She Was Their Target, page 18
With that tease, he hung up, smiling to himself. She would go crazy trying to guess. But never in a million years would she hit on Brittany Blake’s name.
41
His phone rang, and he immediately swiped without looking to see who it was, expecting it to be Kenzie. She probably hadn’t even had time to listen to his message. She had just seen his caller ID and was calling him back.
“Hey!”
“Zach?” It was Jennifer’s tentative voice, confused at his greeting.
“Oh—I thought it was Kenzie. Sorry.”
“I did it. I talked to the medical examiner’s office to ask them about the watch.”
“Good,” Zachary approved. “Do they know where it is?”
“No, they said they don’t know what I’m talking about. That she wasn’t wearing a watch when they got her body. It must have been removed at the dentist’s office, or she wasn’t wearing it that day.” Jennifer’s voice strengthened. “They never saw it, Zachary!”
“Do you remember her wearing it that day? Would she have left it at home when she went to have her teeth pulled?”
“No. You know these kids with their technology. She’d be more likely to leave her wrist at home than her smartwatch. Of course she had it on.”
And now that information was gone. Where had it disappeared to? Had it been lost at the dental office? Would they have taken it off to put in an IV or do something else? Maybe she had to do some testing and couldn’t wear any metal or jewelry. He tried to think of any other reason the dentist would require her to take it off. Hygiene, he supposed. It wasn’t sterile. But then, he didn’t know if they worried about that as much for extracting teeth as in an actual surgery at the hospital.
Or at the morgue? From what he had seen of Kenzie’s office, the technicians were pretty careful about cataloging and properly storing everything that came in. If Kristin had been wearing the watch when she came in, then had someone pocketed it because they wanted it? Had it been put down on a counter and forgotten? Fallen back behind a shelf? Had it been stored with the wrong person’s personal effects?
“Okay,” he said to Jennifer at last. “I guess there’s nothing we can do if it was lost. We can’t force anyone to find it and give it back. Unless it is trackable from Kristin’s phone. Do you know if you can do that? Search for it from the watch app?”
“I don’t have a clue. It makes sense that you might be able to. But Kristin never lost it. She was always wearing it.”
“Of course,” Zachary agreed. Probably the only time Kristin took the watch off was for a shower or to charge it.
“You’ve got her phone. So, if you can find a way to do it…” Jennifer trailed off. Zachary could picture her expressive shrug.
“I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for calling back and letting me know.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome.” Jennifer sighed. “I just hope you can find something before too long. This is getting really… I feel stretched out thin. Ready to snap like a rubber band.”
“I’m sorry. Try to get some rest. You shouldn’t be working all the time.”
“I have to work. It’s the only way to put it out of my mind. The only way I can move forward.”
Zachary was silent for a moment. She didn’t say anything either.
“Take care, Jennifer. You know I’ll do everything I can.”
“Thank you, Zachary.”
She terminated the call. Zachary stared at his phone, unable to move on to the next task.
Somehow he had to help Jennifer. There had to be something that he could tell her that would bring her some peace. But he didn’t know what it was. She was the one who had started down this path. But she couldn’t control the direction the investigation led.
A banner message flashed across his screen while he was staring at it. Too fast for him to read. He swiped and tapped to freeze it in the middle of his screen.
Brittany had tagged him. Not on the same app as he had sent her a message through. It was a vague, general message that everyone would overlook except the people tagged in it.
reaching out to my old friends Zachary and Kenzie. It’s nice to hear from you again.
He looked at the message for a moment but could glean no more from it than was apparent at first glance.
He returned to the private message he had sent her and was met with reply with an enthusiastic streak of emoji hugs and kisses.
we’ve got to do something about this, she had messaged, be careful what you post here, even in private messages. I have reason to think it is not secure
She was probably right. It tended to be incredibly easy to hack social networking sites. People did it all the time.
let’s talk/meet in private he suggested.
Brittany agreed, and they exchanged several messages back and forth to make suitable arrangements.
A call had come through from Kenzie while he had been messaging Brittany, but he assumed she was returning his call and he could get back to her after he finished talking with Brittany. She was probably going crazy trying to figure out who he had seen, and he didn’t mind drawing out the tension a bit more to tease her further.
But then a text message pushed its way onto the screen.
CALL ME
That wasn’t like Kenzie at all. Zachary tapped her name and initiated a call. It was answered almost immediately.
“Zachary? Are you okay?”
“Yes.” His heart thumped at the anxious note in her voice. “I’m fine. What happened?”
“I’m on my way home.”
“Wait. Slow down. What are you upset about? Should you even be driving?”
“I need to get home. How else am I going to do it?”
“You could catch a cab or ride share. Or wait for me and I’ll come pick you up.” He picked up his keys from the laptop table. “Are you still at the morgue? I can be right over.”
“No. Don’t come. I’ll be home soon. I’ll come to you.”
He couldn’t ask again whether she was in any condition to drive. She was going to do it no matter what he said, so he might as well not have an argument with her about it.
“Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“No.”
