Page 80 of Every Step She Takes

PCTracy:It was a stupid thing to do. A violation of your trust. I understand that now.

LlamaGirl:And you didn’t before?

PCTracy:Honestly, no. Like I said, I wouldn’t have suggested you sleep outside if I couldn’t be there. From my perspective, I’m guarding a client, which is part of my job. However, from your point of view, I’m a stranger tracking your movements and watching over you as you sleep. That’s creepy as hell.

PCTracy:I had nothing but good intentions. But you don’t know that. So I screwed up.

LlamaGirl:You did. Goodbye.

PCTracy:Wait! Tell me what I can do to make this right.

LlamaGirl:Nothing. You sent me to this app so we could chat, knowing it also meant you could track me. I’m deleting it now.

PCTracy:Please don’t do that, L. Stick to data. I will make no attempt to track you in any way.

LlamaGirl:I don’t trust you.

PCTracy:Colt was definitely not at home the night of the murder. He went to a rehearsal and then flew out on a friend’s private jet just before 3 p.m. Pacific time, 6 Eastern. I don’t have the flight plan yet, but I’m working on it. A private JET, though, suggests he wasn’t zipping up to San Francisco for the evening. If the destination was New York, he’d have arrived around 11 p.m.

PCTracy:I also think you should see this.

He sends me a link.

PCTracy:Watch the video. You might be able to reach out to her. We can discuss that.

LlamaGirl:I need some time.

PCTracy:Understood. Just be careful. Please.

Chapter Thirty

I have breakfast in the diner. I feel safe here, but that might be an illusion – by six, people are streaming in, and while I’m tucked into the corner of my booth, they could still see me if they walked past. Yet I’m still at the same point as when I walked in here.Roll the die. Accept my fate.I suppose Mom would say that I’m putting my faith in God, but God or Fate, it feels like the same thing. That moment when you look the cosmos square in the eye and say, “Do with me what you will.”

I need a good breakfast, and I need to analyze how much danger I’m currently in, and I need to process what PCTracy did. If taking that time to think and eat breakfast means I get caught, so be it.

The trouble, really, is that PCTracy knows he made a mistake. I called him a bastard, and I want him to be one and belligerently defend his actions.

What? I saved you, lady. I watched over you, and I saved you, and I beat up a guy who tried to assault you. You should be thanking me.

If he said that, I could delete this app and be done with him.

Sorry, PCTracy, but I don’t need a private investigator who’ll cyberstalk me and watch me as I sleep. That’s creepy as hell.

Except he said it was creepy himself. He acknowledged it first and never defended himself.

Was he just saying what I wanted to hear? Talking me off the ledge?

Maybe, but if he really believed he’d done me a favor, he’d be unable to let a little of that slip in.

I can’t dismiss him. But I can’t trust him, either. He betrayed that trust, and he treated me like a child.

Sure, stay out all night. That’s fine… because I’ll be secretly watching over you.

I feel patronized. The question, though, is whether he’d do the same for a man, and I suspect the answer is yes. To him, I’m not a woman in jeopardy needing male protection; I’m a client in jeopardy needing professional protection.

I don’t delete the app. I do close it, and I will leave it closed for a while.

It’s not until I’m nearly done with breakfast that I remember the link he sent. It leads to one of the CNR-wannabe sites, where a reporter caught up with Tiana, “caught up” being paparazzi-speak for “cornered.” Tiana is with Bess Tang, her mother’s assistant and Tiana’s ex. They’re walking out of a cafe after lunch yesterday. Tiana wears oversized sunglasses and a floppy face-shadowing hat, and she reminds me so much of her mother that my heart squeezes.