Authors: Sarah Alderson
I take the risk anyway, crossing quietly to the bed where I stand for a moment, looking down at her. The dog opens one eye and looks at me but doesn’t make a move to rip out my jugular.
She called it Goz. I wonder where she got the name from.
I contemplate the way Nic’s arms are wrapped around her body. She’s huddled in a ball as though shielding herself from a bomb blast and she’s lying horizontal across the bottom
of the mattress as though she didn’t want to take up space or get under the covers.
Her hair is fanned out on the sheets, half covering her face. I fight the urge to brush the strands off her cheek and out of her eyes and instead grab a blanket and lay it over her. She
doesn’t wake but she mumbles something in her sleep and shifts slightly. Her cheeks are flushed and it looks like she’s frowning, her jaw clenched tight and her hands fisted beneath her
chin. I want to rest my hand on her shoulder, reassure her that she’s safe, but Goz is still glaring at me with one eye open, looking like a Cyclops. And it has to be said that Nic emanates
pure hostility, even in her sleep. If she was an animal she’d be a porcupine, spines permanently bristling. I edge away from her, shaking my head.
How the hell did Nic Preston end up in my bed?
And what the hell have I got myself into?
Inside the cube I empty out Nic’s bag, checking for any electronics she might have in there – anything that might be giving off a signal that would allow someone to
pinpoint her whereabouts. I’m assuming Maggie already checked but it’s good to be thorough.
She packed in a hurry. There’s an assortment of clothes and underwear which I feel uncomfortable looking through, so I pile them neatly to one side. I find a Taser, which I put on top of
the clothes. There’s no phone. Maggie said her bag was stolen, along with her iPad. I’m assuming her phone was taken too.
I run a program to find a way through the firewalls of the security company’s server and simultaneously hack into the phone company’s server so I can check Nic’s messages. The
majority of violent crimes are committed by people known to the victim. The chances are that whoever broke into Nic’s apartment knew her, or had been at least tracking her for a while. That
person might also be the same person who killed her mom and stepsister. But then again, it might not.
Keep exploring all the options until you have a conviction –
that’s one of
the first things they teach you at the FBI.
There are just a few messages on her phone, including some from a guy called Marcus Turner. I run a vehicle registration search on him. It turns out Marcus is a twenty-four-year-old postgraduate
student of orthodontics. I wonder how they met. A quick flick through the notes Maggie left me tells me that Nic is studying at NYU, majoring in Psychology. Must have been there. I pause. An
orthodontist? I mean, that’s got to be some kind of cover. No one our age actually chooses to become an orthodontist, do they?
It takes me a few more minutes to hack into Nic’s emails. I run another program to make sure that no one else has hacked her account and while that’s processing I glance through her
emails, feeling as uncomfortable as if I was going through her underwear drawer. There’s an email from a girl called Liva Harvey inviting her for dinner with her and her boyfriend Jay. Nic
didn’t reply. There’s also a recent email from this guy Marcus asking her to go see a movie on Thursday night. Even though I know it’s wrong, I check her replies. She said
yes.
I frown at his driver’s licence photo as it pops up on to my screen. He has a shiny forehead, is already starting to lose his hair and has a nose you could slalom ski off. She’s
dating
this
guy? He looks like the kind of dude who’d spray down the sheets with antiseptic before making love and bleach them straight afterwards. The kind of guy who wouldn’t
know what to do with a woman if she lay down naked and offered herself to him with an instruction manual. I don’t know much about Nic but it surprises me that he’s her type. She’s
beautiful. I’d bet half the guys at NYU are trying to get with her.
I run some basic checks on Marcus, because now I’m plain suspicious. He has a subscription to the
American Journal of Orthodontics
(looks like a real thrilling read, that one) and
follows a few conservative political blogs. He doesn’t subscribe to any porn but his internet history shows an unhealthy fascination with teeth and male waxing salons. He’s squeaky
clean as far as I can tell, his background checking out so thoroughly I’d be surprised if it was an FBI or CIA cover. He’s boring as hell. Though it does look like he has some weird
waxing predilection. Maybe I should find a way to let Nic know.
