Kiss Me, Kill Me

Party Girl membership. Chat rooms were also available, both free and paid.

Sean was going to want to access Kirsten’s profile as soon as possible. Lucy sent him the information she’d thus far uncovered and added a message.

I think you’ll find the answers you need in Kirsten’s profile. I can’t tell if her video chats were with the same person, or upward of fifty different people, but you’ll definitely want to track down the guy she was having sex with on the video. I saved it on her desktop so you can look at it. I’m going to look into this Party Girl site some more. There’s nothing illegal with these types of online sex sites; they’re akin to 900 numbers. If you get into her profile, see if you can find a log of who she has chatted with. It may be in her private PG email, and also see if there are any message archives. If you’re busy, send me her password and I’ll go through her profile myself.

She sent Sean the message, then realized she was still in her bathrobe and it was well after noon. She quickly dressed in jeans and a sweater, then jogged down the stairs to make a sandwich. She’d just taken her first bite when she heard the postman drop the mail into the box outside the front door. She retrieved it, sorting through bills and junk mail. In the middle of it all was a letter addressed to Ms. Lucia Kincaid from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Heart racing, excited and nervous, she quickly opened it.

Lucy stared at the single page. She didn’t blink; she didn’t move; she didn’t even read it twice. Her eyes were fixed on one phrase in the middle of legalese:

your application is denied

She refolded the single piece of paper, slipped it back into the envelope, and slowly walked up the stairs to her room, each step a small mountain, hands shaking, sandwich forgotten.

She’d failed. The FBI didn’t want her.

She fell onto her bed and stared at the ceiling, hope washed away along with her future.

She wasn’t going to be an FBI agent. Everything she’d been working toward for nearly seven years, gone. She was twenty-five years old and she had no idea what she was going to do with her life.

It’s not fair!

She squeezed back tears. How dare she even think about fairness! Her life had never been fair, but who in the hell had promised her it would be? Lucy could blame no one but herself. Kate and her friends and family had been fully supportive, doing everything they could to prepare her for the FBI. She’d taken mock written tests, gone through practice interviews, used the recommendations of high-ranking FBI agents to get her in the door-she had more advantages than most applicants, and she’d still failed.

They’d rejected her.

It was on her, only her.

FOUR

Trey Danielson slumped into a kitchen chair in the Bentons’ kitchen and glared at Sean and Patrick. “You tricked me,” he said.

Sean sat across from Trey, still angry about the video Lucy had uncovered on Kirsten’s computer. Lucy should never have had to watch it, but more than his concern about Lucy’s sensitivities, Sean was furious that the high school senior had done such a dumbass thing in the first place.

“Where’s Kirsten?” he demanded.

Trey shook his head. “I thought she was here! She emailed me-I thought she emailed me.”

“Kirsten has been missing since Friday afternoon. It’s Wednesday.”

Trey frowned and looked at the table. Sean wondered whether he was trying to think of a lie or was sincerely worried about his girlfriend.

“You emailed Kirsten several times,” Patrick said. “You posted concerned comments to her Web page, wanted her to call you ASAP, and you have no idea where she might have gone?”

“I wish I did. God, I think something’s happened to her.”

“Why do you think that?” Sean demanded.

Trey didn’t answer.

“Trey,” Patrick said, “you had a physical relationship with Kirsten. If something happened to her, the police are going to look at you first.”

“That’s insane!” Trey said. “We broke up months ago! We’re friends.”

“When we show the cops the sex tape you made,” Sean said, “you think they’re going to believe anything you say?”

Trey’s face paled. “What?”

“I saw most of it; don’t bother lying.” Sean couldn’t keep the anger from his voice.

“But-I-” The kid was practically blushing and he looked down at his hands. “You can’t show anyone. My parents-shit, they’ll kill me. I thought she deleted it!”

“She did,” Sean said. “We undeleted it.”

Trey looked at him skeptically. “Really?”

“Let’s backtrack. When did you and Kirsten start seeing each other?”

“We’ve been friends since she moved here.”

“You know what I mean.”

Trey shrugged. “It wasn’t like that. I mean, we were friends, and then we went to homecoming last year and started being more than just friends.”

“And you broke up when?”

“Right before school started.”

“Why?”

“Who the fuck cares why?”

“We do.”

Trey scowled. “That has nothing to do with this.”

Sean pushed, trying to get the truth out of Trey. “Did you put that sex tape on the Internet? Or pressure Kirsten to do it? Is that why Kirsten broke up with you?”

“I broke it off with Kirsten. I didn’t want to, but-” He cut himself off.

Sean grew irritated. “Look, Trey, I’m tired of twenty questions, so I’m going to lay it all out for you. I’m a computer security specialist and I’m retrieving every single piece of data off Kirsten’s computer, even files she deleted.” Sean might not be able to re-create all the files, but the kid didn’t need to know that. “We know Kirsten has skipped town at least five times since the start of the school year-which, according to you, is right after you broke it off with her. But this time, she didn’t come back. Some people think she ran away, possibly with a boyfriend, but her mom and dad deserve to know the truth. And I think you know where she went.”

Trey set his mouth in a tight line. He stared at the back of his hands as if counting the hairs.

Patrick picked up where Sean left off. “You made a big show of concern on the Internet-on Kirsten’s Web page, in her email. I’ll bet if we pulled your phone records it’d show you called her number a dozen times. You know, I used to be a cop, and I worked a case where a guy killed his wife, then made a big show of trying to reach her-calling her friends, calling her cell phone that he’d tossed in the lake along with her dead body-all before filing a police report the next day. But his cleverness tripped him up. The police traced his outgoing cell calls back to the lake where he dumped her body-he made the first so-called worried phone call right after he killed her.”

Trey stared, pale. “You think Kirsten’s dead?”

“The jury’s still out,” Sean said, “but we’re concerned.” He considered what Lucy had said about the layout of her room, and bluffed based on the evidence. “We found a log of multiple deleted video files, and considering the layout of her bedroom and the digital recording of you and her getting down and dirty, we don’t believe that was a one-time show.”

“Did you post the video on the Internet?” Patrick demanded.