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Chapter 63 Darcy

63 DARCY

SEVEN MONTHS AGO

That day in London, after meeting Camilla and Kate in person, Darcy drove home, feeling rattled by their meeting. Her instincts had been correct—they’d both mentioned that they had doubts about the trial, about Hugh having an accomplice. In September, she had spotted a tabloid article about the Spinnaker killings, marking the twenty-first anniversary. The journalist, Motsi Sibanda, was now digging around internet forums, asking questions about Hugh’s past. She had even spoken to Camilla, and Darcy had seen the skepticism on Kate’s face when she admitted that the journalist hadn’t contacted her.

She’d always suspected it might all open up again, new questions about the investigation stirred up. She had found the Facebook page set up for the victims’ families. She’d made friends with the woman, Camilla, who had set it up, told her she was the girlfriend of one of the victims. She’d doctored a photograph of them together.

But it wasn’t enough. Camilla was making a lot of noise about her doubts on the handling of the investigation, and many others agreed with her. Motsi Sibanda was pressing forward with a big tabloid piece, maybe even a documentary, and a book.

If Darcy didn’t act quickly, they’d get the case reopened, and the police would find things to connect her to the massacre. And, almost worse, she would lose her reputation. The persona she had meticulously put together, the artistry of which she was infinitely proud of, would be sullied, torn to shreds.

People would look at her as a criminal instead of a dedicated mother. All her darkness, out in the open.

She felt cornered. And an old itch began to nag, begging to be scratched. If the shit was going to hit the fan, she was going to go out with a bang. The gossip surrounding her divorce had made her want to claw her own skin off. She would take her power back, steer the narrative. Tell them who she really was. Catch the fear in their eyes and savor it.

The day she received the divorce certificate, a friend suggestion popped up on Facebook. Rob Marlowe, a profile picture of a tiger. She tended to use a fake Facebook profile to snoop about, and so she friended him. Rob had aged well. The jeans, the artfully shaved beard, the gold chain necklace—all of it screamed I’m still twenty-five, honest! when she knew he was the same age as she. Many of his posts were about weightlifting and marathons, and he posted numerous selfies of that familiar, cocky smirk. And the tiger tattoo on his neck.

She knew Rob from her life before Jacob. He had been one of Hugh’s boys, one of his favorites. Hugh talked about Rob like a son, though she suspected sex was involved. She had only met him a handful of times, all those years ago, but he had treated her like something he pulled off the sole of his shoe.

The fuck you looking at?

Who’s the slut, Hugh?

As she clicked through his photographs, a plan unfurled darkly in her mind.

She kept an eye on him via social media, and sourced a burner phone to make calls to his employer, to associates, using her pleasant, middle-class voice and fluid conversational style to wheedle out useful information: appointments, off-the-cuff character observations, mentions of other people he dealt with.

No, he’s got a big plumbing job in Little Portugal on Thursday. You know what he’s like, always last minute. Ask Ronnie, he’ll know.

She took photographs as “evidence” to show Camilla and Kate, seamlessly integrating them with false details from the night of the massacre. She would curate her story and position him within it, make him what she wanted him to be.

With Jacob’s AI software, she was able to create a puppet, an avatar, who was capable of following a script. “Adrian” could respond to questions via Zoom, as long as she provided enough information for him to supply answers. Despite having tried out the software a dozen times to ensure it didn’t fail her, she was nervous in case it glitched on the Zoom call with Kate and Camilla. But it didn’t. It was perfect.

And then, a recorded PowerPoint presentation with fake evidence that they could all watch together in the villa, stirring them up to think Rob had been involved in the killings. She could hardly believe she had gotten away with it. No wonder Jacob had kept certain aspects of his software development under wraps.

Jacob had never suspected she would bother using the software, so why conceal it from her? He probably didn’t even realize she’d kept the old log-ins from when she did his development bids. Potential clients were asked to sign confidentiality agreements before the full suite of products was made available, and he took injunctions against journalists who managed to wheel details out in the press.

Because if someone could create an avatar like Adrian, capable of holding a virtual conference call… in the wrong hands, it could be very dangerous indeed.

But when it came to it, she couldn’t just use the software to frame Rob. She had to kill him. It was a wonderful feeling, too delicious to resist.

And to find something that felt so good in a world that taught only pain—well, why would you ever stop?

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