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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

LONDON, ENGLAND

FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 2023

8:00 A.M.

Sitting down to her room service breakfast, Cami opened her phone and found Ali’s most recent message. It didn’t provide much more information than she’d already gathered. Moments later, she was startled by the ringing of the landline phone on her bedside table.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Lee?”

“Yes.”

“Detective Inspector Wallace here. I was wondering if you’d be available to come into police headquarters for a formal interview later on this morning. There have been a number of new developments in the case, and we’d like to discuss them with you.”

“Where is your headquarters located?”

“In Chelmsford,” he answered. “We’re about thirty miles from where you’re staying.”

Cami thought about all the appointments she had set for today, but with both Petrov and Willoughby dead, this was now a double homicide with international implications. Unfortunately, she was the one common denominator in both cases. No wonder DI Wallace wanted a second interview.

“Okay,” she said, “but in order to do that, I’ll need to move some appointments around. The best I can do will be early afternoon.”

“That’ll work. Do you need the address?”

“No, we’ll be able to find it.”

“Who’s we?” Wallace asked.

“My friend Rachel and I,” Ali said. “You met her last night. She knows her way around the UK far better than I do.”

“All right,” Wallace said. “Let’s plan on one o’clock.”

Off the phone, Cami hurried over to the connecting door between her room and Rachel’s and tapped on it. “Slight change of plans,” she said.

Rachel opened the door, still in her PJs. “What kind of change?” she asked.

“DI Wallace wants to do a formal interview with me at the Essex Police headquarters in Chelmsford early this afternoon.”

“Under caution or not?”

“He didn’t say.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I’d be there around one.”

“I take it he knows Petrov is dead?” Rachel asked.

“Yes, he does.”

“You shouldn’t go into that interview without a solicitor,” Rachel said. “I can call someone.”

“No, don’t bother. I’ll be fine. What I need to do now is move today’s appointments around and postpone them until Monday, if at all possible, and that means I’m going to have to change my departure date.”

“I’ll see if WWS’s faux cab is available,” Rachel replied. “We sure as hell aren’t going to Chelmsford and back on public transportation. We’d be sitting ducks.”

After changing her return flight to Tuesday, Cami spent the remainder of her morning canceling her Friday appointments and moving them around. Then, before going downstairs to meet up with Rachel, she sent an encrypted text to both Frigg and Ali:

Changed the departure for my return flight to Tuesday. Going to an interview with DI Wallace concerning Adrian Willoughby’s homicide. No calls or texts until I let you know otherwise.

Once the message was gone, she sat there staring at the screen on her phone. She was quite sure that if her phone was put through a forensic examination, the hidden texts back and forth would be undetectable, but what if there was something that investigators would expect to be there but wasn’t—like the one containing the screenshot of Petrov in the Lancaster fitness center that she had sent to Frigg in a Howler form? Fortunately, she had given the screenshot to Sonja Bjornson by hand. Maybe she’d be able to make DI Wallace believe that High Noon had come by their copy the same way.

The distance from the Portlandia to the Essex Police Headquarters in Chelmsford may have been only thirty miles, but the drive took close to an hour. On the way, Cami noticed that both the driver and Rachel were on full alert, watching for any kind of tailing vehicle. Cami, on the other hand, was wondering why Wallace was bringing her in for another interview. Before entering the room, just to be on the safe side, she set her phone to block all incoming calls and messages until further notice.

“The time is 1:23 p.m.,” he announced once everyone was seated. “I am Detective Inspector Wallace. Present in the room with me is Detective Sergeant Frost and a U.S. citizen named Camille Lee. Ms. Lee, you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention something when questioned that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

In that moment, Cami knew she wasn’t here as a witness. She was here as a person of interest at least, if not an actual suspect. Rachel had been right to suggest that Cami should be accompanied by a solicitor, and Cami should have gone along with that idea.

“First off,” Wallace began, “I believe you told me in our previous interview that you had identified your presumed stalker as someone named Bogdan Petrov.”

Cami nodded. “That is correct.”

“And how exactly did you determine that?”

“As I told you, by using facial rec, we were able to confirm his identity.”

Much to Cami’s relief, her use of that first person plural pronoun went right past DI Wallace without so much as a raised eyebrow.

“Are you aware he’s deceased?”

Cami realized now was not the time to pull any punches. “Yes, I am,” she answered. “My understanding is that his body was found on Tuesday. I believe the location was in a field somewhere near San Bernardino, California.”

“How is it that you have so much information about a homicide that occurred an ocean and a continent away?”

“I work for a company named High Noon Enterprises, a cybersecurity firm,” she answered. “As I told you, law enforcement wasn’t notified about what went on in L.A., but my employers have been looking into it. They’re the ones who learned Petrov was dead. I didn’t find out about it until I read it in a text message this morning.”

With that Cami opened her phone, located Ali’s text, and then handed it to DI Wallace.

“Who’s this Frigg?” he asked after reading it.

“One of our investigators,” Cami replied.

