Page 86 of Wild Fever
“Were you told to leave it open?”
“Those doors can only be locked from the inside. I didn’t have a choice. But the instructions were to leave through the patio and leave it unlocked.”
“That didn’t strike you as odd?”
“I didn’t think about it. I never considered someone was going to kill Zheng.”
My eyes narrowed at her, looking for hints of deception.
“Aren’t we past this?”
I held my gaze.
“What about Rick? What does he say?”
I told her.
“He doesn’t look so good.”
“Yeah, well, he refused treatment.”
Kara cringed. “You’ve got to believe me, I didn’t know Yan Zheng was going to be killed.”
“Would you have taken the job if you knew?”
“So, now we’re into hypotheticals?” she asked, growing irritated.
I stared at her and said nothing.
“I don’t know what I would have done. A few days ago, I would have said money is money. Now, I would walk away from the whole thing. Hindsight is 20-20. It’s not really a fair question, is it?”
“I guess not.” I paused. “Looks like Rick was paid from a different crypto wallet than you were,” I said.
Her brow wrinkled. “Different employers?”
“Not sure. Maybe a mistake. It’s not uncommon to have multiple wallets. Maybe the funds were transferred from the wrongaccount. Maybe it was done on purpose so the two wouldn’t look connected.”
My phone buzzed with a call from Crenshaw. I swiped the screen and held the phone to my ear. “Tell me something good.”
"I can’t tell you if it's good or bad, but it's interesting," Crenshaw said.
"Did you find anything about the crypto wallet?"
"No. Not yet. Something else. The Wentworth case. There's something off about it.”
"The whole thing’s felt off since the beginning.”
"We know the hack originated from Elias's IP address at his Stingray Bay house. A boneheaded move, if you ask me. But here's the kicker. Each device has a unique MAC address—Media Access Control. It's an identifier. Like a fingerprint for the machine."
"I'm aware."
"None of the devices that were confiscated from Elias’s house or office match the MAC address used to hack into the cryogenics lab."
That piqued my curiosity.
Crenshaw asked, "Do you think he could have purchased a burner laptop, thinking that might offer him some protection?”
“I think Elias is smarter than that. He had to know that hacking a system from his IP was risky.”
