wanting to shoot Sloane’s idea down right away.But it was too late to take it back.

Sloane looked at her as she sipped from her coffee.“Why not?”

"What we have right now is a data ethics concern," Kate said."An overly detailed intake form and one woman's account of feeling that her private disclosure was used without her consent.That's notnothingfor sure, but it's also not close to what we'd need to move on him in any meaningful way.If we go back at him now with what we have and heisguilty of something, he's going to see exactly where we're pointing and he'll have a lawyer between us and him before the end of the business day."

Sloane was quiet for a moment.She knew Kate was right, though she did not look happy about it."So, we build more first."

"Yes.But what, exactly, I’m not quite sure yet."

Sloane's phone rang before either of them could make a suggestion.She glanced at the screen, said "Forensics," and answered it quickly.She listened for about thirty seconds, said thank you, and ended the call.

"They came up empty for prints on Donna's back door," she said."No usable prints.Wiped or gloved, same as Carol's.They did find a partial footprint in the back yard but it’s so faint that they aren’t expecting much.”"

Kate had expected as much, but that didn't make it easier to absorb.Two clean scenes, with no physical evidence, and a suspect pool that was currently an intake form and a woman's uneasy feeling about a coaching session.

She looked at the laptop screen, still open to the Fresh Horizons Join Us page.She considered it for a moment and decided that these direct forms weren’t going to be the only way to get specific and very detailed information.

“Maybe we go back to those forums and the private Facebook page,” Kate said.“So, some deep dives and look for connections between the users.”

Sloane nodded slowly."Couldn’t hurt.”

But even as they both settled in to do just that, Kate felt a very familiar sensation settle in over the room.While what they were doing was necessary, it also meant that as they were sitting behind a desk, their killer was likely out there planning their next attack.

CHAPTERFIFTEEN

The champagne was a twelve-dollar bottle she had bought at the grocery store on the way home… and she didn't care even slightly.

Nancy had been saving it, in the loosest sense of the word.It had been sitting in the refrigerator for three weeks, purchased on a whim during a moment of cautious optimism that she hadn't quite been ready to act on yet.Tonight felt like the right occasion.She'd pulled it out the moment she got home, peeled the foil, worked out the cork with both thumbs, and poured herself a glass right there at the kitchen counter.

That had been forty minutes ago.She'd since changed into pajamas, washed her face, and was now standing at the bathroom mirror with the glass raised.

"Okay," she said to her reflection, and took a long sip.

She was fifty-three years old and she had just slept with a man she genuinely liked.It had been wonderful, and she figured she was allowed to stand in her own bathroom and acknowledge it out loud to no one in particular.They had been on three dates and yes, she supposed it had moved fast.She’d spent part of the drive home rehearsing the argument she'd need to make when she told her friends, preparing for the raised eyebrows and judgy looks.But the honest answer was that it hadn't felt fast in the room.It had felt like a natural conclusion to three evenings that had already been more honest and easier than most of the conversations she could remember having in the last several years of her marriage.

When the decision had been made between them, it had not been verbal.It had been purely physical.She’d been almost embarrassed at how quickly she climaxed.She’d trembled so much afterward that he’d asked several times if she was okay, and she’d had to urge him to keep on going.

She looked at herself in the mirror and laughed a little at that, quietly and without embarrassment.Four years was a long time and she had started to wonder whether that part of herself had simply gone offline permanently.Now she knew it hadn't.The knowing was its own small, private triumph, separate from everything else about the evening and maybe the best part of it.That, and the anticipation of seeing him again.

She raised the glass once more at her reflection, drank, and set it on the edge of the sink.

Her divorce had been final for three years.She had spent most of that time being very sensible about everything, which was what everyone around her had encouraged her to be.She'd done the Fresh Horizons program and completed every step.She'd started therapy with a woman she actually liked, which had taken three tries to find.

She had even rebuilt the friendships that the marriage had slowly dissolved—or, rather, the ones that had mattered.She had taken cooking classes at the community college, had started cooking real meals again instead of eating crackers over the kitchen sink at nine o'clock at night.She had been, by almost any measure, impressively functional.She had handled the end of a twenty-one-year marriage with more grace than it deserved.She had done the work, and dammit, she had earned tonight.

Her phone buzzed on the counter beside the sink.She picked it up and saw the notification: a like on the post she'd made in the Fresh Horizons forum earlier in the evening, before she'd left for the date.She'd posted something brief and deliberately vague, just a few sentences about feeling ready for something new, and someone had come across it and hearted it.She looked at the username without fully registering it, still smiling.Someone in that group had taken two seconds to respond to it.After everything that forum had given her in the past year, the small gestures still meant something.