I check through the rest of Nic’s inbox, but there’s hardly anything in it. Or in her trash files. She doesn’t send many emails, just to Aiden her stepdad – they seem to
get on well – and to her course tutor (As all the way). There are a couple of newsletters from the gym where she works out and from a female personal trainer. Some junk ones from Netflix. She
doesn’t seem to have many friends. And besides this guy Marcus, no boyfriends. She’s not on Facebook or Twitter. She keeps things private. And who can blame her? After the trial her
asshole boyfriend sold intimate details about their relationship to some magazine.
She’s seeing a therapist – a Dr Phipps. His photograph, when I pull it up from the DMV’s database, shows a guy who looks like Spike Lee. I don’t read the files.
Patient-doctor confidentiality is sacrosanct in my book and it’s pretty obvious why she needs to see a therapist. I’d be more worried if she wasn’t seeing one.
I throw my head back and stare at the ceiling of the cube, thinking back to the day I first set eyes on Nic Preston. It was about six months after I’d been thrown off the FBI’s
internship programme. I was in LA, starting up my internet security business. I was barely nineteen and mentally I was all over the place. Truly messed up. I’d never admit it to anyone, not
even Maggie, but the FBI was my whole life. I’d dreamed of being an agent since I was fourteen and getting kicked out before I even got my badge is still my second biggest regret.
Forcing that thought aside, I pull up a few pieces that appeared in the
LA Times
around the time of the Cooper case. Almost every article carries a photograph – not of the
suspects, but of Nic. A pretty face always sells newspapers, but when the pretty face is also a victim of vicious crime then the media takes it to a whole new level of spectator sport. They even
made some terrible TV movie after the trial.
The day her story hit the news stands I started researching the case, hacking into the police files to find out what the papers couldn’t tell me. If you asked me back then why I was so
interested in the case I would have said it was because it was high profile and I wanted to get my teeth into something big and juicy – but if you asked me now I’d have to admit it was
because Nic’s story got to me. The fact that she had lost so much struck a nerve. Actually, it struck several.
I broke into the server of the security company that had provided the alarm system for the LA house. It only took me an hour to discover that the Coopers’ system had been compromised. My
own internet security company was just a couple of weeks old but I took the evidence I’d found to the District Attorney’s office, hoping it could help. But the next thing I know, the
feds have arrested these two ex-military guys – Robert Miles and Casey McCrory – and are charging them with breaking and entering and double homicide.
They were two Iraq vets, both suffering mental health issues and various alcohol and drug dependencies. Neither of them had an IQ above one hundred and ten. They weren’t capable of hacking
the security system at the Cooper house. They were barely capable of remembering what day of the week it was.
At this point I took my findings to the defence team. I couldn’t understand how anyone in law enforcement could think these guys were involved. Initially they looked at me like I was some
snot-nosed teenager with no clue what I was talking about, but a quick glance at my findings and at my credentials and they were encouraged enough to ask me to start probing deeper, to find more
holes in the prosecution’s case. I didn’t just want to find holes though. I wanted to find the real murderers.
When I took the stand I knew with one hundred percent certainty that Miles and McCrory hadn’t killed Carol or Taylor Cooper. I hadn’t been able to figure out who the real culprits
were but I did know it was a set-up – some kind of conspiracy. I wouldn’t have given evidence had I believed otherwise.
I check the time. It’s close to eight in the morning and I want to get as much as possible done before Nic wakes. I hack into the National Archives and pull up the police report from the
night of the original break-in. They took Nic’s statement eight hours after the event. She was in a state of shock. Her mother and stepsister had just been brutally murdered. She had no
lawyer present, just her stepfather. I lean back in my chair and start reading.
Crystal shatters.
I yank out my headphones and hit the mute button on my laptop. The music playing through the ear buds stops, leaving only pulsing silence. For the briefest of moments I wonder if I imagined
it but then I hear a scream. It’s cut off by the sound of a man shouting and becomes a muffled sob and I draw in a breath as I register that it’s my mum who is sobbing.
