Page 39 of Escape Girl

“I need to tell you about a letter I received,” I blurted. “The July after you disappeared.”

That shut him up fast.

I didn’t tell him much about the contents of the letter, but I did tell him that I knew it was from Jo Harper and that it was the reason I started picking up the phone again when he called.

Then I got pulled into an urgent meeting, and my father and I never really talked about the situation again. But he did text me.Thought about what you said. I’m going to let it go.

If you looked at it from my perspective, I’d done Jo a big, fat favor. I’d managed to call off Vengeful Billionaire Daddy, and she was able to move on from her illegal romance scam to whatever her new company, Poise LLC, was doing now.

Is that why she’d connected Bella to me? As a sort of thank-you? Bella’s case had energized me, no doubt, but Jo couldn’t have known that it would. I didn’t buy that connecting us was as simple as my “brilliant lawyer” skills either. Even if Bella hadbeen rejected by two IP lawyers in Chicago, there were hundreds of others. Many with more experience than me.

From a self-preservation standpoint, wouldn’t it be much smarter for Jo to stay far away from me? My father had let her off the hook a few months ago, but he’d come roaring back if he felt like I was getting involved in anything untoward.

So, there had to be more to it. Today, I’d find out what.

In the hotel bathroom, I brushed my hair, frowning, wondering which style would best hide my roots. Maybe I’d book a colorist for some time this week. I scrolled through Yelp reviews of salons on my phone for a few minutes but then decided I should probably get the appointment with Taggert’s attorney scheduled before I made any alternate plans.

The problem was, I still wasn’t satisfied with either draft of our response to the cease and desist, and I was acutely aware that we had the element of surprise only once. Taggert didn’t think Bella would fight back. When she did, when she confronted him with opposing counsel, I wanted it to feel like the punch in the face Bella so badly wanted to give him.

Last night I’d done some research. Everything about Max Hampshire checked out, and I was sure he was telling the truth. A simple Google search on his name revealed posts from dozens of different software developer sites. In many cases, he was responding to someone who’d asked for guidance on a problem. In others, coders were simply praising him as a super-smart, nice dude who went out of his way to help others.

Right before we left Fizz last night, Tess had busted Bella for staring at Max with awestruck eyes. “He’s even more incredible than you think,” she said proudly. “Yeah, yeah, GuardTower. But also?” She lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. “He’s the Ghost Killer.”

Which meant exactly nothing to me, but Bella let out a sort of swoony gasp-shriek. “Really?”

Naturally, I had to look that up later too. Turns out that the Ghost Killer was a hacker who had managed to take down a real internet asshole—a sleazy dude who ran a revenge porn sex tape site. For years, authorities hadn’t managed to get the site down, as it was hosted on offshore servers. But the Ghost Killer had taken it down for good, to the extreme relief of the dozens of women victimized on the site.

So in addition to being a software creator, Max had a secret alter ego as a semi-famous hacker. As a woman, I completely supported his ghost-killing work, but as a lawyer, he made for a problematic witness. If we ended up in court with Taggert, Max couldn’t be any part of our actual strategy.

However… I bit my lip. He had offered help. He seemed to be awfully good at different methods of research, and he knew the Chicago tech community. I could hire an investigator to get some of the answers I wanted, but maybe this would be faster. Decision made, I fired off an email.

Hi Max,

Nice to meet you last night, and thanks for offering assistance to Bella and me. You know that search thing you mentioned last night? That you ran for Taggert’s name? Could you do the same thing for James A. Hill, Taggert’s lawyer? I’m wondering if Taggert’s used him for other cease and desists in the past. Maybe people searched his name. Also, if you have any extra time, it’d be good to know more about the other intellectual property cases Hill has worked on.

I hit Send and pulled on another suit. Perhaps I should have packed differently. I wasn’t going into a law office today. I didn’t need to look so formal. No, I decided, squaring my shoulders. I’d always liked wearing suits. In today’s world, where athleisure ruled, I knew that made me odd. But I liked everything about suits: they were warm, flattering, and they signified power.

When I’d started my new job a few weeks after our wedding, Bobby would wolf-whistle at me in the mornings. He’d waggle his eyebrows and leer at me over his coffee cup in our kitchen. “Sorry if this makes me sound like a meathead, but you look so damn hot in your lawyer clothes.”

I squinted at my laptop. There hadn’t been an escape room invitation in my inbox this morning. After receiving so many in a row, the absence felt ominous. Maybe the “Honeymoon in Real Life” was the last one. If Bobby was focused our relationship’s greatest hits, ending on that week actually made sense. It wasn’t long after our honeymoon staycation that things began to change between us.

Enough.

Today wasn’t the day for solving the mess of Bobby and me. Today was the day for solving the mystery of Jo.

I considered emailing Jo to tell her that I was coming by but rejected the idea immediately. In fact, hell no. Element of surprise again. Her LLC was registered with an address in Fulton Market, and Google Maps revealed it as a loft office building. In the mirror, I admired myself from the neck down. I looked steely. Formidable. I was going to march in there, put her on the spot, and demand some answers.

My upbeat resolve carried me down the Langham’s elevators, through my Uber ride to the loft building, and up the two flights of stairs to Poise’s office suite. Determination lifted my fist and I banged on the door with gusto.

The door swung open, inward and sudden. But it wasn’t Jo who answered. It was a young blonde woman, and she was the most gorgeous person I’d ever seen in real life. Platinum hair, perfect figure, and a face so stunning it was hard to believe.

I’d thought Bella was lovely when I’d first met her, and she was. But comparing Bella to this woman was like comparing a pretty girl in your high school to Aphrodite.

She was, I suddenly thought,ridiculously beautiful.

Holy shit. If this goddess was the scammer who sat down next to Bobby in the bar that night, I honestly couldn’t blame him for being tempted.

“Can I help you?” the blonde asked.

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