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Kay checked to see if there was any news as to Jenna’s phone records, but nothing had been filed yet. She typed a quick note to Deputy Farrell, asking her to expedite the records and get Mrs. Jerrell involved in obtaining them as soon as possible.
The unsub must’ve reached Jenna somehow, and that wasn’t by singing a serenade under her windows. The answer had to be in her phone. The actual device, crushed in the fall, was still with the ME. Last time she’d checked, they hadn’t been able to get the device to start.
Satisfied, she pushed the laptop aside and went back to visualizing the meeting between the unsub and Jenna. The girl must’ve been less than willing to have sex, much less than the unsub had anticipated. But he’d come to meet her already aroused, his urges screaming for release. So, he drugged her and took her up the mountain, a long hike for someone who’s drowsy from the Rohypnol. Maybe he drugged her up on the ridge, because she fought back, but had climbed the ridge voluntarily?
Maybe he wasn’t very strong, physically, to subdue Jenna, and needed the roofie to make her compliant.
Or maybe he’d discovered something while she fought him as hard as she could. He discovered who he really was. A sociopath, aroused by Jenna’s resistance and her screams. Someone who found that overpowering her was the one sensation he’d been looking for his entire life. And he couldn’t get enough. But she couldn’t fight too much or too hard; she was already drugged.
That’s why he took Kendra.
How?
She browsed Kendra’s phone records quickly, looking for a message or a phone call that might’ve suggested who he was.
Prior to Kendra leaving the winery, there hadn’t been any text message on her phone reading like an invitation or a date. But there was a call from a phone number with a San Francisco area code.
Kay typed another message to Deputy Farrell, asking her to identify who that caller was. She almost sent it, but something held her back. She wondered if she wasn’t missing something in the messages and phone calls going back and forth between those kids, like a web of secrets and lies bouncing around in their group. How did Jenna’s reputation get tarnished? Who had initiated the cyberbullying?
She typed another short paragraph to the deputy, asking her to get phone records for all the players in the twisted game that had cost Jenna her life, maybe Kendra’s too. “Expedite it, please,” she wrote, cringing at the thought of how long it was going to take.
She needed a faster way to find the unsub, if she was going to find Kendra alive.
It was almost five in the morning, too early to do anything, but she couldn’t sit still and waste two more hours of Kendra’s life. She got dressed quickly in jeans and a white cotton shirt, and grabbed her keys on the way out.
This morning, she was reversing the roles. She would pick Elliot up and start tracing the path of the destructive smear campaign that had been cast over Jenna’s existence.
She’d never visited Elliot, but she knew where he lived. He’d showed her the place in passing; it was an older farmhouse on about two acres of grassy land. When she arrived, the house was veiled in darkness, lit only by the pale light coming from the moon through thick live oak foliage.
She walked around the back, at first to see if one of the rooms were lit, but it was still very early. At the rear of the house, the strong moonlight, unobstructed by trees, landed on the windows and an open sliding glass door, dimly lit from the inside.
Feeling like a stalker yet curious nevertheless, she drew close, pussyfooting through the grasses until she reached the open sliding door.
Elliot was asleep on a large bed, a sheet covering only parts of his naked body. The light from a night table lamp on the other side of the bed cast pale shades of yellow on his taut muscles and tousled hair. She looked at him sleeping, her eyes lingering on his body, knowing just how wrong it was what she was doing and yet unable to stop. Things could be different for Elliot and her, so much different, if she could take the chance. If he would say something for once.
She turned away from the unsettling view, leaning against the glass and looking at the waning moon. Toward the east, the sky was starting to change color. A sigh left her lungs… she was being ridiculous; if she’d been in his place, she’d been appalled by this behavior. There was no excuse.
She knocked against the glass, loudly, refusing to look inside again until the light changed.
“You decent in there?” Kay asked. “May I come in?”
Elliot sat on the bed, gathering the sheet around his body with a rushed gesture, looking confused. “What happened?” He locked eyes with her, turning flush. She hid a smile. “I overslept? I’m sorry. What time is it?”
“You didn’t oversleep,” Kay said, beginning to regret her impulse to visit. “I’m early.”
“Oh,” he said, wrapping the sheet tightly around his waist before leaving the bed. Still perplexed by her unexpected visit, he seemed uncertain of what to do next. “Take a seat,” he said, gesturing toward the bed. “I need to get dressed. Did anything happen?”
She remained standing. “No. I just… couldn’t sleep, that’s all, and I thought it would be okay if I picked you up today instead.”
“Sure, that’s fine,” he said, turning around and looking for something. “I was up late. Miranda kept me up half the night. She was sick… her belly ached.” He found his slippers under the bed and put them on, then rushed into the bathroom.
Her heart sank. Miranda? Dashed, she started noticing things. The bed, a king-size, looked as if it had been slept in on both sides. The other side lamp had been on before she’d arrived. There was a woman in Elliot’s life, and Kay stood there like an idiot in another woman’s bedroom. Her blood froze at the thought Miranda could walk in at any moment and catch her standing by Elliot’s bed.
“I’m going to go,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “Pick me up when you’re ready, okay?” She stepped outside in the cool air of the early dawn and breathed.Stupid. What did you expect? That he’d wait for you forever, to make up your damn mind?
He caught up with her, barefoot in the dew-covered grass, wearing a pair of jeans with the belt still undone and fussing with a golf shirt. “Where are you going? You’re here already, and I’ll be ready in less than no time,” He slid the golf shirt over his head and buckled up his belt. “Let me introduce you to Miranda.”
Breath caught in her throat.Oh, hell, no, she thought. “Maybe some other time, all right?” She was dying to get out of there. “We need to go to work. I know what we’ve been missing. We’ve been looking at this entire thing wrong.”