“But you didn’t feel obliged to pass that information along to me when I called you later on? Withholding information is considered a crime, you know.”

“As I said, I only learned about Petrov’s death this morning. When you called, asking me to come in for an official interview, he wasn’t the first thing that came to mind. I was far more concerned about moving my appointments. Besides, we’re talking about it now, aren’t we? How is that withholding?”

DI Wallace sighed. “Okay, walk me through your day in Los Angeles last Friday, starting at the beginning.”

Cami did so, from going to her Friday morning appointments, until the time she had fled the fitness center.

“Who exactly did you call for help?”

“WWS,” Cami explained. “That’s short for Wonder Woman Security. They’re an international personal security firm owned by a woman named Sonja Bjornson. They specialize in providing personal security for high-profile women. B. Simpson, my boss, had given me the direct phone number and told me that if I ever felt I was in danger, I should call them, so I did.”

“Do you consider yourself high-profile?” Wallace asked.

“I don’t,” Cami replied, “but evidently there are people out there who do.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“There’s someone we think might possibly be behind all of it.”

“Name?”

“His name is George Smythe,” Cami said. “His company, Cybersecurity International, is one of High Noon’s largest competitors. We believe he’s also the person who encouraged and underwrote the bad press Adrian Willoughby wrote about us several years ago.”

“Do you have any contact information for him?”

“No,” Cami answered. “His company is located here in the UK, I’m not sure where.”

Wallace made a note of that information. “All right, so back to last Friday. What happened after you left the hotel fitness center?”

“WWS sent a car to pick me up and take me to their headquarters, which is located in Ms. Bjornson’s house in the Hollywood Hills. I stayed there until Saturday morning when another WWS vehicle drove me to an airport in San Diego where I caught a private flight back to Arizona.”

“And the people from WWS will be able to verify all of that?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to need their phone number.”

“Of course,” Cami said, extracting her phone from her pocket once more before locating and reading off the WWS number from her recent calls list.

“Would you mind if we turned your phone over to our tech unit so they could examine it?”

Thanks to Lance’s GHOST operating system, Cami knew that all encrypted texts and emails would have vanished without a trace. “Sure,” she said, handing over her phone. “No problem.”

Wallace passed the device along to Detective Sergeant Frost. “Take this downstairs, have them clone it, and bring it right back.”

“Copy that, sir,” Frost said.

“DS Frost is leaving the interview,” DI Wallace announced. “Now tell me, how did your employers become aware of Bogdan Petrov’s death?”

“Shortly after our first interview,” Cami replied. “WWS launched their own investigation into the stalking situation. Since I believed I’d been followed, they had someone track down my rental car. An examination of that led to the discovery of a tracking device that had been connected to a cell phone that stopped pinging somewhere near San Bernardino. When a dead body was found near that location, I believe WWS suggested to local authorities that Petrov might be their unidentified victim.”

“What have you been doing since you’ve been here?”

“I’ve been at the hotel the whole time. The Portlandia’s surveillance videos will verify that. Coming here this morning is the first time I’ve set foot outside the hotel since I checked in.”

Wallace nodded. “All right, then,” he said. “It’s clear that Petrov and Willoughby were conspiring against you. Now they’re both deceased, so why would this George Smythe want you dead?”

“I’m not sure he wanted me dead. WWS is pretty sure the crime was planned as a kidnapping, a well-funded one at that. The technical capability it took to wipe the Lancaster’s surveillance system would have cost a fortune.”

“A kidnapping for ransom, then?” DI Wallace asked. “How much money are you worth?”

“I don’t think the guy behind this was looking for money. We believe he’s trying to lay hands on GHOST.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“G-H-O-S-T is a proprietary software that has put High Noon at the head of the pack in the world of cybersecurity. Previously, Smythe tried to buy us out, but my boss wasn’t interested in selling. I believe kidnapping me was Smythe’s backup plan for getting his hands on the software.”

“Do you have any way of proving that?”

“Not so far, but we’re working on it. Am I under arrest, then?”

“Not at the moment,” Wallace said. “We’ll try taking a look at this Smythe fellow. Are you still planning on leaving the UK tomorrow?”

“No, I’ve delayed my departure until Tuesday, but if you need me to, I can make arrangements to stay longer. Can I go now?”

“Tell me about Ms. Bloom,” Wallace said. “Is she really your friend or is she actually your bodyguard?”

Cami was surprised that he’d sorted that out.

“The latter,” she said.

“And she works for this…” Wallace paused long enough to consult his notes. “WWS organization?”

Cami nodded.

“We’ll need to interview her as well.”

Just then the door opened and DS Frost returned, carrying Cami’s phone, which he returned to her.

“Find anything?” Wallace asked.

Frost shook his head. “Not so far. Nothing out of line, and our preliminary examination shows that the phone has been pinging off towers near the Portlandia from the time she checked in on Monday afternoon until she left there this morning to come here.”

“All right, then, Ms. Lee,” Wallace said. “You may go. Please bring in Ms. Bloom, DS Frost. Let’s see if her version of events matches up with Ms. Lee’s.”