Bodyguard: Target (31 page)

‘What’s all this
about?’ demanded Jessie, as she was shoved into a chair in an empty dressing
room.

Vince stood by the door, while Rick kept
a hand on Jessie’s shoulder and ensured
she stayed seated.

‘Don’t play innocent with
me,’ said Charley. ‘You know exactly why you’re here.’

Jessie’s eyes flicked from
Vince’s impassive face to Rick’s stony expression and back to the
furious glare Charley was giving her. The startled girl looked like she might burst
into tears at any moment. Charley thought Jessie was putting on a convincing act.
But of course
she’d have to be a good actress in order to con her way into
everyone’s trust.

‘Charley, what have I done?’
she pleaded.

‘Aside from set fire to the hotel?
Try to kill Ash.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Jessie.
‘Why would I want to hurt Ash? I love him.’

‘That’s exactly why.
That’s your motive. You’re obsessed with Ash to the point of
madness.’

‘No,
this
is madness.
I
haven’t done anything but support
him,’ said Jessie
angrily. She tried to rise, but Rick firmly pushed her back down.

The door to the dressing room opened and
Big T stormed in. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘This is who’s behind all
the threats and attacks on Ash,’ stated Charley, stepping aside.

Big T stared at the frightened girl in
the chair. ‘What, Jessie?’
he said, his thick brow creasing in
scepticism. ‘But she runs Ash’s US fan club. She’s his biggest
fan.’

‘Gives her the perfect
cover,’ argued Charley. ‘In order to stage these so-called accidents she
needed to have complete access to all locations. Her tour pass is the ticket to her
crimes.’

‘You’re insane!’ spat
Jessie. ‘You’re making accusations without any shred
of
proof!’

Big T cocked his head at Charley.
‘She’s got a point. Where’s your evidence?’

‘Well … there isn’t
anything that directly incriminates her,’ admitted Charley, ‘but
there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to Jessie.’

‘Go on,’ said Big T, leaning
against the wall and crossing his arms.

Charley took a deep breath. She’d
been thinking
hard since the discovery of the envelope that morning. ‘I
can’t say whether any of this links back to the original letter bomb or the
“No more encores” death threat. But I do know that I found Jessie
sneaking around backstage the night of the spotlight accident. She was hiding behind
the drum riser, right next to one of the wire-rope ladders that led up to the
lighting rig.’

Jessie rolled her
eyes. ‘I told you at the time I wanted to see the stage setting like Ash
does.’

‘I believe she’d just come
down the ladder after rigging the spotlight and was checking that it was aligned
with the toaster lift,’ Charley continued, ignoring the girl’s
incredulous laugh. ‘Next, a little before Ash was electrocuted, Jessie took
his microphone for the
acoustic set. I think she may have switched it for the faulty
one.’

Jessie snorted in disbelief. ‘Oh,
come on! Really? You were there with me. How was I supposed to do that? I’m
not a magician.’

‘But you were the only one to
handle it, apart from the crew. Geoff also complained that you had touched the gear
before. That in itself is suspicious,’ responded Charley. ‘Then
there’s the fire last night. A few things have struck me as odd. First,
it’s funny how you knew not to go to the closest fire exit, the one that was
blocked.’

‘I didn’t know
which
way I was running,’ argued Jessie. ‘I don’t
think anyone did. It was chaos.’

‘But at breakfast Zoe said you
made her run your way. Why?’

‘I-I … don’t know. I
thought that way
was the closest exit.’

‘But you just said you
didn’t know which way you were running. You’re lying!’

Jessie began to cry, her mascara running
down her plump cheeks in black lines.

Charley wasn’t going to let
herself be swayed by crocodile tears. ‘Second, I found it strange that you
were
fully dressed in the middle of the night. That indicates
you were ready for
the fire.’

‘I-I don’t go to bed until
late,’ sobbed Jessie. ‘I was updating Ash’s fan website …
Honest … You can look at my posts. You’ll see the times I uploaded
them.’

‘Posts can be scheduled in
advance.’

‘Oh, you have an answer for
everything, don’t you?’ snapped Jessie, glaring at Charley through
tear-filled eyes. ‘You just want to get rid of me. You’re
the one
who’s paranoid. You’ve got your claws into Ash and now you want to make
sure no one else has him.’

Charley laughed. ‘That’s
exactly what
you’re
trying to do. You’ve admitted you love him
many times. You even stated that you’d kill to be in my position. You’re
jealous. And because you can’t have him you’ve decided no one
will.’

Leaping up from her chair,
Jessie swiped
her false red nails at Charley’s face. ‘You liar!’

Charley barely managed to evade the
razor-sharp points. Instinctively defending herself, she aimed a knife-hand strike
to the girl’s neck.

‘Enough!’ barked Big T,
grabbing hold of her wrist mid-strike. Rick seized Jessie in his arms and pulled the
two girls apart. ‘Charley, this is all very thin. Pure
speculation.
Don’t you have any firm proof?’

Charley took out her mobile phone.
‘The day after Ash and I were photographed in the restaurant, I too started
receiving death threats. Most were online, but this one was written on my bathroom
mirror.’

