Page 7 of A Billionaire Dom

Linsey

The girl Kaseyhad hired yesterday, Mary Jo Walton, was working the desk at K’s Phoenix today, which meant I was working from home.

It still felt strange saying that.Home.

I’d spent a year before meeting Kasey moving from place to place. Before that, I’d gone from apartment to trailer to house to drug den and back again. The first time I’d ever really felt like a place could be home was my first night in the apartment I shared with Kasey, and even then, it had taken me months to accept it.

When we’d moved to Denver, I’d worried that feeling would disappear, but it hadn’t. As terrifying as it was for me to realize just how close Kasey and I had become, I couldn’t deny that it was more her than a place that was home for me. She was the best friend I’d ever had and was probably the best one I’d ever have. And for someone who’d always been proud of her independence, that freaked me out.

Which was why I was doing what I always did when I was freaking out about something.

I worked.

Not ‘answering phones and getting paid under the table’ work, but myrealwork.

I’d spent hours at the library as a kid. It’d been one of my few constants, and it’d been cheaper for my mom to drop me off there than actually pay for a babysitter. So, I’d read a lot, and when I hadn’t been reading, I’d been on the computer. By the time I turned twelve, I’d switched things around so that the majority of my time had been on the computer rather than with my nose in a book.

The first place I’d ever hacked had been my school to change anAinto aBon my report card. I’d figured that if I’d dropped my grade by a letter, it hadn’t been illegal. Not even close to logical, but most adolescents weren’t exactly known for their logic.

I’d messed around in various school systems a few more times over the years, mostly using it as a playground to learn in, but it hadn’t been the only thing I’d hacked as a teenager. Getting away from my shitty life had required money, and I’d never stayed in the same place long enough to get a regular job. I still remembered the first time I’d realized how I could get the money I needed.

My mom never watched the news, but one spring night, the guy she’d been dating at the time had been following a local story about the owner of a construction company who’d been giving kickbacks to someone on the city council to get various contracts.

That night, the news story was about how much money the bribed official had made and how much profit the owner of the construction company had made. In the middle of the interview, Mom’s boyfriend made a comment about how someone should take all of their money because, if they were found innocent, they’d be able to keep all of their dirty money.

That was the first time I’d stolen, but it hadn’t been the last. I hadn’t been greedy, though, taking only what I’d needed at the time. Then, when I’d arrived in Denver, I’d heard a story about a woman who’d used her hacking skills to solve crimes and help people. I hadn’t even considered that what I did could be used for more than just getting money, but when I’d heard about this woman, everything had changed.

I’d started looking for bigger companies who profited from corruption and taking huge chunks of money, sending them to organizations and charities that helped people. Women’s shelters. LGBTQ allies. Adoption and fostering advocates. Suicide prevention.

About two or three weeks after I’d started ‘collecting donations,’ I’d seen a news article online about a missing kid and how there hadn’t been any leads, not because the police didn’t have a suspect, but because they hadn’t had the evidence they’d needed to get specific search warrants. It’d been a Catch-22.

They’d needed to have access to certain things in their suspect’s life to get evidence that he’d been a kidnapper and killer, but they’d needed evidence to get the authority to delve deeper into the man’s life.

Four days after that story aired, the police had received an anonymous envelope with print outs of said suspect’s phone records, car GPS coordinates, and financials. The guy had ended up cutting a deal and was now serving a twenty-five to life sentence.

Now that I’d settled into Houston, it was time to find areas where I could help. While I’d looked into active, current cases before, the front page of the newspaper – Kasey insisted on having an actual newspaper delivered every day – had a story about all of the cold cases in Houston and how the new police commissioner intended to start a task force to focus solely on cold cases.

I didn’t know a lot about police procedures, but I felt pretty safe in assuming that one of the things this task force would do was for people to come forward about certain cases. They’d be looking for tips, and I could offer anonymous ones based on information I gleaned from less-than-legal means.

I pulled my feet underneath me so that I was sitting cross-legged on the couch and hunched over my laptop. Not the best position for my posture, but surprisingly comfortable at the moment. I ate another spoonful of raspberry yogurt and left the spoon in my mouth as I used both hands to run a search, then followed the first link.

I ran my fingers through my hair, still not quite used to having it quite this short. When I’d decided to streak my light brown hair with deep purple, I’d gotten it cut as well. Drastically. I’d gone from having hair to the middle of my back to something that was a mix between a pixie cut and an undercut. I loved it, but it still sometimes caught me off-guard that most of my hair was gone.

I’d used an app to find it, and that thought made me wonder about some of the technology used to age pictures of suspects or missing kids. Seeing people out of context often made it hard to recognize them. I assumed the same principle applied to disguises.

Sometimes, it was the simpler disguises that worked best. People liked to mock how a pair of glasses kept people from realizing that Clark Kent was Superman, but there was some truth to it. I once watched an old spy show where the main character wore a bright red wig when she went undercover, and people paid so much attention to the color of her hair that they hadn’t paid attention to her facial features.

The second website I went to pulled my attention away from hair and disguises. An entire site that listed all missing person cold cases in each state and had the ability to narrow down to counties. Texas was vast and populated enough that trying to find Houston-specific cases through my usual methods would’ve been difficult. Not that I necessarily needed to only research cases where I lived. I just thought of it as how I got involved in my community.

Sometimes, I was tempted to search my own name, see if my mom had ever reported me missing. I’d told her more than once that I’d planned to leave, and I’d left a note, so I wanted to believe that she’d known I’d left of my own free will, and she’d wished me the best. Experience, however, kept whispering to me that she hadn’t given me a second thought.

“Focus, Linsey,” I muttered. I knew better than to fall down that particular rabbit hole. No good would come of it. I’d chosen Kasey as my family. Biology didn’t mean shit.

This was where I’d start hunting, I decided. Instead of trying to find a bad guy, I’d look for those who may or may not have been victims of foul play. If I found them, I could determine why they’d left and decide what to do on a case by case basis. If what I found led me to believe they were dead, I’d turn my attention to the suspects in the cases.

That decision made, I began to make a list, writing the names and information out long-hand so that I could organize everything at once. I’d found it also helped my brain to go over things more than once to allow the information to sink in. I’d start with the first ten and see what I could find.

Allyson Gaskins, age 24. Last seen walking down Travis Street on 12/3/88.

Heidi Titan, age 26. Reported missing by husband Mark Titan on 8/1/93.

Solomon Travis, age 52. Last seen in Houston Heights by stepson…

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