Page 8

K atherine thought it best to privatize her fan page for a while, allowing only the girls she’d been chatting with to stay. She remained unsure about Walter, the male nurse. Maybe she would block him. Something about him seemed a bit off. Could it be possible he was Karrie’s father? She would go online, look at his posts, and try to read between the lines.

While she appreciated all of her readers, Walter was the only male ever to join the fan page. Her books were about teenage girls, and each had a special power. Lark could move objects telekinetically. Adrianna had psychic powers that enabled her to know things before they happened. Harmony possessed strength far beyond normal, and Jayden produced sounds that could be deadly. Katherine’s years at the Burgess Hill School had elevated her imagination far beyond that of other girls her age. Her characters represented powers she herself had wished for. Right now, she could use Adrianna’s psychic abilities.

Katherine could think of no explanation for Karrie’s father claiming he wrote her books, and no way was it humanly possible for him to have possession of one of her notebooks. She’d kept each one in a large plastic bin in her closet. Just for the hell of it, she went to the closet, pulled the storage container out, and scanned the stack of spirals. All of her notebooks were exactly where she’d left them.

Why did Karrie fear her father? She had admitted that he hit her sometimes. Karrie reaching out online to “Darby,” of all people, made no sense. Did Karrie know of their possible connection in real life? Katherine wanted to think this was nothing more than a childish prank, yet there were too many coincidences for this to be a joke. No one knew she’d moved to North Carolina. Not even her former colleagues at the Globe , nor the couples she and Adam had socialized with. She’d left her life in Boston behind. She’d never contacted anyone.

Wait.

It had been so long ago that she’d almost forgotten. She’d sold her apartment a few months after moving here. All of the transactions had been made through emails and banks. When her apartment was sold, the money was wired to the business account of K.C. Winston, Inc. If someone wanted to find her, and they were technologically gifted, they could have located her. If they were truly hell-bent on destroying her, maybe they could do just that.

Deciding this was a starting point, she could possibly trace the transaction. As far as research went, she was decent enough, though not so knowledgeable that she knew exactly how to go about this. Katherine would hire an expert and find who was involved in selling her old place and everyone who’d communicated with the real estate agent. Maybe a certain name would ring a bell, offer an explanation, help her discover who in her past would have reason to . . . what ? She didn’t know. Send a teenage girl to her fan page to screw with her and tell a few lies about being the author of her novels? It couldn’t be that stupid or simple. And why now?

In her office, she searched online for a computer forensic expert. There were hundreds. Katherine clicked off. If she were going to hire a professional, she needed to meet them face to face.

Unsure how to go about it, she decided that she would ask Doc. He’d lived in North Carolina his entire life. He knew a lot of the local business owners. Tomorrow she’d ask him if he knew a professional to assist her and keep it private. But then she had to stop depending solely on him.

Before she changed her mind, she pulled up the Friendlink fan page again and changed the settings. She could manage posts and limited activity to only five current members. Especially WHS524—Walter. The more she thought about him, the more suspicious he became. He’d joined recently and was extremely bossy with the others. She wanted to keep an eye on him. She scanned through his comments since he’d joined. She didn’t read anything other than his rude threats, which seemed fairly tame. He could be just a bossy old coot with no life.

Tired, Katherine shut down her computer, her thoughts racing everywhere. The past two days had been full, and she was tired. After she went through her nighttime routine, she crawled beneath the warm blankets with both dogs and dreamed of a life with Tyler.