Page 92 of Wild Frost

I called Ivy's friend, Casey. She answered after a few rings, "Hello?"

"Casey, this is Deputy Wild.”

"What do you want?" she snapped in a defensive tone.

"I'm told the FBI visited Ivy at school. Did she talk to you about that?"

Casey was silent for a moment. "I don't think I should talk about this on the phone."

That piqued my curiosity. "What's going on?”

After a long pause, she asked, "Do you have Memo?”

It was a secure, encrypted messaging app. Even Isabella had a hard time hacking apps like that. The encryption was end-to-end. Not even the company that ran the servers could access messages between users.

“Yeah.”

"Call me on Memo," she said.

I ended the call, launched the app, and dialed her number. Casey answered after a few rings. This was about as secure as you could get for a commercial application.

"Want to tell me what's going on with the cloak and dagger stuff?"

"Can I trust you?" Casey asked. "You're not with them, are you?"

"With whom?"

"Last week, the FBI came to the school to talk to Ivy. But they weren’t the FBI. They were lying.”

"How do you know?"

"They were trying to scare Ivy. They were security from Valterion Capital. At least that's what Ivy told me."

"Why would security personnel from Valterion Capital pretend to be FBI?”

"Think about it." Casey sounded frazzled. "Mom said they stopped by the house earlier today. Thank God I wasn't there. Said they wanted to ask me questions about Ivy.”

"Where are you now?”

“I'm staying at a friend's house. I'm not going back home. Not after what happened. I'm starting to think they killed Ivy.”

"Why?"

"You promise you're not one of them? How do I know you're really a cop? I mean, you guys certainly don't look like cops. You could be anybody. You could be with the company or some corrupt shadow government agency."

"I think you know we’re cops. But call the sheriff's department and ask for Denise. She’ll vouch for us.”

Casey paused for a moment. "Okay. If you check out, I'll call you back. If not, you'll never see me again.”

She ended the call. Something certainly had her spooked.

I gave JD a look and updated him on the situation, then texted Denise and told her to expect Casey’s call.

Denise texted back:[You’re not going to believe this. Jacob Sweet turned himself in. I guess he saw the news about Wesley’s confession and felt like a total shithead. Confessed to everything.]

I replied: [One less thing I have to worry about.]

Casey called back a few minutes later on the encrypted app. I put it on speakerphone so Jack could hear. "What I’m about to tell you is totally top secret, okay?”