after me, but honestly, I did the world a favor. Janie was a complete loser. A total bore. She was all over me because I gave her some attention. If you’re thinking about sex, then that was part of it. But really, not that much. Janie liked me because of how I made her feel. I listened to her pathetic backstory. It was blah, blah, blah. Poor me. Sad me. Lonely me. Man, was that girl messed up. And, yeah, she was in charge of me and the other inmates. Honestly, I don’t get our country half the time. They have someone like Janie bossing around someone like me. Really? Really? Who can get the job done? Me. Who can be ruthless to move the needle in the direction that makes sense? Me. Not her. Not her at all. Oh God, all she could do was whine about her childhood, her husband, and her son. She couldn’t wring one ounce of joy from her pathetic existence. Her husband didn’t pay any attention to her. And yes, Erwin Thomas, if you are watching—and I know you will watch—Janie knew all about you and that woman that you’ve been seeing. I wonder if Sandra Sullivan’s husband knows about you too.”
She paused as though she’d spoken out of turn and was embarrassed.
“Oops, my bad,” she said. “I guess he knows now. I told Janie to tell him, but she was too weak. I can’t imagine just sitting back and letting something just happen to you. Pretending to be passive and unaware is fine as a strategy until you dig in and plan your attack. Janie never got the memo on that. She just kept hoping things would get better. Hoping is for losers. I’ve known that since I was twelve. Hoping is what you do when you have no power to do anything at all.”
Brenda stopped to think. Janie was gone. Her husband had been trashed. Now, son Joe was about to feel the betrayal of a mother who’d been sucked into a deadly game—a game that she’d lost.
“How she agonized over filling out Joe’s college entrance papers, including his essay. What was it? Oh yes, now I remember. ‘Living Authentically When Others Pull the Strings.’ Just wow. Really. How anyone with the flimsiest B average could write something so close to the bone would be beyond me. Janie was so worried that you’d get found out, Joe. She thought she was helping you and, if you ask me, you were lazy enough to let her do the heavy lifting. She did that for you. For your father. And what did she have for herself? Nothing, that’s what. You’d think that a kindred spirit like me would have been what she’d been looking for all her life. You think she found me? That’s a big laugh. I found her.”
Brenda tilted her head back and rolled her shoulders to release some tension. She returned her gaze to the lens.
“In some ways I miss her,” she said. “A little. I really do. She could rub out the soreness in my neck better than my last lover. Janie tried so hard. She wanted to please me. God, she tried. Kind of funny when I think about it. As if I’d ever care about her. And, get this, the irony of the whole thing was that she thought she was in charge of me. That out of the mess she’d made of her life, having the keys to the cellblock made her think she was in control. I pulled the strings. I did. I always have.
“That’s all for now. More later. I promise. Probably should have a name for my show here, don’t you think? I’ll think on that. You too. Use the comments feature below. And if you know something nasty about someone, please post it here.”
Like a seasoned YouTuber, Brenda pointed a lacquered nail downward to indicate the Comments field. A pause to make her point, and then she turned away from the camera. The screen went to a checkerboard block of other Internet distractions.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kendall Stark didn’t expect anything from Jonas Casey, so when he showed up in her office with a couple of lattes she was caught off guard.
“Peace offering,” he said.
She thanked him and took the coffee drink.
“I guess it would be wrong of me to refuse the olive, or rather, coffee branch,” she said.
He smiled and slid into the visitor’s chair across from her. A framed photo of Cody and Steven taken on their front porch faced him from the credenza, but the FBI agent didn’t comment on her family.
“Look, we both know that Janie Thomas is a kidnapping case,” he said.
Kendall pulled the green stopper from the plastic lid and took a sip. Caffeine, she hoped, would kill the throbbing headache that started about the time Brenda Nevins came into her life.
“We don’t,” she said. “Not really. As for what we really know is that—at least initially—Janie went with Brenda willingly.”
“Yes. Agreed. Initially.” He took a drink. “But that’s not how things ended, wouldn’t you agree?”
She couldn’t argue with that. Janie didn’t expect to die, though she might have been willing to die for her lover’s freedom. But it didn’t happen like that.
“Is the coffee the peace offering?” Kendall asked. “Or is there something else?”
He gave her his incredibly disarming smile.
“Right. Something else. Something I want you to think about.”
He was probably playing her the same way he played other women who couldn’t deny that he was handsome and magnetic. Still a jerk. But his looks and charisma somehow mitigated his true personality.
“What’s that?” Kendall asked.
“We traced—and I’m using that word very loosely—the upload on Brenda Nevins’s YouTube channel.”
Kendall could feel her heart rate quicken. She’d been hoping for someone to tell her where Brenda was, how far she’d gone, and, more important, what it would take to catch her.
“Go on,” she said.
“Like I said, loosely. Our guys in the lab—and that’s no slam, this time it is a couple of guys—determined that Brenda Nevins uploaded her video in Iceland of all places. That didn’t seem right.”
“No,” Kendall said. “How could she get to Iceland? She doesn’t have a passport.”
“She couldn’t, of course. We checked to be sure. Dug a little deeper into the code and determined that it had bounced from Qatar to Spain and then over to Iceland. We checked again, and Brazil was added to the mix. You get the idea?”
“I’m not a computer expert,” Kendall said. “But yes, I get that someone is helping her do what she’s doing. And that someone knows a thing or two about untraceable IP addresses, servers, and the like.”
The FBI agent had cut himself shaving that day, and a piece of tissue clung to a spot just above his Adam’s apple.
Kendall fought the urge to pick at it.
“That’s right,” he said. “And by the way, I’m not an expert either. I only act like I know what I’m talking about so I can get what I need to get and then find what I need to find.”
She liked him for admitting that. He didn’t have to.
“So where does this leave you,” she said, quickly amending her words, “leave us?”
“You’ve dug into the Nevins case as much as anyone,” he said. “You probably have a feel for who might be able to help her with something as
