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Dev found another electrical outlet and plugged the tablet in again to keep it charged while they scanned its contents.
Kiana sat on a stool, opened the tablet’s case, propped the screen up and laid out the miniature keyboard. Next, she opened the journal and found the page with the passwords. She ran her finger down the list until she found the entry for the tablet and keyed in the login and password. The tablet blinked and displayed the desktop with a tropical beach background.
Dev opened the refrigerator and whistled. “For people who don’t come here often, they have a fully stocked refrigerator. What would you like to drink? Beer, wine, a power drink, tea?”
Without looking up, Kiana answered, “Chardonnay, if they have it.”
Kiana clicked on icons, one after another until she found Meredith’s social media applications and the link that opened the ancestry site. It required another login and password, which she quickly found in the journal. “I’m up on her social media and on the ancestry site.”
“Great.” Dev set a glass of white wine and a bottle of beer on the counter, walked away and returned with a charcuterie board filled with crackers, different kinds of cheese and olives.
“Nice,” she said and layered a piece of cheese onto a cracker and took a bite. “Mmm. I didn’t realize how hungry I was. Not only are you a bodyguard and good in a fight, but you’re also handy in the kitchen. What other skills are you holding out on?”
He gave her a sexy smile. “I’m a man of many talents,” he said. “I save the best ones for special occasions.” Then he winked.
She nearly choked on her cracker as her heart skipped a beat and heat coiled low in her belly.
Kiana wanted to know about the best ones and the special occasions but didn’t dare ask. She didn’t need to go down that path. Been there, done that, had the empty bank account and broken engagement to prove it.
Still, Dev wasn’t Carl. Dev was a man who valued loyalty and honor. Carl only valued himself.
Focus.
She stared down at the tablet until her brain reengaged in the task at hand. Starting with the ancestry site, she bumbled her way through several screens until she came to one with a diagram of people related to each other.
Had Meredith found her blood relatives?
A shiver of excitement rippled through Kiana. Excitement followed by dread. Could one of her blood relatives be the person behind the attacks?
Dev sat on the stool beside her and took a drink of his beer. “My mother is big into genealogy. She tracked her family all the way back to England in the late sixteen-hundreds. She’s only gotten my father’s line back to Johnson City, Tennessee, in the early eighteen hundreds. But she’s still working on it.” He leaned close. “What did Meredith find?”
“I’m not sure. It looks like a list of people with similar DNA.”
“Not everyone enters data into these programs, but it’s surprising how many people do and how much information is available.” He pointed to where Meredith’s name was displayed. “Apparently, she’s found some people she’s related to. And if you look at the number of centimorgans shared between her and some other people who’ve performed DNA testing, she’s matched with a number of close relatives.
“Wow.” Kiana shook her head. “She must have found this recently. She only got her DNA results back a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t gotten mine back yet. After I gifted her the test, she insisted I do it, too. I wonder if she’s tried to contact any of these people.”
“May I?” Dev asked.
“Please. I’m not sure how to look at all this.” Kiana slid the tablet toward him.
Dev scrolled through the list of people whose DNA matched Meredith's. “If this information is current, one of these men could be her father. If you click on each name, you get information that might have been collected on that individual from census reports, birth records, news articles and obituaries. Public records. This man, Robert Pearson, is about the right age to be her father and is considered a close relative.”
Dev clicked on Pearson. A disjointed history of his life was displayed. “He graduated from a high school here on Oahu, went to college locally, then attended college in California.” He pointed at the screen. “He appears to have stayed in California, moving around a couple of times. He married a woman from California, and they have two children.”
“Wow, it’s all there.” Kiana shook her head. “Except knowing exactly what his relationship is to Meredith.”
Dev clicked on the next man, Joe Akana. “This guy is also around the same age as Pearson. He’s not related to Pearson at all. They have no matching DNA, which means Pearson could be Meredith’s father, and Akana could be related on her mother’s side. Or vice versa.”
“But she has relatives out there.” Kiana stared at the screen, wondering what her DNA test would reveal. Would she find the family she’d longed for all these years? “She just had to untangle the history to find her origin.”
“Pretty much.” Dev followed the list of entries under Akana. “Born in Honolulu, went to high school here. Married, divorced. He doesn’t appear to have had any children of his own. His father was a native Hawaiian, and his mother was an Irish-Hawaiian mix based on her birth parents. Joe had one sister, Martina Akana, two years younger. I’ll have Swede search these names.” He clicked a couple more times. “Pearson’s parents could be grandparents.”
“Why doesn’t it show the mother?” Kiana asked.
“Probably because she hasn’t submitted her DNA to this database,” Dev said. “Based on his age, Joe could be a cousin or an uncle.”
“He might know who Meredith’s mother was, either way.”
