Page 59 of Mine to Keep

“Cops won’t be able to help me.”

He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my lips. “It’s going to be okay.”

I hugged him close and rested my cheek against his chest. “When I’m with you, I believe that.”

“Anything else happen today?”

I went through the situation at the coffee shop and he hummed. “I haven’t gotten to Beth yet, but she and Nicole are at the top of my list right now.”

I nodded. “I think I’m just paranoid.”

He gently scratched my scalp. “I rather you be paranoid right now instead of lax.”

After the shower, Nick and I dried off. We ordered Chinese and ate it in front of the television, watching a mindless reality show. When sleep finally came, Nick wrapped himself around me, and for a little while I pretended he was guarding me from my demons.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Nick

“Social media!”Noel came rushing into the tech room. It was Wednesday, and Matt was with JJ. I was scouring over background checks.

“What about it?” I asked after my pulse calmed the fuck down.

“Is Matt on social media?”

I spun in my chair to look at my brother. We were identical in every way. The only differences were that he loved to wear his sunglasses all the time, and he’d started tying his hair in a ponytail when it got too long and he was too lazy to cut it.

“Yeah, he has Insta, and a couple of others.”

He snapped his fingers. “I was watching a movie where this girl was being stalked and the guy got to her from her Facebook or something.”

“You think whoever is doing this is on social media?”

“They could be in his everyday life and they could not. Here’s the thing, people post everything on SM. Pictures of drinks, food, places they go to, clothes they wear, people in their lives,relationships. Seriously, it’s too easy to find someone and know everything about them. Let’s say they’re also in their real life, it would add gasoline to the fire.”

Noel was on to something. “Can you get into his socials? I’m elbow-deep in these checks. Get Mason to help; he’s smart.”

“On it. Can I ask your boy his passwords or should I just backdoor him?” He waggled his brows.

“I will kill you in your sleep,” I deadpanned.

“I’ll go ask him.”

After he was gone, I started digging more. I was looking into Nicole and James Somers. High school sweethearts, no kids, not for lack of trying. They’d purchased the apartment complex ten years ago and had done a lot of work to it. They didn’t have a lot of turnover, so I guessed tenants were happy.

Nicole’s father had passed when she was five, and her mother lived in England with some man very much her junior. James’s father had also died a few years ago from a massive heart attack, and his mother was currently in a hospital for multiple things.

No records on either of them. On paper they looked great. I had to dig more for the dark shit. First I dived into the type of porn they liked to watch; their search history was going to be the big thing, and from there I’d go even further.

A hand squeezed my shoulder. “What on earth are you doing?” Matt laughed. “Porn?”

“Not my porn—this is what your landlords are into.”

“What?” He pulled up a chair. “How is this helpful?”

“People are secretive creatures. But what they enjoy can sometimes tell the story of the types of personalities they have living in their heads. I don’t kink shame, don’t misunderstand me, but patterns are what patterns are.”

“And what is their porn life telling you?”

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