Conspiracy Girl by Sarah Alderson Read Free Book Online Page B

one) and
follows a few conservative political blogs. He doesn’t subscribe to any porn but his internet history shows an unhealthy fascination with teeth and male waxing salons. He’s squeaky
clean as far as I can tell, his background checking out so thoroughly I’d be surprised if it was an FBI or CIA cover. He’s boring as hell. Though it does look like he has some weird
waxing predilection. Maybe I should find a way to let Nic know.
    I check through the rest of Nic’s inbox, but there’s hardly anything in it. Or in her trash files. She doesn’t send many emails, just to Aiden her stepdad – they seem to
get on well – and to her course tutor (As all the way). There are a couple of newsletters from the gym where she works out and from a female personal trainer. Some junk ones from Netflix. She
doesn’t seem to have many friends. And besides this guy Marcus, no boyfriends. She’s not on Facebook or Twitter. She keeps things private. And who can blame her? After the trial her
asshole boyfriend sold intimate details about their relationship to some magazine.
    She’s seeing a therapist – a Dr Phipps. His photograph, when I pull it up from the DMV’s database, shows a guy who looks like Spike Lee. I don’t read the files.
Patient-doctor confidentiality is sacrosanct in my book and it’s pretty obvious why she needs to see a therapist. I’d be more worried if she wasn’t seeing one.
    I throw my head back and stare at the ceiling of the cube, thinking back to the day I first set eyes on Nic Preston. It was about six months after I’d been thrown off the FBI’s
internship programme. I was in LA, starting up my internet security business. I was barely nineteen and mentally I was all over the place. Truly messed up. I’d never admit it to anyone, not
even Maggie, but the FBI was my whole life. I’d dreamed of being an agent since I was fourteen and getting kicked out before I even got my badge is still my second biggest regret.
    Forcing that thought aside, I pull up a few pieces that appeared in the
LA Times
around the time of the Cooper case. Almost every article carries a photograph – not of the
suspects, but of Nic. A pretty face always sells newspapers, but when the pretty face is also a victim of vicious crime then the media takes it to a whole new level of spectator sport. They even
made some terrible TV movie after the trial.
    The day her story hit the news stands I started researching the case, hacking into the police files to find out what the papers couldn’t tell me. If you asked me back then why I was so
interested in the case I would have said it was because it was high profile and I wanted to get my teeth into something big and juicy – but if you asked me now I’d have to admit it was
because Nic’s story got to me. The fact that she had lost so much struck a nerve. Actually, it struck several.
    I broke into the server of the security company that had provided the alarm system for the LA house. It only took me an hour to discover that the Coopers’ system had been compromised. My
own internet security company was just a couple of weeks old but I took the evidence I’d found to the District Attorney’s office, hoping it could help. But the next thing I know, the
feds have arrested these two ex-military guys – Robert Miles and Casey McCrory – and are charging them with breaking and entering and double homicide.
    They were two Iraq vets, both suffering mental health issues and various alcohol and drug dependencies. Neither of them had an IQ above one hundred and ten. They weren’t capable of hacking
the security system at the Cooper house. They were barely capable of remembering what day of the week it was.
    At this point I took my findings to the defence team. I couldn’t understand how anyone in law enforcement could think these guys were involved. Initially they looked at me like I was some
snot-nosed teenager with no clue what I was talking about, but a quick