Page 70 of Her Devoted HERO

“Kenna, calm down,” Dex said. “Clive here did not betray doctor patient privilege or whatever shit you want to call this. Clint is still listening into your calls.”

“I want to hear those tapes now.” She folded her arms over her chest.

“No,” Dex said immediately. “It serves no purpose.”

“I will not be a mushroom.”

Dex chuckled.

“What?” Clive asked.

“Kept in the dark and fed bullshit.”

“Oh.” Dex could tell that Warren didn’t know how to respond.

“Honest to God, what purpose would it serve?” Dex asked reasonably.

“I’d know what was going on. I need to know what’s going on! Don’t you understand?”

“He’s one of the men who pinged you on the dating site,” Dex answered. “I’m going through them every night. Clint and I both are. We’re eliminating as we go.”

“Wait just a damned minute, we’re taking care of this. Our techs are damn good,” Warren said. Dex could tell the man was pissed.

“We’ve seen their efforts. They’re missing things.”

There was a long pause. “You’ve hacked into our system?”

Now Dex was pissed. He leaned over the phone and said softly, “I asked to work with you. I asked nicely three different fucking times.”

“This is police business. You’re a Navy guy, go do Navy things.”

Kenna put her hand on Dex’s arm. It was nice, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to help the detective.

“Clive. I think we’re done here,” Dex said.

“Well did you and your friend find this out? We just got this information confirmed this morning. There are two missing women in the last two weeks who somewhat match who we saw in that video. One of whom was on the dating site. Betchya didn’t know that, now did you, big guy?”

He didn’t. It pissed him off.

“Did you know that there are five profiles using the same IP address? They all contacted Jean and Kenna. Did you know that this IP address was bounced to hell and back, but we finally found out it originated at a Starbucks in La Jolla?” Dex asked.

There was a long pause, then Warren sighed. “You win, we’ll share. I’ve got more. We’ve done a cross-check on our missing person database. Three months ago, there was another woman who went missing. She was on the CaliSingles dating site. Goddammit, we had a serial killer all along, and didn’t know it,” Warren said disgustedly.

“Why not?” Kenna asked.

“Her ex-husband had put her into the hospital twice. The detectives working the case have focused entirely on him, they never even noted that she was on the CaliSingles dating site in her case file. When we talked to them, they said they hadn’t scrubbed her files off her computer. Total negligence.”

“Are there any others? How far back have you looked? CaliSingles has been in operation for three years.” Dex looked over at Kenna she was pale and shivering. He put his arm around her.

“We’re pulling all of our missing women for the last three years and checking CaliSingles. Now tell me about the IP address. You think that our guy used five different profile names?” Warren asked.

“Yes. Clint is already putting together the time stamps so you can try to pick up any video they might have from the coffee shop. As a matter of fact, you should already have it in your e-mail,” Dex said dryly.

There was a pause. “You mean you were going to share this all along?”

Dex got pissed. “I was going to share this. This isn’t a goddamn pissing match. This is Kenna’s life for fuck’s sake.”

“Yeah, yeah. What was I thinking?”