Page 45 of Just Hide

But now Cami thought about it, although she’d been so enthusiastic about mentioning the hot yoga, she hadn’t seen any actual check-ins. In fact, Cami remembered, Nadia didn’t have her location turned on at all.

So, what if the enthusiasm for yoga was a cleverly crafted alibi to mislead people into thinking she was here, when in fact she was somewhere else?That could be a possibility,Cami thought, with a chill.

She had a motive. Her brother had been severely hurt by a similar looking woman who’d dumped him, and the debacle had prompted a breakdown. Cami felt very sorry for him. She had a lot of sympathy for people with mental health issues. It was a vulnerability that she personally thought hadn't received nearly enough acknowledgement and understanding in today's world.

Had rage over her brother's circumstances, and anger at what she perceived to be the cause, made Nadia have a psychotic break and go out killing similar victims? And had she been clever enough to build herself an alibi, hoping the police would see she’d been at yoga and look no further?

Cami was thinking so.

“We believe she does yoga here most afternoons, according to her social media," Connor said to the instructor, clearly looking to get to the bottom of this discrepancy, but the instructor was shaking her head.

"Look, the name might be vaguely familiar. I don’t want to lie and say I’ve never seen her, and then get in trouble for it. She might have come here once or twice, but that would have been months ago."

"Red headed woman?"

"Yes, that's ringing a bell now. I remember a redheaded woman, she had a very distinctive appearance with that long, red hair. She came here for one session, but that was back in September sometime. So, I'm sorry, I can't help you. I could ask the other instructors, who work in the mornings and on weekends, but I really can't help you. I do all the afternoon classes myself."

Cami nodded. There was no yoga in Nadia's life. It was all a lie. She’d never been a regular at this class. She was starting to feel a sense of panic. They’d been misled. Where was this woman, and what was she doing?

As they were standing here, at a loss to find her, she could be preparing to take another victim.

"Well, this is nothing if not irregular," Connor muttered. “There’s nothing more we can do here, so let’s find another way.”

They strode out of the uncomfortably sweltering hot yoga environment, and back into the shiveringly cold and windy outside. There, Connor got on his phone.

"Have we been able to get a track on that cellphone number?" he asked whoever he was speaking to. She saw his frown deepen and realized there must be a delay. They were not able to triangulate Nadia’s number yet.

In the meantime, though, what could she do?

She had Nadia’s phone number. She could work with that.

"I'm going to see if I can get into her phone," Cami said. She was using her own phone, with the cell number that Nadia had been active on. Her phone was turned on.

“It’s an iPhone. That makes it easier,” Cami muttered. “My software usually works on iPhones.”

She set up the program and began communicating with Nadia’s device, which was at least turned on. She could see that her program was able to connect with it. Now, if she could just get far enough into it to find the location, she could activate it.

"What are you doing?" Connor said, getting off his own phone as he got into the car.

Cami explained quickly. "Her location is turned off. So, I'm trying to get far enough into her phone to turn it on. If I can do that, then we can see where she is, very easily. But I just have to get into that section of her phone. My program usually works. It can be slow, though."

If she could just turn on the location, then they could pinpoint her. It would be the quickest way by far. And she'd worked a very clever hack that bypassed the basic phone security. Problem was that it was sometimes slow and didn’t always work on Android systems, but this was an iPhone.

Cami tapped her fingers on the dashboard, grateful to be huddled in the car and out of the rainy, darkening evening, but impatient that her work around was going at a snail’s pace.

"Come on, come on," she muttered under her breath. "Come on, you can do it, get in there, get through.”

And then she felt her phone begin to vibrate. The location of the other phone was now turned on. She'd done it!

"Okay. I've got it. I got into Nadia’s phone, far enough to turn on the location. So that's activated, and now, we can hopefully see where she is."

She felt her heart pounding with excitement. This needed to work.

Her phone buzzed, and Cami looked down. "I've got the address," she said, now triumphant that her software had managed to do its job. She'd been very pleased with this program and its ability to sneak through a phone's defenses. It couldn’t access the whole phone. The structure of the operating system in a phone made that very difficult. But it could usually get to the location, and sometimes, to the texts also.

"This phone is at number eight Cross Street," she said, looking at the map.

Quickly, Connor looked at his own GPS. "That's only two miles from here. So, let’s get going."

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