buzzed to life with a text. I looked down at the readout. Cam.
I grinned, shoving my phone back in my pocket as I quickly tippy-toed to a pair of French doors at the back of the house. The interior was deserted, large pairings of overstuffed furniture the only occupants. Gingerly, I tried the handle on the back door. Locked. I quickly made my way along the house until I hit another pair of French doors. These looked like they led to a guest room, a colorful throw on the bed, but no personal photos or touches. Again, I tried the door. Locked tight as a drum.
Okay, obviously I wasn’t going to get that lucky.
I slipped my hand into my pocket, rummaging for anything that I could use to pick a lock. Gum, movie stub, ballpoint pen. Sigh.
I looked at the glass panes on the door. They were small, but large enough to slip a hand through. If I could smash the one near the handle…
I bent down and picked up one of Katie’s decorative rocks and lifted it over my head.
But someone grabbed it away before I could use it.
“Jesus, Bender!”
I spun around to find Cal glaring down at me. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I was gonna smash the windowpane.”
Cal dropped the rock back on the ground. “I can’t take you anywhere.” Then he proceeded to pull a long, thin thing that looked a dentist tool from his pocket. He inserted it into the keyhole and jiggled it.
“What’s that?”
“Lockpick.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “How is it a guy that ‘doesn’t feel good’ about breaking and entering owns a lockpick?”
He shrugged. “I don’t always have to feel good.”
I grinned.
My cell buzzed in my pocket. Cam again.
Gee, thanks for the heads-up.
“There.” I heard a click, then Cal turned the handle, pushing the door open. “We’re in.”
I shoved my phone back in my pocket and brushed past him into the guest room.
It was on the small side, expensively furnished, but in an understated way. A queen bed, dresser, and matching set of nightstands. A large oil painting hung above the bed depicting the Tuscan countryside, and a vase of fresh flowers sat on the dresser.
“Guest bedroom,” Cal said, voicing my thoughts.
“Let’s go find hers, then.”
I opened the bedroom door, peering out. Two more doors, then the hallway opened up to the large living room I’d seen through the first set of French doors. Quickly I tried the other two rooms, only to find similarly furnished guest rooms. Beyond the living room was a tall, winding staircase, leading to another hallway. I motioned for Cal to follow and jogged up, hoping like hell that my shoes didn’t muck up Katie’s bright white carpets.
At the top of the stairs were three more doors. The first two contained a home gym and a study. The third, a master bedroom bigger than the entire offices of the
“So, this is how the other half lives,” Cal whispered beside me.
No kidding.
I spied a Victorian writing desk in the corner. And on top of it? A laptop.
Gotcha.
“No technology my ass…” I mumbled as I crossed the room, flipping the top open and powering the sucker up.
“You know, just because she has a computer doesn’t make her a killer,” Cal pointed out. “Lots of people have computers.”
“Yeah, but why would she lie about it?”
“To impress a fan? To seem deeper than she is?”
I shrugged him off, watching the welcome screen flicker on. I went through the motions of booting up her system, then quickly started scanning her list of programs for Audio Cloak. But, of course, I still wasn’t that lucky.
“Maybe she deleted it,” Cal offered, reading over my shoulder.
I checked her trash folder. Empty.
“Got any other ideas?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “Sorry, not a computer genius.”
Unfortunately, neither was I. What I was dying to do was take this back to the office, to the one person I knew who was a computer genius. Felix. Only, if I did that, I’d also have to tell him whose it was and how I got it. Not exactly a conversation I was dying to have.
“What about her browser history?” Cal suggested. “If she had to go through the website, it should show up there, right?”
“Brilliant.” I pulled up an Internet Explorer window, then checked her history. A list of websites came up. An online shoe store, two spas, a bank,
And Match.com.
I snorted. “Looks like we just found Katie’s dirty little secret.” I clicked the link. And immediately a profile popped up on the screen for “Kate B.,” a single, “friendly, outgoing” woman in the L.A. area looking for a “confidant man who doesn’t mind sharing the spotlight.”
“Is this for real?” Cal asked over my shoulder.
I scanned through her profile. “Sadly, it looks like it.” I thought back to the lonely look in her eyes as she’d told me about her night home alone. Could it be that Katie was really that hard up to find a good man?
Cal shook his head. “Finding love online. What a myth.”
I cringed, my thoughts instantly bounding to my own dirty little secret and Black. “Not necessarily. I’m sure some people hook up that way,” I countered. “There’s no shame in looking for love online.”
Cal raised an eyebrow at me. “Ninety percent of the guys on there are losers or perverts.”
“Well, that still leaves a girl with a 10 percent chance,” I mumbled.
I looked at Kate’s picture. It wasn’t a headshot or studio airbrushed job, but a candid photo of her sitting at a park, an ice cream cone in one hand as she laughed at something off camera. I had to admit, it was nice. Okay, she was a movie star, there was no way any pic of her was going to look hideous. But it was more natural, fresher, than I’d ever seen her.
Unable to quell my curiosity, I clicked her mailbox to see who’d written to her. Three profiles came up. A guy carrying a “few extra pounds” in Omaha who loved dogs and rodeos. A guy who listed himself as five feet tall, but promised that “good things came in small packages.” And a seventy-five-year-old who listed himself as “very young at heart.”
Wow. Talk about depressing. If this was the response someone like Katie was getting, what kind of chance did the rest of us have?
“What does this have to do with your stalker?” Cal asked, glancing at his watch. Clearly he was feeling less “good” the more time we spent in Katie’s house.
“Nothing. But, it’s the best gossip I’ve hit on all year. LONELY HEART MOVIE STAR SEEKS CYBER ROMANCE.”
“I thought you said there was no shame in looking for love online.”
“There isn’t. But it makes for awesome headlines.”
Cal opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted by my cell ringing from my pocket. I slipped it out and saw Cam’s number light up the screen.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“You’ve got company.”
I froze. “What do you mean?”
