Page 27 of Toxic Truth

“My bad.” She powered up his computer. “Password?”

“Studley Doright.”

She laughed so hard she bent at the waist, hands on her knees. “It is not.”

“You’re sure?”

Not any longer. She keyed in what he’d said. The homepage popped up. “Wow. I thought you’d have something intricate like military codes or something.”

“They’re classified.”

She wasn’t certain if he was pulling her leg or not.

He flipped the bacon. “Before you open your drives, get into your email account. Hank needs the threatening ones you got, plus your texts, and the voicemails.”

She chewed her lip.

His rich skin lost too much color. “Please, tell me you didn’t delete everything.”

“I didn’t. I knew I might need them for later when I sue those bastards from here to eternity.” She sat. “My smartphone’s in my car. I take it Hank’s guys have already towed it away?”

“They better have.”

He brought up the outside cameras. The area where her car had been was empty, the ground returned to its natural state, no tire tracks or depressions. “I’m sure he has your phone. Give him the password and he’ll download everything for you.”

Not everything. “The goons who called left their messages on my home phone. It’s a landline like yours.”

“No problem. We can download them to my computer.” He poised his hands above the keyboard. “I’ll show you how.”

“If they’re still there.” She rubbed her temple. “If they had a key or whatever to get inside my place to plant tracking devices, once I left for good I’m sure they returned to erase the messages. Right?”

He drummed the table. “Only one way to find out. Do you know how to collect your voicemails from another phone?”

“Learned that before I knew how to walk.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Like I said, smarter than hell.”

His praise buoyed her spirits. The empty voicemail at home killed her joy. “They’re gone.”

“No biggie.” He hugged her. “We’ll have you emails and texts.”

“Unless they got into them, too.” Hurriedly, she checked Gmail and released her breath, not realizing she’d been holding it. Every rotten threat was there in a hidden folder she’d created. “What’s Hank’s email?”

Lucas told her and returned to the stove.

She forwarded everything she had then called Hank who opened her smartphone and found the texts.

Elated, she bounced on her chair. “Can you find out who sent them? Preferably a location?”

“Sorry, I can’t promise. However, we do have the best forensic computer experts at our disposal. If the addresses are available, they’ll get them.”

It wasn’t the answer she wanted, but was a start.

Copyingher flash drives to Lucas’s laptop then shooting them to Hank took longer than Kenzie expected. Lunch passed in a blur. She barely ate despite Lucas’s urging.

As the sun lowered, she kept checking her email and waiting for the phone to ring with news concerning the perps’ names and addresses.

Nothing.

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