Her Secret Life

There was no way that Simon and Michael were merging in her mind. And yet, that morning, on three separate occasions, she’d gazed at Simon and seen the look in Michael’s eyes the day before when she’d told him he was beautiful.

What was up with that?

“You ready to go again or do you need a minute?” the assistant director, Sandy Paxton, asked her.

“I’m good.” She smiled at Tom. “I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it.

He nodded. And she knew his acceptance was sincere. Tom was...Tom. But they were friends. Not like they portrayed on set—nothing that close. Still, she trusted him more than a lot of people in her world.

“Let’s do this,” Tom said, grinning, and plopped down on the sofa beside her to repeat his confession that he was developing feelings for Doria—the woman he’d been best friends with since the show’s inception.

She wasn’t sure she liked where the script was heading. Doria and Simon? Didn’t fit.

But she’d been in the daytime-show business long enough to know that if your character’s script didn’t come with continued twists and turns, you’d soon be gone.

Still... Simon?

She made it through the scene—and the rest of the morning—without mishap.

* * *

TUESDAY MORNING MICHAEL wasted no time during his breakfast meeting with a detecti

ve from the LAPD who was working on a confidential case that he didn’t want some of his peers to know about. The department had allocated funds to bring Michael’s team—in this case Michael, personally—on board.

While in town he stopped by a couple of midsize firms that kept his company on retainer to monitor their systems for signs of hacking.

He had an entire database of larger corporate accounts, too. Ones that called him when they suspected suspicious activity. Some that needed him to underwrite antivirus fixes. Or override system takeovers.

And then there were the housewives who were afraid their inordinately rich husbands were cheating on them, or husbands who wanted to know what their wives were doing online. Mike didn’t cover those jobs himself. He had a staff of four highly trained and trusted employees who did most of that work.

And that morning, for a friend, he was checking out an address from which an account had been set up with a private email account.

The IP address that had posted the Photoshopped picture of Kacey came from an internet café that was known for serving great coffee. The place hosted four public computers. Users paid for computer time by the half hour. Most paid cash. The shop’s manager, upon seeing Mike’s credentials, allowed him to take a look at all four machines and copy what he needed onto a flash drive.

As he left, Mike was toying with the idea of texting Kacey to see if she had a break for lunch so he could give her an update.

The fact that all he could tell her was that he’d checked out her sister’s home computer, and had information to peruse from the computer that had been used to send out her altered photo, gave him pause.

He’d never report back to a client with so little to offer.

He wasn’t meeting with Lacey to go through her work computer until after the office closed at five, so he had some time...

Phone in hand, pretty much convinced a text wouldn’t hurt—they sent them pretty much every day anyway, though always at her instigation—Mike felt the vibration just before his phone rang.

And switched gears completely when he saw the picture that flashed up on his screen.

“What’s up?” he answered immediately, all systems on alert, as they always were where Willie was concerned. At seventeen, the baby of the family had not yet grown up.

Or rather, he’d grown up too quickly and struggled to maintain homeostasis with a mind that didn’t quit and demons that wouldn’t let go.

“Hey, bro, not much. What’s up with you?”

He’d already glanced at his watch. “Just finished with a job. Why aren’t you in class?” Should be trigonometry. He knew Willie’s schedule down to the second.

“Yeah, well, there was a bit of a situation, bro. I was hoping maybe you could head Mom and Dad off at the pass?”

Shrugging out of his suit coat, Mike threw it on the backseat of his black BMW. “Where are you?”