She hung up the phone. Zachary stared at the screen, shaking his head.
Something had set her off. But he had no idea whether it was a real or perceived threat. She did overreact to things. Despite her reassurance that her PTSD was improving on its own, he hadn’t seen a decrease in her symptoms. And that wasn’t the way it worked. It wouldn’t just disappear on its own.
But he would have to wait a few minutes until she got home. It was a small town, it would only be a few minutes, and then she could explain it to him, and he could decide how concerned he should be. Until then, he would set judgment aside and just wait.
Though he couldn’t, of course. His heart was still thumping and he wouldn’t be able to relax until she was home safe and sound. His brain was going through all sorts of horrible things that might have happened to upset her. He paced back and forth, trying to calm himself down and to think of what she might need.
42
Despite his anxiety and panic attacks, Zachary was actually good in a real emergency. That’s where his hypervigilant and ADHD brain really paid off. He saw and processed the dangers quickly, went through a hundred different scenarios to see what the results of each decision were, and appeared to be calm and confident.
Unlike when he had a flashback or a panic attack over something that was not a real danger at all, and could collapse in the middle of the floor—or the street—over Christmas candles or an accusation by Bridget.
So he was thinking about what things he could do to calm Kenzie down, from food to soft music and a warm bath or shower. Girding up his loins to support her in whatever she needed him to do. Thinking about how he would help her to sleep and call Dr. B to discuss issues if it were something he couldn’t handle. He had the phone numbers for her mother and father if it was a family issue or he needed input from them. He didn’t have Dr. Wiltshire’s personal number, but he knew the number to the morgue and could have a message passed on to Dr. Wiltshire if it were something to do with work.
Whatever she needed him to do, he was there for her. He would do it.
Finally he heard the big garage door open and her car pull in. The engine sounded fine. Nothing wrong with the car, as far as he could tell. He stood in the kitchen waiting for her. She wouldn’t want him jumping all over her the instant she came in the door. Or poking his head into the garage before she had a chance to exit, demanding to know what the problem was. He could be solid and reliable, waiting for her to confide in him.
The door opened and Kenzie stepped into the kitchen. She saw him there and nodded without saying anything. She kicked off her shoes and hung up her purse. She cleared the door open code on the burglar alarm and walked over to him. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly. Zachary put his arms firmly around her and held on, waiting.
She took several deep breaths, but he could feel her shaking. Could feel that fluttering movement of her stomach as she shuddered with each breath. He kissed her cheek.
“I’m here,” he assured her.
Kenzie shook her head and at first she couldn’t say anything, couldn’t put what she was feeling into words.
“Do you want to sit down?” Zachary pulled back a little, but she stuck to him. “Have a glass of water?”
“In a minute.”
“Okay.” He could wait.
Several minutes passed. Zachary could hear the clock on the wall ticking. Eventually, Kenzie released him. She went to her chair and sat down carefully, as if she didn’t know if that was her place. Zachary went to the fridge and poured her a glass of cold water. He didn’t add ice to it.
“Here you go.”
Kenzie took it. He studied her as she sipped. She was quite pale, her red lipstick and black hair standing out in stark contrast to her face. Her curly hair, often wild if she drove with the top down, was still neatly arranged, which meant that she had not enjoyed the summer breeze as she usually did. She had been in a hurry to get home.
He still didn’t demand to know what had happened, but merely waited. After making sure she didn’t need anything else, he sat down in his chair and watched her.
“There was a man,” Kenzie started.
Zachary nodded, waiting. A man in the morgue? A patient? Or a man she had run into somewhere else? Maybe just a man she had known once that something had made her think of.
“He was at the entrance to the parking garage. His car stopped behind the barrier. Trying to use his access card to get into the garage, but it wasn’t working.”
“Okay. Not someone you knew?”
“No. But there are a lot of people who work there on a different floor or are only there now and then, who don’t come and go at the same times as I do, so, unless we had a file together, I wouldn’t know them. There are a lot of people there I don’t know.”
“Yeah, makes sense.”
“He was standing there, obviously having problems with the card reader, and he waved me over like he needed help. Sometimes the readers are really flaky, but I’m usually pretty good at getting them to work. So I stopped to talk to him, to give him a few tips.”
Zachary tried to read her face. Tried to anticipate what was coming next.
“So he came closer to hear me, so I didn’t have to shout across at him.”
“Sure.”
Zachary could see it in his mind’s eye. He knew the location, and he could picture Kenzie stopping to help the man who was having such a difficult time.
“And he got close to me, and he grabbed me! My arm. And he twisted it…”
Zachary looked down at her arm. He should have caught the redness earlier. “Do you need ice? Is it okay?”
“It’s okay. No permanent damage. It just hurt, and he twisted it, so my wrist felt like it was going to break. And my shoulder. I was trying to stop him, to keep him from twisting, but he was so strong.”
A couple of tears escaped her eyes. Zachary shook his head, not understanding the scenario.
“What did he want? He was the car owner, not some homeless guy?”
