Page 38 of Just Hide

But first, she frowned. She needed to check herself before she rushed forward, and she had to figure out how they were finding her. That was the key. To stay one step ahead of the police.

Shaking her head violently, remembering the message from HR that all employees had received just a short while earlier, she felt a burst of pure anger. The pleasure of the crime was being marred by the looming presence of law enforcement. They were taking away what she’d rightfully earned and should now be reveling in.

Running her mind through the events of the past few weeks, she tried to see what she could have done differently. Was there some way she could have avoided this? Was there something she could have changed that would have thrown the police off her scent?

No. They weren't here because of anything she had done, she decided. She had been careful to cover her tracks and knew she had moved quickly, leaving no evidence behind.Even so, it was a wretchedly unlucky blow that they were here at all.

How she wanted the thrill of the kill, but now the fear of being caught was keeping her from enjoying it fully.

Did anyone else know? Would one of her colleagues end up betraying her?

She thought about that for a long, tense moment and then shook her head. That wasn't possible. None of them knew a thing.

And in any case, she could plan ahead; she could keep an eye out. She had ways of monitoring what was going on.

Luckily, and not surprisingly since she worked for an IT firm, she had knowledge of IT, and using it was encouraged among all employees. She could log into the company's chat site; she could even access some of the cameras.

In a way, she thought of the company like a person. A big, complex person that was full of habits and activity. When something happened to disturb those, there was a ripple effect, and she was seeing it now.

After Maria’s message to all employees that the FBI was on site and investigating, minor panic had ensued. Subgroups had erupted in their own private chats. Emails, frantic and scared, had crisscrossed, phones were beeping as messages were sent. No matter whether you were at work at the time or not, the anxiety this had caused was tangible, and she’d felt it.

Know your enemy.Quickly, she accessed the camera footage—she couldn't get it all from her home computer, but she could get some. And then, working her way back, she saw them at the entrance door.

Two of them.

Her stomach clenched in fear, and the reaction surprised her. She hadn't thought she would be so scared, but it was a visceral response. It scared her to think they were here, that they had gotten this far in tracking her.

"You're not going to get me," she whispered.

She stared at them closely, taking in her enemies, because she needed to know them in order to escape them.

One tall man with a stern, heavy face. He looked typical police, but these were not just police, these were the FBI after her. Again, she felt that clench of fear. They couldn't stop her! Not now, not when she was flying so high.

The other was a short, slim girl who looked young and didn't look like police at all. Perhaps they'd brought her on board because she had IT skills. That was the only explanation that made sense. She looked at both their faces carefully.

Then, with dread crawling inside her, she accessed the company computer system and found the security camera footage from the day before. She checked it carefully to make sure that it was clear.

It was. She’d been careful, and the plans she’d put into place a while ago were still working. That was good. Now she had to reinforce the groundwork she’d done earlier to make sure the police looked past her.

She accessed the company's chat site and began typing a message. "Glad to hear this is being sorted, because it’s scary," she wrote innocently, adding to a mass of other comments. Some were negative. She could see that a lot of the employees didn't trust the police, or thought they'd bungle the case, or else just couldn't believe that the killer could be in their company.

But she needed to leave an innocuous, supportive, positive comment that would help to make her invisible, because right now, she didn’t know who her friends were or how far the FBI’s reach went.

That was enough.

Drawing a deep breath, she closed the camera window and logged off. Her heart was pounding because everything was at stake now. Everything.

Then she logged onto the other software. This was where she needed to be, right here, in her own personal kingdom, searching for the next victim.

And she knew who it was going to be. She'd identified the target a couple of weeks ago, like the others, and she was slowly and methodically closing in. There had been no hurry, but she had to admit, with the arrival of the police, she was now starting to feel pressure as if she should act sooner.

"What if they stop me?" she muttered. "What if I can't carry on with my payback plan? They're already in the offices! They know I work here!"

But did they know? Or were they just ruling out the company before moving on?

Breathing deeply and trying to calm her fears, she tried her best to talk rational sense into herself.

"They can't know," she whispered. "They must be here because of the software, that's all. That's all it is. They know this software was used, or maybe they don't even know, maybe they're just guessing. It's just a clever guess."

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