Page 12 of Just Hide

She scooted into the chair and turned her attention to the two devices using her own phone nearby the other one to set up a communication line. Meanwhile, she plugged the iPhone into her laptop and then used the step-by-step workaround that they'd discussed in class.

It worked perfectly, and Cami felt a flash of gratitude to her classmate, who'd discovered that particular hack in a private group and shared it.

While her phone probed the other's passcode, she turned her attention to Antoinette's device, feeling eager to learn more about the people who hated her and about her activities in recent days.

Had this killer searched for her randomly, or had he or she used an app, or a video, or a place where people's faces were shown?

"I'm going to look through the messages first," she told Connor.

Cami took a quick look through the reams of texts and chats on various programs and apps within the phone. Antoinette had been a big communicator.

That morning, she'd gone for a manicure and pedicure. That was where she'd been before her death. Had she been followed from there? It was a few miles away, and she had driven there in her vehicle, which Cami saw was a white sports car. Antoinette had been doing well for herself.

Perhaps that was where she'd been followed from, Cami wondered, or else the killer had just been waiting for her at her house if he knew where she lived, which if he'd done his homework, he might.

"Even though she had lots of enemies, I'm not seeing any threats or anything nasty," she told Connor, scanning the messages carefully. "She spoke a lot with friends, and a lot with her work connections. She spoke to about thirty or forty different people each day, mostly friendly dialog."

Cami turned her attention to the apps, the videos, and the pictures. She found nothing suspicious on any of them. Antoinette was a busy, working woman, an in-demand model with a full schedule, who'd dismissed her haters and those jealous of her. She remembered the names that Petra had mentioned, but she couldn’t see any sign of any interaction between those people. Wanting to check further, she looked up Liz Gregory, Cynthia Gable, and Sue-Ann Williams.

But in her spare time, which there admittedly wasn't that much of, she had used a dating app, Cami saw. In between all the work demands, she'd clearly been seeking a special someone. Cami guessed that she'd preferred to date outside of the modeling industry. Cami could see why. Maybe she’d signed up on it hoping for someone who would love her for herself, not for her looks.

But what she noticed about this app was that it gave clear, head and shoulders pictures of all the subscribers. If someone had been looking for certain features, this would be an easy app to use, and there were a lot of sign-ups in Boston. Thousands of people.

In fact, intrigued now, Cami gave it a try.

"You know what I'm going to do?" she asked Connor.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, slightly wary.

"I'm going to see if I can do a facial recognition search on this app and see what I come up with."

She used certain specific parameters. Boston, for a start. Both the murders had occurred here, after all. And then she quickly downloaded a face recognition software app that she thought would fit the bill onto Antoinette's phone and ran it to search. She guessed from experience that it would take a few minutes. It was a fairly new app, and it had rave reviews.

While it ran, she turned to the other phone, seeing that the program to crack its entry code was still running.

And then a ping on Antoinette's phone showed her that her software had gotten a result. It had picked up a similar looking face on the same app.

Her eyes widened, and her heart sped up. Rosalind Asher's face was staring back at her. The software had found it immediately. Both the victims had used this same app. And that meant the killer might have used this app as his hunting ground.

Swinging around, Cami heard the pinging tone as her software did its job. Rosalind's phone was open now. With both phones available, she could search the dating app on each and see if the two women had any profile views or interactions in common.

If they did, then those watching eyes might have belonged to the killer.

Feeling determined, Cami flicked through Rosalind's phone, hoping that this next step would bring results.

The first thing she saw was that Rosalind had deleted the dating app on her phone a couple of months ago, but that didn't matter. Her profile was still visible on the site, and there was enough archived evidence still in her phone. All she had to do was burrow deeper into the records to search for it.

"Contacts in common, views in common, messages in common," she muttered to herself, looking from one device to the other, switching to another application on her laptop for faster hunting.

And then, after fidgeting for just a minute as she waited, it came up with an answer.

"I've got someone," she told Connor triumphantly. "His name's Roger Harwood, and he works for a tech company in central Boston."

CHAPTER SEVEN

Roger Harwood. Cami stared down at his face, feeling a surge of determination. He'd messaged Antoinette more than once in the past few weeks, wanting to meet up, and he'd viewed Rosalind's profile recently, even after she'd deleted the dating app.

She took a look at who he was. Twenty-eight years old, an IT security tech, working for a company called White Noise in central Boston.

---