Page 36 of Shadowing Her Stalker

“Okay, okay,” Cara interjected. “Let’s all...take a breath.”

Her father rolled his eyes. “Take a breath,” he muttered under his. “Same mumbo jumbo for the folks willin’ to pay for it.”

“Fine,” Cara snapped. “Let’s all calm down and talk rationally,” she demanded, sounding about as far from calm and rational as a modern-day guru could. “Do you think we can manage to get through one meal without bickering or picking at each other?”

Wyatt held his tongue as the older man nodded then ducked his head, reapplying himself to his plate. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a jerk,” Jim said quietly.

“You were a jerk, but your apology is accepted,” his wife responded, punctuating her largesse with a prim sniff.

“People are calling the local school asking questions about Cara?” Wyatt asked, rephrasing the gist of the conversation.

“Yes,” Betsy said, her tone markedly more subdued. She twiddled her fork, routing out a divot in the mashed potatoes he’d so painstakingly nuked. “I didn’t think it sounded threatening. At least, Delia Raitt didn’t make it come across like it was. She was goin’ on about what a big deal Cara was now, and how proud we must be, and how she never thought little Cara Beckett would turn out to be a fancy big shot.” She turned to look at her daughter. “Her words, not mine.”

“Did she happen to name any of the publications they said they were calling from? Did you recognize any of them?”

Betsy shrugged, then shook her head, her smile turning rueful. “She said a couple of names, but they sounded computer-y to me.” Jim snorted and her eyes lit with fire. “Like you know any better, James Beckett. You tell me the name of one of those tech blog thingies,” she challenged.

“Doesn’t hafta be one of those. It’s been all overForbes, theWall Street Journal, theNew York Times,” Jim said quietly. When they all turned to look at him, he glanced up from under lowered eyebrows. “What? I don’t live under a rock.”

Cara ducked her head, and Wyatt couldn’t help but stare as a peach-pink flush crept up her neck to her cheeks. The woman practically glowed with pleasure at this small concession from a man Wyatt himself had reclassified from remote and disinterested to quiet and observant over the course of an afternoon in his company.

“There are dozens of legitimate publications interested in profiling your daughter,” Wyatt said, gently breaking the spell. “I know to those of us back here at home it may seem like she has put herself out there with LYYF, but in truth, Cara is kind of an enigma in tech circles. Aside from her work published on the app and the social media connected to it, she has stayed out of the media. If there are interviews to be given, it’s usually one of her partners in the spotlight.”

“Usually Chris,” her mother said with a nod. “He loves to be the one doing the talking. Always was the slick one. I remember from the time we came out there to visit.”

“Chris is a talker,” Cara conceded.

Wyatt jumped back in before they strayed too far off track. “From everything I can find, and believe me I have looked through all accounts connected to her, Cara doesn’t put much of herself out there. Which is why she found it such a shock to have people on the internet taking such an, uh, intense interest in her personal life.”

“I don’t even take pictures of my food,” she said with a wry smile.

“And here I thought all people put on those sites were pictures of their plates,” her father said gruffly.

Cara flashed him a grateful smile and Wyatt felt his shoulders drop as the tension in the room dissipated.

“I can’t,” Cara said, her tone turning serious again. “I learned early on. The second I post something, a yummy dinner or a pretty blue sky, people crawl all over themselves trying to interpret the hidden meaning behind my post.”

“Some people can’t accept the appreciation of a pretty blue sky at face value,” Wyatt said, nodding his understanding.

“Exactly. People say I’m making a statement about climate change, or take the opportunity to lecture other community members about the proper use of sunscreen. I have to be very careful about everything I post online. You never know how people will interpret it, and there’s always someone waiting to pounce.”

Her father shook his head in disgust. “People have nothing better to do.”

“Everyone has to share their opinion,” Wyatt commiserated.

“My daddy used to say opinions were like belly buttons—everyone has one, but you don’t need to go around flaunting it,” Betsy chimed in.

“I heard it using a different body part,” her husband said under his breath.

Betsy frowned. “What body part?”

Wyatt chuckled at their byplay but refused to further the conversation. Instead, he turned to Cara. “I’m assuming the company has a publicist or PR firm they work with?”

She nodded. “All official media requests are supposed to go through a woman named Amanda Pierce. She has a boutique firm out of Palo Alto. It’s called APPR,” she added. “But it’s not unusual for people to try to work around the process. We all get requests. Zarah fields them for me every day.”

“But the bigger outlets will go through the publicist,” he asserted. “I can see individual vloggers trying to get around the gatekeeper, but there’d be no reason for theTimesor theJournalto do an end-around. Publications likeWIRED,TechCrunch,CNET...they’d want everything on the record, and they’d want to be able to follow up on anything newsworthy.”

“You think these people calling the school district were only pretending to be reporters?” Betsy asked, fear warring with incredulity in her voice.

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