Page 54 of Darkwater Lane

The first thing I do when I sit at my desk is send out feelers to try to find out if there are any good barns nearby that we can check out for Connor. He’s loved riding so much that I hate to see him have to let it go. While there don’t seem to be any equine therapy programs in the area, his regular therapist from home agreed to continue meeting with him via Zoom so at least he’ll have that consistency.

After sending those emails, I do a quick internet search. Once I have the phone number, I call our car insurance company and inquire about how much it will cost to add Connor to our policy. Then I look for a drivers-ed course nearby and fill out an interest form.

Letting him get his license is something I can give him. I just have to figure out how far I’m willing to go without breaking myself.

Later, Taylor from work calls with an update.

“You want the good news or the bad news?” she asks.

Out of habit, I stand from my desk and push the office door closed. Not that it matters. Lanny is out on a long run while Sam and Connor have gone to the hardware store to pick up supplies for some upgrades they have planned for the kids’ bathroom.

Once I’m seated again, I force myself to take a deep breath. “Good news first. There hasn’t been enough of that lately.”

“Your podcaster, Madison Westcott, looks clean.”

Some of the tension leaves my shoulders. “Really?” I should have expected that, given I’d done my own background search on her, but Taylor has skills and access to databases that I don’t have.

“You sound surprised.”

She’s right. “I guess I don’t have much faith in most folks these days.”

“Smart,” Taylor agrees. “I can send you the receipts if you want them, but she has somewhat of an alibi for the night Varrus was murdered. Records show her checking in at 2:25 p.m. and her computer logged into the WiFi at 2:37. She watched YouTube videos until 4:43. Credit card receipt from a second hotel showed she purchased two beers at 5:31.”

“That second receipt is from drinks with me,” I note.

“I pulled her phone records too. Location data has her cell phone in the area of the hotel the whole time.”

“Which just means her cell phone was there. It doesn’t prove she was,” I point out.

“It’s not the most airtight alibi ever,” Taylor agrees.

I try to picture it: Madison checking into her hotel, setting up her computer, then sneaking out again to track down Leo, drag him to my house, and murder him. There was only a half-hour or so window between the time I left the house to meet her, andwhen she showed up at the bar. With traffic, that wouldn’t have left her much time to kill Leo and get cleaned up before meeting me.

“Okay. Thanks for looking into that. And the bad news?”

“Rowan is trouble. I mean, the kind of trouble you don’t want to mess with.”

I slump in my chair as an anxious tension squeezes my gut. “Tell me more.”

“As you noted on her LinkedIn profile, she’s worked in cyber security for years—decades at this point. Her specialty is as a white hat hacker, specifically a penetration tester. She’s one of those people you hire to try to break into your systems—digitally and physically—to find the flaws.”

“Yeah, I saw that she’s a hacker.”

“No, she’s not just a hacker. She’s next level. She’s someone people hire to outsmart other hackers,” Taylor says without hesitation.

My stomach drops. “Wonderful. We all know I’ve had such great luck with hackers in the past,” I say bitterly. Early on, when we were first on the run, I’d worked with a hacker named Absalom. He taught me how to reinvent myself, how to avoid getting doxed, and how to keep Melvin from finding us. Only to discover that he’d been working against me the entire time, leading me right into my ex-husband’s trap.

“This woman is good, Gwen. It wouldn’t surprise me if my digging around didn’t ping some sort of digital tripwire and alert her to the fact that she’s being looked into.”

I curse under my breath. “Would she be able to track it back to you?”

“I’d like to say no because I’m pretty damn good at what I do, but so is she. I give it 90-to-10 odds she doesn’t pin it on me.”

So, a 10% chance Rowan realizes she’s being investigated and tracks it back to Taylor and, by extension, me. Not bad, but notgreat either. “If she does pin it on you, it’s not even much of a leap to work out that I’m involved.” I run a hand down my face.

“If you want, I can stop looking. Cancel the searches on Madison as well. Tiptoe away and hope Rowan doesn’t catch sight of any digital footprints.”

I shake my head. “Maybe it’s not a bad thing if she realizes I’m digging into her past. Let her know what it’s like to be hunted for once.” I tap a pen on the desk in thought.

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