Just Keep Breathing, GS Rhodes [best book club books for discussion TXT] 📗

mirror, Joe eventually giving up and pulling out his phone. Kidd didn’t want to give him too much. Even though he was only in his twenties, Joe was technically still press. He shouldn’t even be telling him anything but, and this was something he had figured out during the last case, he seemed to know a lot. And if he’d gone to the same school, there was every possibility he could help them out.

“Website exposing the fact Sarah was cheating, fight on Friday afternoon, Sarah hasn’t been seen since,” Joe said, all of it matter of fact, not a lick of emotion. “You got all that?”

“Yep.”

“Good, because I think I know who it was who set up the website,” Joe said with a grin.

“You’re joking,” Kidd said. He pulled the piece of paper Ms Chowdhury had printed for them out of his pocket and showed it to Joe. “This is all we got. Headteacher said it had been deleted.”

“It was, but I was all over it before the guy responsible could take it down,” Joe said. “The thing about having a website is, there’s an IP address, and it doesn’t take a genius to track down who owns a domain. So I’ve got the name of the guy, and confirmation that he was in Sarah’s year at school.”

“Well, who is he?”

“Nicholas Ayre,” Joe replied. “I know the name won’t mean much to you, but he’s all over social media so you’ll track him down soon enough. He’s not in their crowd or anything, sort of an outsider from what I can tell, but he has a vendetta against her. Could be something.”

“You got anything else?”

“Only that Sarah’s social media presence isn’t all it seems,” Joe said. “From what I’ve got from people who knew her and people who knew of her, it all sounds very Mean Girls/Gossip Girl/tired teen drama. She was the queen bee and there were a lot of people who wanted to see her fall from grace. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot.”

“I got the impression from her friend, Taylor, that she wasn’t all that keen on having Sarah around all the time.”

“She’s not, none of them are, really,” Joe said. “It’s a little bit sad, I’ve got to admit. But everybody I know at that school has it in for her.”

Kidd turned his attention back to the road, DS Sanchez was pulling onto Penrhyn Road, getting ready to turn into the University car park. He felt a little bit sorry for Sarah. He knew from the news that kids were using social media too much, using it to the point that they were causing themselves damage, faking that they were happy when they weren’t, but this was ridiculous. Sarah’s social media was full of her friends, or people she thought were her friends, all of them doing things together and having fun, and all of that was fake?

“You okay?” DS Sanchez asked quietly, shutting off the engine as she parked off.

“Yeah, yeah, good,” he said, turning back to Joe. “You got anything else for us?”

Joe shook his head. “That’s all I had. I didn’t know you guys were going to be there today. Just a stroke of luck on my part.” Joe said, shuffling across the back seat towards the door. “Nice to see you both again—”

“Joe,” DI Kidd interrupted. “Just wanted to check, everything alright with you?”

Joe eyed him curiously. “How do you mean?”

“I just mean at home, given everything that happened.”

“Given you arrested my crazy ass brother?” Joe said, a twinkle in his eye. But there was something else, something Kidd couldn’t quite place. “My dad has been pretty cut up about it. Mum too, but for different reasons. But they’re fine.”

“What about you?” Kidd asked. Joe had been there the night they’d finally caught up with Tony and arrested him. He’d ended up with a knife to his neck. One false move and Joe might not even have been here to talk to them about all this.

Joe took a breath. “I’m fine,” he said. “It’s a weird thing for people to know me for. I certainly get some stick for it. But I’m okay. Just looking after myself, my family too.”

Kidd smiled at him. “Good. And if you come up with anything else—”

“I’ll give you the exclusive,” Joe said with a wink before shuffling out of the car and heading off towards the reception of the University.

DS Sanchez turned to Kidd. “What are you thinking?”

“A lot of things.”

“Give me specifics,” she said.

“I’m thinking that there are probably more suspects in this than we first thought,” he said. “I know we need to go and talk to the parents and see if they’re involved in any way, but the more I hear about these kids that hate her, this headteacher who doesn’t give a shit about her, the more concerned I am for her safety.”

“So the kids at school hate her,” Zoe said. “That doesn’t mean that they’re capable of kidnapping her and holding her hostage.”

Kidd looked over at Zoe. She locked eyes with him and it was like she read his mind. They both knew better than that. They’d seen enough to know that anyone was capable of absolutely anything under extreme circumstances.

She turned the engine on and drove away.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sarah Harper’s family home was exactly the kind of house that DI Kidd expected Laura Martins to have moved into after finishing school. It was at least three times the size of Kidd’s place and looked like it belonged in a magazine rather than on the outskirts of Kingston town. It was just across from Fairfield Park, a stone’s throw from the middle of town, and Kidd was fairly sure that they had bought two houses and knocked through to build one, giant house because it definitely looked out of place.

“Who the hell needs a house this big?” DS Sanchez asked as they stepped out of the car. “Honestly, who needs this many rooms? Do