“All charges have officially been dropped.” Dean delivered the news Monday afternoon.
Judy held Rick’s hand over the table and squeezed it hard. In the other rooms, her entire family moved about the Beverly Hills estate.
Judy didn’t want to discuss the kidnapping, or the man responsible for it, in front of her parents. All of it had been traumatic enough . . . for all of them.
“Do we know why he targeted me?”
She and Rick had their theories, but nothing had been confirmed.
Dean glanced at Rick, then to her. “How much of this do you want to hear?”
“All of it,” she told him. “He can’t hurt me now.”
No, Mitch Larson wouldn’t ever hurt anyone again.
“I’m sure Rick told you about the pictures.” She couldn’t imagine her image all over the man’s home, even after Rick told her about them.
“Yes.”
Rick offered a smile of encouragement.
“Along with the pictures were long-winded rambling narratives blaming you for his dishonorable discharge from the military.”
“But—”
Dean waved a hand in the air. “Of course you didn’t have anything to do with it. He also used your name and that of the female officer who his real grievance was with, interchangeably, in his letters. He had pages of notes from that online game. He had three accounts, including that of a woman you friended on Facebook.”
Judy pictured the profiles in her head when Dean listed the names Mitch Larson had used. The dots connected and linked him directly to her.
“So when I kicked his butt on the game, he found his target,” Judy concluded.
“It appears that way.”
She squeezed her eyes closed. “How stupid and naive of me.”
Rick brought their joined hands to his lips. “This wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. But I made it easy for him.” She turned her attention to Dean. “How soon can I scrub my profiles from the Internet?”
“Detective Raskin is working with the Internet department to back up the files for their use. Shouldn’t be but a couple more days.”
“I want it all gone, everything I can get off the Internet. No more online games. Monopoly might be boring, but it’s safer.”
Dean pushed away from the table, shook Rick’s hand. “If you need anything . . . you know where to find me.”
Judy offered a hug. “Thanks for everything.”
“Be safe,” he told her before he left the house.
It took a month for her family to return to their normal lives. If it wasn’t for the promise of going to Utah for Thanksgiving and a week at Christmas, her parents wouldn’t have ever left.
Judy met with Debra Miller after the family dispersed.
They sat across Michael’s kitchen table, drinking coffee. “I’d like you to come back,” Debra told her.
Judy smiled into her cup. “I don’t honestly know if I can.” She was stronger than she thought she’d be, but walking back into the office . . .
Debra tapped a perfectly manicured nail against her cup. “I won’t pretend to understand how you feel. Get through the holidays before you give me your answer.”
“I’m just an intern,” she reminded her. “You don’t have to feel any guilt about what happened.”
Debra actually laughed. “I don’t. Misdirected guilt isn’t fueling this conversation, Judy. I like your designs . . . like your passion. José was promoted and we’re in need of someone to replace him, not to mention I’d like you around to help with the Santa Barbara project.”
“You’re offering me a job?”
“I’m offering you an opportunity.” Debra sipped her coffee. “Besides, I can’t help but notice the delicious men you surround yourself with.” She winked over her cup.
Debra Miller was a very attractive, put-together woman. Judy doubted she struggled for male companionship.
Judy walked her out of the house as Rick was pulling into the drive.
He removed his helmet and left it dangling from the handlebars of the Ducati. He shook Debra’s hand.
Debra glanced over her shoulder and lifted her eyebrows. “See what I mean?”
Judy laughed and Rick smiled, though she knew the joke was over his head.
“Call me after the first,” she said.
“I will.”
Judy and Rick watched her leave before moving inside. “What was all that about?”
She rinsed the cups and put them in the dishwasher. “She offered me a job.”
“Really?”
Judy gripped the counter, looked in the backyard. “Yeah.”
“What do you want to do?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I have until January to make my decision.”
Rick moved around the counter and pulled her into his arms, kissed the top of her head. “She’d be lucky to have you.” Rick was always saying stuff like that.
They’d fallen into a comfortable pattern of living. Meg had moved the offices back to the Tarzana house while Rick stayed at Mike’s with her. But Mike was wrapping up his latest film and would be returning home for a few months. It was time to consider where she and Meg were going to live.
It was time to determine the longevity of her relationship with Rick. She loved the man but couldn’t risk telling him her feelings. After everything that had happened, they hadn’t had time to analyze their life together . . . or apart.
Emotionally, she wasn’t sure she was ready to consider life without him. To his credit, he hadn’t once alluded to wanting a different path than the one they were on.
Rick put her at arm’s length, kissed her briefly. “We’re leaving in half an hour.”
“We are?”
“Yep . . . a date. Nothing too fancy.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Well, I need to get ready then.”
Thirty minutes later, they left the house in Mike’s Ferrari. “You know . . . eventually my brother’s going to want his car back.”
Rick laughed. “I know. Means I need to get behind the wheel as much as possible while I can.”
They talked about traffic, her job offer, what was happening with Zach and Karen and the extra teen that made it into their home in the last month. When Rick pulled into the parking lot to the tram leading to the Getty, Judy actually clapped her hands like a kid. “You remembered.”
He put the Ferrari in park, came around to help her out of the low car.