Page 30 of Shadowing Her Stalker

Cara was pouring tea over crackling cubes of ice when her father appeared, freshly showered and changed into clean clothes. With his damp hair combed and the remnants of his summer tan offsetting his blue eyes, Cara caught a glimpse of the handsome young man who’d wooed and won the heart of Elizabeth Watts. Her parents were an attractive couple. One day in an LA spa and they could easily shave twenty years off the birth dates shown on their driver’s licenses.

She listened with half an ear as she filled her plate at the stove. Their conversation was so casual, so normal, it made her hands tremble. This time the day before, she’d been diving out of a moving vehicle. Now her father was naming off random items he wanted her mother to add to their supply list. Yesterday, a strange man named Gerald Griffin had been alive and well and pointing a gun at her. Today, he was dead, and her mother was pushing food on a handsome special agent from the state police.

Staring down at the kaleidoscope of vegetables on her plate, Cara focused on the vibrancy of their colors. Rounds of bright orange carrots, red pepper and yellow squash were offset by dark green zucchini and pale chunks of cauliflower. She was safe. She was home. Her mother had made this gorgeous stir-fry for her, and she was grateful. More grateful than she could say. Wetting her lips, she grasped the plate hard enough to mask her terror as she turned to join them at the table.

She wouldn’t let whoever was doing this steal these precious moments from her. She would pass the few hours in peace, then tomorrow morning she and Wyatt would put their heads together and start figuring things out.

Forcing a smile, she placed her plate on the table and dropped into her chair. When she was sure she had the shaking under control, she reached for her glass and gulped the sugary sweet tea. As the cool liquid soothed her parched throat, she couldn’t help thinking about how horrified her friends back in La-La Land would be if they knew she was sucking down tea brewed with leaves trapped in bags with little tags and sweetened with no less than two cups of refined white sugar.

Wyatt’s phone rang and they went still.

“I’m sorry,” Wyatt murmured, but they all knew the apology was both reflexive and performative. Of course he would take the call.

“It’s almost as if people are aiming for our mealtimes. Go on,” her mother encouraged, but her smile was nervous and forced. “We want to know everything we need to know.”

But do we?Cara thought as Wyatt rose, swinging his leg over the sturdy wooden chair and pulling his phone from his pocket in a fluid motion now familiar to her. She placed her cutlery across the edge of her barely touched plate. She stared down at the brightly colored dish her mother had gone to the trouble of preparing for her, knowing she wouldn’t manage another bite. Her stomach was too sour. Her throat bone-dry.

Betsy reached over and covered Cara’s hand with hers. “Try to eat something. You need your strength.”

Across the table, her father sat with his knife and fork clutched in each hand. “What do these people want?”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” Cara confessed.

“Is it money?” he persisted, jabbing his fork into his slice of roast a mite too forcefully. “They asked for ten million dollars in the email.” He snorted. “Who could possibly come up with so much money?”

Cara bit her bottom lip. She didn’t know how to tell her father she could. If she were to sell her portion of LYYF to Chris and Tom now, she’d be able to cover the ransom demand and still have money left over. And if she waited until after the company went public...well, according to Chris, ten million would be little more than pocket change.

As if reading her mind, her mother zeroed in on her. “Do you have that kind of money?”

Uncomfortable with the topic of money in general and feeling cornered, Cara squirmed in her seat. “I, uh,” she started. Her father stopped chewing and stared at her as if he’d never laid eyes on her before. Caught in his steady blue gaze, she confessed, as always. “Not, um, you know, liquid.”

Her dad gently lowered his silverware to his plate and pulled his napkin from his lap, never breaking eye contact. “But you have access to large amounts of money?”

Cara cringed inside. She’d spent most of her adult years downplaying the perceived extravagance of her California lifestyle. Particularly in the three years since the app went stratospheric. She’d sent them photos of her charming little house on Sunset Drive, but she never told them she’d paid nearly two million dollars for fifteen hundred square feet of space. It wasn’t the kind of math people who clip coupons and pride themselves on canning homegrown vegetables and preserves would understand.

“I do,” she replied, but added nothing more. Thankfully, Wyatt reappeared and the subject was dropped. “What’s happening?”

“Not a lot. I guess Chris Sharpe has left for New York. Something about meetings with some fund managers before the stock offering. Emma says she spoke briefly with Tom Wasinski, and he says he’d like you to call him.”

“Nothing more on tracing the money?” she asked as he reclaimed his seat.

Wyatt settled his napkin into his lap. “No, we’ve hit a dead end on the numbered accounts, but Emma is monitoring chatter on a couple forums she thinks Griffin was active on, and I have some other angles I want to track after dinner.” He picked up his fork again. “I’m sorry for the interruption.”

The rest of dinner passed in fits and spurts of congenial small talk. After they were through, Cara helped her mother with the dishes while her father saw to Roscoe’s evening kibble and Wyatt retreated to his laptop. She was settled in the den with her parents watching a police procedural when he reappeared, looking rumpled and worried.

“Anything?” she asked, motioning for him to join them.

He skirted Roscoe’s enormous orthopedic pet bed as he stepped into the room. The dog gave him a cursory snort as he passed. “Nothing we didn’t already know. Countersurveillance on your accounts is running as it should,” he reported, taking a seat on the opposite end of the sofa. “Nothing has popped yet.”

The detective in the television show started rattling off a list of supposedly damning physical evidence they’d collected during a cursory search of the victim’s sister’s bedroom, and Wyatt let out a disdainful scoff.

Cara and her mother looked over at him, surprised by the interruption, but her father was the keeper of the remote. The moment the scene cut to a commercial, he muted the volume and shifted in his recliner to look directly at Wyatt.

“I take it things don’t tie up so neatly in the real world,” he said with a nod to the television.

“Most of the testing they mentioned doesn’t exist. Or, if it does, it either produces results too unreliable to use as evidence or is so expensive most municipalities couldn’t afford to implement it,” Wyatt explained. “Good physical evidence is much harder to come by than fictional.”

“I can’t believe you dare to sit here and spoil one of our favorite shows,” Cara accused.

---