She sniffled. “A homeless guy could still own a car. But… it was a really nice car. Late model Mercedes. He wasn’t homeless. He didn’t look out of place. Or he did, because he looked too fancy, and that place is full of cops, not millionaires. But he could have been someone’s lawyer.”
Zachary nodded. “Did he say anything?”
“He said…” Kenzie swallowed hard and spoke in a tight, restrained voice. “That I should get my nose out of things that were not my business. I’ve got plenty of my own files and should stick to those.”
Zachary nodded, frowning. He opened his mouth to ask her a question, but didn’t get it out.
“It was about Rx, Zachary!” Her eyes were wide and bewildered. “About LipoSlayerRx and Kristin and your friend Jennifer. Telling me to stay away from the case.”
Zachary tried to protest that Kristin Jones was his file, not Kenzie’s, so if there was anyone to warn off, they should be warning Zachary off. And they hadn’t. But he thought about the dark car that had followed him from the police station. They had never caught back up to him. The car hadn’t been a late-model Mercedes, but they might have had more than one vehicle. More than one person there to warn them off. Both him and Kenzie. One car had followed Zachary away and one had stayed behind to get to Kenzie. But why? To tell them to stay out of the Kristin Jones case? It wasn’t like they were about to have someone arrested. They couldn’t prove wrongdoing on anyone’s part yet. The medical examiner’s report was unchanged. Until it was changed from natural death to homicide, the police were not likely to have anything to do with it.
Zachary had turned the drugs in to Campbell, but did the people who had been watching him know that? They couldn’t know exactly why Zachary was there unless they had the house bugged, and he swept it at least weekly for electronic monitoring. Accomplished in covertly monitoring people, he knew how easy it was. How the devices could be practically invisible.
But they knew he was working on the file and that he had seen fit to go to the police about something. And they had followed him to warn him off as well. Only he had shaken them on the highway and they couldn’t. Not unless they knew where he lived. Zachary turned in his seat to look out the front window again. Plenty of time had passed. Plenty of time in which to figure out where he lived. Or to follow Kenzie, who would have been oblivious to a tail, back home. He still didn’t see any cars that didn’t belong on the street. No one was sitting surveilling the house from nearby. No late model Mercedes.
“Did you… make sure that he couldn’t follow you home? Did you watch for anyone behind you?”
Kenzie nodded. “I did the best I could. I’m no professional, but… I didn’t see him or his car again. I pulled over partway.” She breathed hard and her eyes were shiny with tears. “Because I couldn’t drive and I needed to make sure that no one was following me. I just pulled over on the main road, put my flashers on, and watched. That’s when I called you.”
Zachary nodded. “Good. That was a good idea. He would have had to make himself visible.”
“But he didn’t. And I watched. I didn’t see anyone following.”
“Good.” Zachary put his hand over hers, trying to reassure her. “You’re safe here.”
43
I don’t understand it,” Kenzie said, shaking her head. “I don’t even understand how anyone could know I’d looked at anything concerning Kristin, Rx, or your investigation. That was just between you and me. Unless you told someone else about it.”
Zachary shook his head. “No. I haven’t told anyone you knew anything about it. I never do. I just say that I know someone with a medical background or something like that. I don’t ever say your name or that you’re my partner or that you work with the medical examiner’s office.”
“Then how would anyone know?”
Zachary shook his head slowly, thinking it through. How would anyone know that Kenzie was involved in the investigation? There weren’t even that many people who knew that Zachary was. Jennifer, a few of Kristin’s friends and other people at the school, and Joshua Campbell. Who else even knew that he was looking into it?
“Someone followed me when I left your building. I thought that Campbell put someone on to me or Gordon was having me tailed to make sure I stayed away. But… it could be Rx. Campbell warned me that these big pharma companies can be dangerous.”
“As if we didn’t already know that,” Kenzie said, rolling her eyes.
They’d had enough experience with that in the past.
“You talked to her doctor,” Kenzie pointed out. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him that I was looking into Kristin’s death. I didn’t say anything about you.”
“But he knows that you’re investigating it. Investigating Rx. And prescribing Rx is practically all he does.”
Zachary’s stomach was in knots at the thought that anything he had done could have put Kenzie in danger.
“He’s making all kinds of money pimping the stuff. He probably has contacts within the company and gets a lot of kickbacks.”
Kenzie nodded. “Yeah. I would guess so.”
“And the minute I left there, I’ll bet he was on the phone with them, telling them I was making trouble.”
“That puts you on their radar. But what about me? Would they look into your background and find out that we were together and just assume that you would involve me in the investigation?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. From what you described, it sounded like he knew you were involved in the investigation.”
Kenzie nodded. “Yes. He acted like he knew I had been sticking my nose where it did not belong.”
Zachary rubbed the back of his neck, thinking about it. It had all been happening at the same time as Brittany had been posting about him and Kenzie on social media. Too fast for her words to have gotten back to TrimProGenix that Kenzie was involved and to warn her off. Kenzie had been threatened right around the time that Brittany had been posting. But he figured he’d better bring her up to speed anyway.
