The Liberation of Alice Love(79)
Author: Abby McDonald

The theory made sense. More than that, it seemed irresistible.

Nathan mumbled beside her, his arm still draped across her stomach, but Alice was suddenly too energized to sleep. Easing herself from under his embrace, she slipped out of bed and pulled a crumpled blanket around her shoulders. Tiptoeing past discarded clothing and her high-heeled shoe—tossed against the door in what had been a pleasant blur of hands and lips—she crept out of the bedroom, carefully pushing the door closed behind her.

Nathan’s flat was modern and minimal, with a study area set up on the far end of the open-plan living area, complete with gleaming desktop computer system. Alice padded across the room, her feet bare on the cool wooden floor. Settling in front of the computer, she said a silent prayer; after everything Nathan had learned from his career, she was expecting a raft of passwords and security checks, but when she reached for the wireless keyboard and hit the spacebar, the computer woke from sleep mode with a low whir.

Perfect.

The computer display showed four a.m., but Alice was wide awake as she reached for the mouse. She ran searches of the name, “missing,” and any other pertinent phrases she could think of, filtering to the rough time span Nathan had mentioned. If Ella really was Kate Jackson, then this Kate would have disappeared years ago: fading into nothing so other, false names could take her place.

Two dead, one missing—that was what Nathan had said about the original short-list.

Working swiftly, Alice quickly verified the deaths from online articles and local newspaper archives: a slow decline from cancer, a bloody car wreck. She skimmed over the web pages, already ruling them out. Besides, Ella wouldn’t be so dramatic as to fake her own death, not when it would be simpler just to slip away one day—go out into the world as one person and come back as quite another. No, Alice knew, that just wasn’t her style.

But the missing woman? Now, she had more potential.

Alice wasn’t sure how long she sat there, bathed in the pale glow from the desk light, but the longer she looked, the more the data led back to one specific suspect, the Kate Jackson from Devon, who had turned twenty-nine years old last Thursday—at least, that’s what she would have done, but since she disappeared during a trip to Australasia five years ago, nobody had a clue if she was even alive to celebrate. Alice read through every mention she could find, but sadly, a solo female traveler going astray in that part of the world wasn’t rare; the coverage was depressingly thin: a sidebar in a national paper and a few stories in the local press, showing her anxious parents and older brother urging for more police support—Alice squinted at the small photo that adorned every story, snapped from an earlier, happier stage of her travels. The woman was grinning in a pale blue bikini, brown hair, brown eyes, medium height and weight. Entirely forgettable. Easily disguisable. It could be her.

Gazing at the grainy photo, Alice tried to see Ella in the girl’s features, but no matter how long she stared at it, she couldn’t be completely sure if it was her—or not.

What had she been running from?

There was a sudden noise from the bedroom. Alice leaped out of the chair and quickly switched the screen off, casting the room into dark again. Dashing toward the kitchen area, she flung open the fridge just as Nathan padded in, sleepy in an oversized pair of athletic shorts.

“What are you doing up?” Yawning, he wandered closer, wrapping his arms around her in a lazy bear hug.

“Just getting a drink.” Alice relaxed back against his bare chest, reaching for the water purifier. She went through the motions of pouring herself a glass and sipping the drink, sneaking a look past his shoulder to check there was no sign of her online investigations. The screen was dark, her secret safe. “Come on.” She smiled up at him. “Back to bed.”

“Good.” Nathan yawned again, tugging her toward the bedroom. “I was getting lonely in there without you.”

Alice laughed. “Uh-oh. It’s too soon for you to be getting clingy…”

“Yup, that’s me. In fact”—he turned, pressing her up against the doorway with a dark grin—“I’m surprised you haven’t got tired of how needy I am.”

“Right,” Alice agreed, letting her head fall to one side as he kissed his way up her neck. “What with the constant travel, erratic schedule, stubborn streak—”

“Are we still talking about me?” Nathan reached her lips, kissing her for a long moment before pulling away. “Because I’m hearing a lot of you in there too…”

Alice wrapped her arms around his neck, savoring the weight of his body against her and the soft slide of fabric as her blanket slowly fell to the floor. Kate Jackson wasn’t going anywhere tonight.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Kate Jackson’s brother was named Carl: thirty-two years old, single, and—as Alice’s extensive online investigations had revealed—a senior market research analyst at a company in Kilburn. With a new focus, Alice quickly threw herself into the research: learning everything she could about the man, no matter how superficially trivial. The data never lie, after all, and soon she discovered that he liked sci-fi movies, Neil Gaiman books, and old episodes of Battlestar Galactica; he lived in a house on Bellevue Road with two other men who seemed similarly unencumbered by responsibility or female companionship.

It was almost surprising to Alice how little time or effort it took to assemble a profile of Carl’s every taste, using what she had gleaned from Cassie’s many stalking expeditions and her own new research skills. Abandoned MySpace pages, little-used LinkedIn profiles—the information was all there, waiting to be found. It helped that he was clearly active in several online communities, rich with past messages and profiles just brimming with helpful information—from his preferred refreshment (Starbucks vanilla lattes) to his opinion on the latest 3-D movie technology (Avatar was, apparently, the mark of things to come). Soon, after some careful cross-searching of user names and email addresses, she had acquired all his contact information, including mobile phone number, and—most important—his address.

Which was where Alice found herself one Thursday morning, having pulled herself from bed at a painfully early hour, just to cross the city and wait at a bus stop just up the road from Carl’s house. She’d located three Starbucks branches on his likely route to work, but Alice couldn’t just leave it to chance; if she was going to find a way of meeting this man, then she had to be certain of his routine. Sure enough, at eight thirty-two, he emerged from the front door and hoisted a nylon backpack up onto his shoulder. Alice readied herself for action, but Carl clearly wasn’t as prepared: he was barely five steps down the front path when he paused, patting his pockets and checking through his bag in a familiar panic. Turning back, he lifted a potted plant beside the door, fished out the spare key, and let himself back in. A moment later, he reemerged, setting off toward the Tube.