Page 5 of Shadowing Her Stalker

All the puzzle pieces fell into place.

“Cara Beckett is one of the founding partners of LYYF. It’s a lifestyle and wellness application.” He tapped his pen on the desk a couple of times then opened the app, anxious to put the name and face together. “You probably have it on your phone too,” he informed Trooper Masterson. “Our health insurance provider gave everybody a free subscription to the service for a year as part of our benefits package a couple years ago.”

“Hmm, I’m not familiar,” Masterson said, unable to mask the hint of derision in his tone. “I’ll have to ask my wife if she tried it. She likes all those lifestyle things.” He guffawed. “I pay for the whole dang cable package, but all she ever watches is the home-makeover channel. If I come home to one more set of paint swatches I’m going to spit.”

Wyatt clenched his jaw. He had to take one of the calming breaths he learned from using LYYF before posing the obvious question. “Why are you asking me about Cara Beckett?”

“From what I gather, she’s some kind of celebrity.”

Wyatt frowned at the descriptor. Celebrity? Maybe in some circles, but not in the way Masterson would recognize.

“Not a Hollywood celebrity, but in other circles, yeah, maybe,” he conceded. “Again, why do you ask?”

“Because I got her sitting in an office down here. A trucker said she practically leaped out of a moving vehicle to get away from the guy she was ridin’ with.”

“Leaped out of a moving car?”

“Says she was abducted. Man with a gun jacked her rental car at the airport. The woman is pretty shaken up. No purse or phone or ID of any kind. No money. The guy who found her took her up to the truck stop and waited with her until a patrolman arrived. They brought her back here and dropped her at my desk, but I’m not quite sure what to make of her story.”

“Is there a reason why you don’t believe her story?” Wyatt asked.

“No particular reason,” Masterson replied cautiously. “It’s not something that happens around here very often.”

“Oh, I’d say we see our fair share of carjackings.” Wyatt himself had a friend who was lured from her car at a fast-food restaurant and left standing by as her vehicle sped away. She’d been one of the lucky ones.

“She keeps talking about somebody docking her and I’m not sure what she means.” Wyatt could hear the guy scratching his head. “She seems to think there’s some connection between the docking and what happened to her today. Keeps saying it can’t be a coincidence.”

“Docking?” Wyatt scowled as he watched the progress bar at the bottom of his screen creep toward completion. He glanced down at the name he’d scrawled on the sticky note, then zeroed in on the blinking cursor as if it might give up the answer to what was nagging him.

“What is Cara Beckett doing in Arkansas?” he whispered, talking to himself.

But Masterson answered. “Says she’s from here. Folks own a place up in Searcy County. Ranchers.”

“Searcy County? That’s north, isn’t it? They were heading south,” Wyatt noted.

“I don’t think this guy with the gun was hoping to meet the folks,” Masterson said dryly.

Wyatt turned the information he’d been given over in his head. “Docking? I don’t know what she means.”

“Makes two of us. I tried to get a better answer out of her but she kept goin’ on about her home address and phone number being leaked and someone called Nancy gettin’ attacked outside her house. Frankly, she’s a bit...overwrought,” Masterson drawled.

Wyatt sat up straighter partly because he was annoyed by the trooper’s supercilious attitude but mostly because he was catching on to exactly what Cara Beckett was trying to tell them.

“Do you mean doxing?” he demanded, his tone sharp.

“Excuse me?”

“Doxing.” But saying the word louder didn’t help it penetrate the trooper’s skull. “Doxing is when somebody on the internet, usually a hacker or some kind of troll, unearths someone’s personal information and publishes it for the world to see.”

He paused to let the explanation sink in, but Trooper Masterson remained quiet.

“It’s slang for dropping the documents on someone.”

“But why? Who is she?”

“She’s a partner in a tech company.”

“So shouldn’t she be able to stop this, uh, doxing thing?”

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