Holiday Wedding (Holiday Romance-Spicy Version #2)

29

Tuesday, December 24

Wedding Day

Jenny

Dean drives the Aston Martin to the airport, breaking the speed limit and swerving around corners. Caleb takes the passenger seat, and I’m in the back like a child. There’s a tense silence between the three of us.

I’m fuming. Mad at myself. If I hadn’t made the mistake I did years ago, when I leaked Caleb’s location, when he was hiding out in California with Gwen, then none of this would have happened. Caleb would have taken my side, not Eddie’s. But I messed up back then, and that one error is going to haunt me forever.

It’s not fair.

I’ve tried to make amends. I’ve worked on myself. More responsible now, I think before I speak. Maybe it’s hopeless, though. Once I’ve been branded as an irresponsible gossip, that label is irrevocable. It’ll stick to me, like a sale sticker adhered to the cover of my favorite book. I sigh, depressed by the thought of it.

My phone dings. An alert I set up weeks ago sounds off, buzzing loudly. I peer at the screen, my thumb rapidly scrolling through data from the computer program I coded. By the end, my hand’s shaking.

Quickly, I fire off an email to my reporter friend, Wes. I know he has inside contacts at the police department. I label the subject: SOS ASAP.

A wild-eyed Alvina meets us at the airport, with Gwen’s family right behind her. They’re all present—Gwen’s mom, stepdad, two brothers, and twin nieces. Even her tiny chihuahua, Pip, is there on a leash held by Megan, the smaller of the twins. Caleb’s mom and dad are there, too.

“Gwen’s gone,” Alvina tells us, her voice tight with panic. “Wayne’s out looking for her. She went to the bathroom down by baggage claim and never came back. Airport security is checking the camera footage. The police are on their way.” I’m so frightened by her words that I feel lightheaded.

Airport security shuffles us all into a large private conference room, one they use for departmental meetings and debriefings. The walls are frosted glass and there’s a long oval table in the middle of the room surrounded by black office chairs with armrests and sliding caster wheels. The twins sit at one end of the table coloring on construction paper someone scrounged up. At the other end blueprints of the airport are spread out. Caleb, Dean, the police, and airport security pore over them. Hours pass as they use walkie talkies to cross check locations with search parties who roam the airport’s terminals and back corridors.

By my own choice, I sit on one of the chairs in the middle of the table. Not part of the family group at one end or part of the investigative team at the other. I’m in literal No Man’s Land. Hopelessness is setting in when my phone buzzes loudly. It’s an alert I set up weeks ago. I peer down at the screen, rapidly sorting through data from the computer program I coded. Then I switch over to my social media accounts, double checking that my suspicions are correct. By the end of my scrolling, my hand’s shaking. I fire off a text to my reporter friend Wes, subject line SOS ASAP. I know he has inside contacts at the NYPD. He responds within minutes and gives me the information I was dreading. This changes everything. I have to tell Dean and Caleb, but I can’t afford to make another mistake, not with Caleb still doubting me.

“I figured out who runs the Secret Santa website and who’s been taking pictures outside Caleb’s apartment.”

He squints down at me. “What’re you talking about?”

“Do you understand how social media works?”

He gives a small shake of his head. “Excuse me?”

“TikTok. Facebook. Instagram. All of them. They know where you are using your location settings.”

“What?” His brow puckers with confusion.

Frustration rises in me. I’m not explaining this well. “Think about it, Dean. When a 13-year-old girl in Alabama posts something, it wouldn’t make any sense to show it to some middle-aged guy in Japan. Social media is too smart for that. Instead, first the post is shown to followers geographically close to the girl. Subscribers with demographics similar to hers. The post spreads out in a ring around her. If it gets engagement, that ring widens and it’s sent to more and more people, until eventually it might go viral and spread across the world.”

“Jenny,” Dean says softly, as if he’s concerned for my sanity. “What does this have to do with Gwen?”

“Everything!” I shout, and he flinches. I grab his upper arm, lowering my voice. “Social media posts are geotagged. Each one of them. Sometimes it’s obvious, like in the corner it’ll say where it’s from, but often it’s embedded in the code.”

Swallowing, I will myself to meet his eyes. “I made a computer program to decipher the social media geotags of all Caleb’s known contacts, the ones from that list you gave me. I had it crossmatch their locations with Caleb’s over the past couple of years. It was a lot of data to filter through, so it took a long time. Honestly, I didn’t think it was going to work, but just now it came up with results.”

“Dean,” I say, squeezing his bicep, hard enough to hurt. “I know who the stalker is.”

Dean asks urgently, “Who? Who is he?”

My stomach churns from the information I’m about to reveal. “It’s not a he. It’s a they.”

“They?” His voice rises with the question.

“That’s the reason we couldn’t figure out who was behind everything. The pictures. The website. It’s not just one person.”

Dread settles deep in my bones. “There’s two of them.”