Charley brought up
the photo she’d taken of the lipstick threat:

TO BE AN
ANGEL
U NEED 2 DIE FIRST!

‘Recognize
your handwriting,
Jessie?’ she asked, tilting the screen in her direction. Jessie’s eyes
widened and she shook her head vigorously in denial.

‘Why the hell didn’t you
bring this to my attention sooner?’ said Big T, his jaw tensing.

‘I thought it was a tour
prank,’ Charley replied. ‘But then I got this.’

She pulled out the magazine clipping and
showed it to him.

‘I’m sure this’ll be
familiar to you too, Jessie,’ said Charley.

Jessie stared at the picture in horror.
‘I didn’t do
that
,’ she
replied, her voice small and
quiet.

Big T grabbed the clipping from
Charley’s hand. ‘This is no tour prank! When did you get
this?’

‘I-I only just came across it
… earlier this morning,’ explained Charley, stumbling over her
words.

‘
This morning!
’ Big
T threw his hands up in disbelief, then he waved the clipping in her face.
‘This changes everything. This
confirms the fire was a direct attack on
Ash! The police need to be told. If I’d known you were
under threat too, I’d –’

Charley’s phone rang. She turned
away from Big T and answered it. ‘Hello?’

The voice on the other end of the line
declared, ‘I’ve done it.’

‘Done what?’ asked Charley,
pressing her mobile to her ear.

‘I’ve traced the accident
messages,’ repeated Amir, the excitement in the new recruit’s voice
matched only by the speed at
which he tried to explain his findings.
‘I’m sorry it took me so long, but you didn’t give me much to go
on. A couple of internet posts with different accounts. But I managed to hack into
them both easily enough and dig up more messages. Of course, they were dummy
accounts, created with false email addresses that led to fake personal information.
Pretty much a dead end for your
average hacker. But I reverse-tracked
how
the messages were posted.’

He paused, clearly expecting Charley to
be impressed at this flash of hacking insight.

‘OK … and?’ prompted
Charley, holding up a hand to stop Big T interrupting the call.

‘All of them were posted using the
same
phone,’ he revealed. ‘Obviously, the IP addresses were
dynamic so I couldn’t discover
it that way. And the suspect kept changing
the SIM card so the phone number wasn’t fixed or
traceable. They’re being very careful to cover their tracks. But the IMEI
number of the phone itself is constant.’

‘IMEI number?’ asked
Charley, bewildered by Amir’s technical lingo.

‘IMEI stands for International
Mobile-station Equipment Identity number. You can easily find out
your own
phone’s IMEI by typing *#06# into your keypad. The number is used to identify
any device that uses terrestrial cellular networks. By that, I mean non-satellite
communication. Each number is unique to its device and coded into the hardware,
making it virtually impossible to change.’

‘That’s all very
informative, Amir, but how does any of that help me?’

‘It means
the device can be
tracked!’ said Amir, a broad smile evident in the tone of his voice.

Charley smiled too. She eyed Jessie. She
had her now!

‘Since the suspect is using
prepaid SIM cards, we obviously don’t know who the phone belongs to,’
continued Amir. ‘But I managed to hack the network carrier and source the
current mobile phone number associated with our suspect’s
IMEI number.
I’m texting you both of them now.’

Charley’s phone beeped with a
received message.

‘I’m also updating your
phone remotely with a tracker device,’ Amir explained. ‘It’s a
program I’ve designed. It’ll take a minute or so to upload, but then
you’ll be able to pinpoint the suspect’s phone to within two or three
metres –’

‘Charley!’ cut in Big T, his
wrinkled face hard and unforgiving as
granite. ‘We need to talk about this threat
now
. And I think we can
let Jessie go, don’t you? There’s nothing credible linking her to the
accidents, apart from your rather tenuous speculation.’

‘Guilty until proven
innocent,’ Charley reminded him, pointing to the tattoo on his arm. She waved
her mobile in the air. ‘I’ve got the proof
we need right
here.’

Turning to Jessie, she ordered,
‘Give me your phone.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it.’ Charley
snatched the mobile from Jessie’s hand and typed in *#06# to reveal its unique
IMEI number. She compared it with the one on her screen, confident of exactly what
she’d find.

It didn’t match.

Charley checked it again and an awful
sick feeling weighed
heavily in the pit of her stomach.

Wishing the ground would swallow her up,
she handed back Jessie’s mobile. ‘I’m sorry … I’ve
made a mistake.’

‘You most certainly have!’
snapped Jessie, shooting her evils, before stomping out of the dressing room.

Big T let out a heavy sigh and shook his
head in disappointment. ‘Charley, we’ve some serious talking to
do.’

In her despondent daze, Charley heard
Amir’s voice drifting up from her phone. ‘Hey, Charley, are you still
there? The tracker app should be working now. The green dot is you. The red dot is
your suspect.’

Charley studied the
screen. A map of the venue was displayed. The app correctly located her in the
dressing room.

A red dot appeared right next to the
stage.