“Where’d you get that?” Ryan leaned closer, taking a moment to study the pic.
Layla paused a beat before saying, “Heather.” Her gaze settled on Mateo when she said, “She used to feed me pics for my blog. It’s a little arrangement we had. She told me to send myself whatever I wanted. She had tons of pics of Madison too, which I found kind of weird. She seemed a little obsessed with her.”
Ryan nodded. “Mad couldn’t stand her. Said they used to be friends, but then Heather freaked out and started acting really jealous when Madison hit it big. She copied everything Madison did. It drove her crazy.”
“Do you think Heather has something to do with this?” Aster’s eyes went wide, but Mateo was quick to dissuade her.
“Heather’s a little intense,” he said. “And she’s definitely ambitious, but I hardly think she’d take Madison down in hopes of taking her place, which is what you all seem to be implying.”
“It does sound a little too much like a Dateline special,” Aster conceded.
“Which are all based on true crime stories,” Tommy pointed out, more than willing to throw Heather under the bus, at least temporarily, if for no other reason than her connection to Mateo. Guilt by association, as they say.
“Point is”—Layla looked directly at him—“Heather is competitive as hell, and more than a little conniving, but I’m pretty sure it ends there. Seriously, forget I even mentioned it. We can’t afford to get sidetracked.”
“So, if Paul served you those papers, does that mean the restraining order was faked, since he’s not really a lawyer—at least not that we know of?” Mateo asked.
Layla shook her head. “Unfortunately, Detective Larsen was all too aware of it, which means Paul could’ve been acting as a process server. Lots of law firms use PIs for stuff like that.”
“So, where does this leave us?” Aster asked.
“Taking a field trip to Joshua Tree?” Tommy ventured, hoping Mateo would have the good sense to stay behind. No one liked a fifth wheel.
Aster checked her watch, then stood and stretched her arms high overhead. “What is that, like a two-hour drive?”
“Two and a half,” Javen said. “I’m printing the address along with a map. Pretty sure this place is way off the grid, so your GPS may not recognize it.”
Aster moved around the apartment, collecting her keys and bag, preparing to leave.
“One more thing,” Javen said, his voice adopting a high, worried pitch. “I found a weird code on one of those papers you gave me last time I helped you.”
Aster impatiently jangled her keys in her hand. “Go on.”
“It was a series of numbers, like a bar code or something. It was the only thing on it, and I didn’t know what it was, so I decided to run a search on it.”
“And . . .”
Javen swallowed, his big brown eyes moving among them, and said, “It’s a tracker.”
Aster waited for him to continue.
“Madison had a tracking device, a microchip implant.”
“Like . . . the kind you put in your dog in case it gets lost?”
Javen nodded. “It’s not as uncommon as you think, or at least not among the super rich, the super famous, the super powerful, and other super people who receive lots of death threats.”
“Did Madison get a lot of death threats?” Layla asked.
“Fame attracts haters, and Madison had more than her share,” Ryan told her.
“Did you know about the tracker?” Aster turned to Ryan, but he just shrugged.
“I had no idea. And I never saw any sort of weird markings or scars . . . other than that burn scar on her arm, but she got that from the fire. Or at least that’s what she claims. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“Well, we know the house burned down, so there’s a good chance the scar really is a result of that event,” Tommy said. “But maybe it’s also where they decided to hide the tracking device, you know, in order to conceal it better.?
??