I scramble off the bed and tiptoe to the door. It’s ajar and I peek my head out, straining to hear, but everything has fallen eerily silent as if all the air in the house has been
sucked into a vacuum.
The shouts came from downstairs, so I dizzily edge my way to the top of the stairs, keeping my back to the wall. A man’s voice spirals up – gruff and angry – and I dart
back out of sight. I can’t hear what he’s saying because he’s in the kitchen and the door is pulled to, but I can hear my mum whimpering in response. I lean back against the wall
and try to think even though cold tendrils of fear are winding themselves around my body.
The words
home invasion
leap into my mind. There have been a few in the neighbourhood. But I can’t believe it’s actually happening to us, it’s too surreal. I shake
my head. What am I doing just standing here? I need to get to a phone. I need to call the police.
I start tiptoeing back to my room, my heart battering wildly against my ribs, but I haven’t taken two steps before I hear the kitchen door burst open and another man shouting,
‘Check upstairs!’
Footsteps stampede towards me. My bedroom is too far so I sprint in a single bound to the bathroom across the hallway. I glance around in panic – the marble bath, the small cabinet
beneath the sink, the elegant arched window with the wrought-iron bars beyond it. With nowhere to go, I slide behind the door just as the footsteps reach the landing and come to a stop inches from
where I’m hiding.
I close my eyes, anger and terror welling inside my chest, waging battle. On the other side of the door I hear the man breathing heavily through his nose. A floorboard creaks and I picture
whoever it is standing there, taking in the dozen or so rooms leading off the hallway, trying to decide where to start his search. For the first time since we moved to LA and into this house,
I’m grateful for the preposterously large size of it.
My legs are shaking and I force the muscles to tense and stay rigid. I stare at the back of the door willing it not to move. But it does. The man is pushing it open, slowly. I turn my head
to the side, trying to flatten myself against the wall, biting my lip to stop myself screaming, but just as the door bangs against my foot and I am sure I’m about to be discovered
there’s a loud blast of music from the other end of the house.
My eyes snap open in confusion. Nicki Minaj is playing at top volume. The man lets go of the door instantly and I hear his footsteps thunder down the hall just as I realise what the music
signifies. Oh God. Oh God. I hear a high-pitched scream. It’s my stepsister, Taylor. She was meant to be out at a party.
I hear Taylor scream again, then the sounds of a scuffle, followed by a sharp yelp. I don’t move. I can’t. I stand frozen behind the door and listen as she is dragged screaming
down the hallway. I twist slightly and manage to catch a glimpse through the crack in the door.
Taylor is wearing only a towel. Her long bleached-blonde hair sticks in wet slicks to her back and she kicks her bare legs out at the man, who is holding her by the arm. He wrenches her
hard, pushing her down the stairs and she flies forwards, her face hitting the wall with a crack, leaving a smear of blood that I can’t drag my eyes away from.
Taylor lets out a startled cry and the guy grabs her around the waist and carries her down the remaining stairs. She clutches the towel around herself, spitting out a torrent of curses. I
don’t catch more than a glimpse of the guy’s back – he’s about six foot, broad shouldered, wearing all black: combat pants, a long-sleeved sweater and a ski mask.
When they are gone, into the kitchen, I take a deep, shuddering breath and step out from behind the door. My body vibrates like a tuning fork. Move. I need to move. I hover in the doorway
looking right, towards my bedroom, and then left to the room my mum and stepdad share. It’s about twenty metres from where I stand. I start to move towards their bedroom but the sound of
Taylor crying pulls me up short.
‘Is there anyone else in the house?’ one of the men is yelling at her.
Taylor screams, a high-pitched yelp that turns my insides to liquid.
‘No!’ my mum shouts back. Her voice is defiant but there’s a rift of fear in it that makes my heart stop.
‘Where’s the safe?’ the other man demands.
‘In the study,’ my mum whimpers. ‘But I don’t know the combination. Only my husband does.’
‘What about her?’ the first one asks.
There’s a pause then I hear my stepsister shrieking and cursing and the dull thud of a fist smacking flesh.