Page 52 of Cassidy

Yet her age being so close to Travis’s nagged at her. What if this girl was involved? She could have loaned her car to someone. Or she could be the driver while someone else fired the weapon.

Maybe she needed to keep Patrice on the list. Miles first, then Patrice.

“What did you find?” Gabe asked, sensing her dilemma.

“Do any of these four names sound familiar?” She recited them one by one. When he shook his head, she sighed. “Miles looks sketchy, but that doesn’t mean he’s guilty. And Patrice is close to Travis’s age. Could be she lured him in somehow.”

“Yes, but you can’t ignore the other two,” Gabe said. “We need to eliminate them completely before dropping them. They could have criminal backgrounds or family members with a criminal history.”

“I understand. But I still want to start with the most likely prospect.” She entered Miles Wayland into the system first. After a few minutes, she decided that if they were going to keep working until sunrise, they needed coffee.

She stood and headed to the break room. She watched Gabe work from the doorway as the coffee dripped. He’d run his fingers through his hair again, making it stand out on end. For his sake, she hoped Travis wasn’t hurt. And that he wasn’t involved in the criminal side of this thing.

Whatever it was.

She filled two cups with coffee, doctored them the way she and Gabe liked it, and carried them out to the desk. Gabe offered an absent smile as he took the cup and sipped.

Rather than ask if he’d learned anything new, she turned her attention to her task. Miles Wayland did not have a criminal record, which was disappointing.

Neither did any of the other three vehicle registrants.

Since that didn’t work, she went back to the elderly man, Oliver Haydon. She ran a report of his known associates, which were mostly family members.

None of them had criminal records either.

She went through the same process with the middle-aged woman, Debra Flacko. She had even more known associates, but the only name that popped with a criminal record was a teenager who’d been caught selling marijuana.

Doubtful that selling marijuana would lead to firing shots at them, so she went back to Miles and Patrice.

Time to dig into their social media sites. She started with Patrice, mostly because in her experience girls were more likely to post online than boys.

Patrice was no exception. She had been right about the girl being a cheerleader; there were several posts featuring her alongside her fellow cheerleaders. She checked to see if Travis was a friend of hers, but he wasn’t.

There was a post about her new (albeit used) car that was a gift from her parents on her sixteenth birthday.

Again, she couldn’t see this girl being involved. Which left her first choice of a suspect, Miles Wayland.

Miles didn’t have much of a social media presence. She found him on one site, but it was clear he hadn’t posted anything in over two years. The other sites had even less activity.

There was one post that caught her eye. “Gabe, what is Dorian?”

“Huh?” Gabe turned to look at her. “Dorian?”

“Yes. This Miles guy has a post that says something about being on Dorian. That was two years ago, and he hasn’t posted anything since.”

“Dorian is a social media site for gamers.” Gabe’s eyes widened, and he abruptly turned to stare at his screen. “That’s it. Gamers. This software is for a game!”

She wanted to be happy about the breakthrough, but she didn’t understand it. “Like what kind of game?”

“A computer game. That’s what those levels were about.” He smacked his hand on the desk. “I should have known right away that this was related to a computer game.”

“Okay, but why would a computer game cause you to be in danger?” A horrible thought hit. “You didn’t steal proprietary software, did you?”

“Steal it? No.” Gabe frowned, then said, “Although I did copy it here on the USB drive for a reason.”

His comment was like a pin popping a balloon. Just knowing this was somehow related to a game wasn’t enough.

They needed to understand why anyone involved with a computer game would want to kill Gabe.

---