Page 47 of Child In Jeopardy

He was smiling a little when he came to her, leaned down and kissed her. That helped rebuild the buzz, too, and the kiss turned so hot she nearly asked if he had a second condom.

“I don’t want either of us to overthink this,” she said instead.

That widened his smile. “Good.” He ran his gaze over her body. “I seem a little underdressed.”

She sat up, took his hand and looked him over as well. “It suits me.” And she sighed. “You’re...hot,” she settled for saying.

Now he chuckled and moved in to give her one of his scorcher kisses when her phone rang. Both of them groaned, but they knew they couldn’t just ignore it. Lana especially knew that was true when she saw the name on the screen.

“It’s Julia,” she relayed, automatically checking the time. It was just after 9:00 p.m., past the usual time for a friendly chat, so Lana answered it right away in case there was an emergency of some kind. “Is something wrong?” she asked, putting the call on speaker.

Julia certainly didn’t jump to reassure her that all was well. “Yes. I’m obviously working late, and I found something in one of the files your mother wanted me to look at.”

Since there were plenty of things a thorough PI like Julia could have found, Lana didn’t speculate. She just waited for Julia to continue. Slater must have realized the potential for truly bad news because he started getting dressed.

“In one of the files, there were some copies of email conversations between your father and Buck. I intend to send them to a tech to make sure they’re real and that the file is actually as old as it seems to be.” Julia paused. “The emails appear to go back nearly twenty years.”

Twenty years. Lana immediately made a connection with that since it’d been when Alicia was murdered. Judging from the intense look Slater got in his eyes, he’d made the connection, too.

“The emails by themselves aren’t confessions,” Julia went on. “The wording seems to be intentionally vague. Here, I’ll just read you one, and you can see what I mean. This is from Buck. ‘I moved her to where you said, and nobody saw me. There was too much mess to clean up so I left it.’”

Everything inside Lana went still. Yes, she could see why the email would have alarmed Julia. “And the date on them?”

Julia sighed. “The night of Alicia Monroe’s murder.”

Of course it was. “What was my father’s response?”

“‘Make sure no one finds her. Ever. If they do, you’ll go down for this.’” Again, she paused. “It sounds as if Buck and Leonard were in on this together. Sounds,” Julia emphasized. “That’s why I want to have the techs look at it. It’s possible someone planted this on your father’s computer. Someone like BoBo.”

That was true, but it was equally possible the emails were real.

“Why would Buck and Leonard have a conversation like this via email rather than texts or calls?” Slater asked.

Lana silently cursed herself for not having already considered that. It might be an indication these were indeed faked.

“I have no idea, unless they didn’t want there to be any phone records. Burners were around then, but maybe one of them didn’t have a burner. Still, if it’s secrecy you’re going for, then why keep the emails?”

Unfortunately, Lana could think of a reason. “Insurance,” Slater and she said together. So obviously he’d considered this as well.

“This way, if Buck rats him out, Leonard has proof that Buck was involved. Maybe even the actual killer.”

That was true, but Lana’s stomach twisted. Because maybe Buck was just the cleanup man and her father had been the one to kill Alicia. Lana was still considering that when her phone dinged with an incoming call.

“My mother is calling,” Lana relayed to Julia. “Does she know about what you’ve found?”

“No, I wanted to tell you first, but your mom copied the files before she gave them to me, and she said she planned to go through them. So maybe she found the emails as well.”

Yes, and if she did, her mother would be frantic.

“Go ahead and take her call,” Julia encouraged, “and if you have any questions, you can phone me back. In the meantime, I’ll send these emails to one of our techs.”

She ended the call with Julia so she could talk with her mother. The moment she heard her mom’s voice, Lana knew that something was indeed wrong.

“Lana,” her mother blurted. “Oh, God, Lana. Something horrible happened.”

“What?” Lana asked through the muscles that had tightened in her throat.

“It’s all there in the files from your father’s computer.” She broke into a loud sob. “It’s all there.”