“Classy,” Griff says.
Carson pauses, plastic Solo cup at his lips. “Don’t be a smart-ass. I’m only here long enough to shower and get something to eat.”
“That’s getting ‘something to eat’? I must be doing it wrong.”
“Again, don’t be a smart-ass.” Carson’s voice rises and, next to me, Griff tenses, his feet push into the floor. It makes Carson smile.
He switches his attention to me. “Tell me how you got in.”
“Rear window. Second floor.”
“How’d you get out?”
“Same way.”
Carson scrubs one hand along his jaw. “What I don’t understand is why the security guards left. I sent two officers up to Atlanta to question—”
“It looked like they were called away.”
“Go on.”
I grip the couch cushions under my knees, suddenly very, very aware of Griff watching me. “I was on the bike path. It looked like one got a text or maybe a visual voice mail. He showed it to the other and they left.”
Carson swirls his drink around as he thinks about that. “So what does that mean?”
“It means your killer has someone on the inside of the security firm,” Griff says.
“Or,” I counter, “it means we’re dealing with another hacker.”
Both of them look at me. Carson’s interested. Griff’s . . . shuttered.
“Security firm like that,” I say slowly, trying out the words. “They don’t make mistakes. Their people don’t just wander off. They get orders. They’re told what to do, and whoever told them was someone they trusted and knew.”
Carson sits up. “Or they thought it was someone they trusted and knew.”
“Exactly. Getting into Barton and Moore’s main computers would be really freaking hard. Getting into a supervisor’s cell phone and accessing his people from that cell phone? Easier.”
“Anything else?” the detective asks.
“What about the . . .” I close my eyes. Open them. I’m afraid of what I’ll see in the dark. “Bones I found? How did you explain it?”
“Body was reported by an anonymous tip.” The detective digs around in his jacket, pulls out a plastic baggie. Inside, there’s a dark square of something and Carson flicks it onto the coffee table, where it lands with surprising weight.
It’s a wallet.
Carson pushes the baggie around so I can see the girl in the dirt-stained license smile at me. “You know who that is?”
I shake my head. The plastic is so stained I can’t make out much of the face, only the long blond hair.
“That is—was—Kyle Bay’s girlfriend, Lell Daley. You uncovered her body.”
Next to me, Griff stiffens. Even through my jeans, I can feel how his muscles stand up like rope.
Carson leans off the side of his couch and sifts through a box of files on the floor. He pulls a set of folders onto his lap and flips through a few, flicking a couple of pictures onto the coffee tabletop. “According to her mother, the girl”—Carson taps the face of a girl with honey-blond hair, her skin almost Crayola orange from fake tanner—“eloped with Kyle Bay a few years ago.”
I recognize Kyle at once. Dark hair. Deep-set eyes. There’s a sneer at the corners of his mouth like he’s trying—and failing—not to laugh at you. It’s so much like his dad I scowl.
“They were both eighteen so it’s not like anyone could do anything,” Carson continues. “Mrs. Daley was thrilled with the marriage.”
“The Bays weren’t?”
“That would be my guess. The real question is, when did she die? According to her mother, she eloped four years ago.”
“Somehow I don’t think she made it that far.”
“Agreed.”
We watch each other for a moment and Carson breaks first, reaching for the bottle again. He doesn’t pour another drink, but he studies the liquid like he wants to.
“So if Lell’s body is in the ground,” I say. “Where’s Kyle?”
Carson toasts me with the bottle. “Isn’t that just the question of the hour?”
“Is Kyle a suspect?” Griff asks. He hasn’t spoken in so long that Carson and I both blink like we’d forgotten him.
“Pretty much my number one suspect,” Carson says. “Kid’s been gone for years and now Bay’s getting emails about remembering and the assistant who hated Kyle turns up murdered.”
“Kyle and Chelsea didn’t get along?” I ask.
“According to Ian, they didn’t. You sure you were the only other person in the house?”
I rub damp palms against my jeans. “Why?”
“Because Ian Bay was attacked today and he says his brother did it.”
The room is suddenly stuffed with silence. “How bad is he?” I ask at last.
Carson shrugs. “His face is pretty trashed and he’s scared, but he’ll live—he’s already home again. He said his brother jumped him. They fought. Kyle knocked him out cold. You must have interrupted them.”
My stomach lurches. So that means . . .