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for the
bathroom and vomited. My arms and legs shook as I knelt on the
floor and gripped the toilet. Tyler followed in behind me and held
back my hair, his palm swirling in slow, comforting circles along
my back.
    “Easy, Jill. There’s no need to make yourself sick
over this.” He filled a cup with water and held it out to me, along
with a towel. “Here, drink this. Take a few deep breaths.
Everything will be just fine.”
    “We’ve lost the house, haven’t we?” I asked,
breathless after gulping the water.
    With his lips pressed together, Ty gave me a sad
look that answered my question. I started to cry. He pulled me up
and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, rocking me gently as he
stroked my hair.
    “Maybe not, Jill. We’ll need to make some calls in
the morning and see what’s going on. I’m sure it’s just a simple
mistake. That’s all. It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”
    We stood in the middle of our tiny hall bathroom,
his arms braced around my shoulders as he comforted me with
soothing words, but I couldn’t shake the feeling he was wrong.

Chapter Seven
    Jillian
     
    I made a few phone calls in the morning and my worst
fears were confirmed. Someone had indeed run up a large balance on
my card. I called the bank and demanded an explanation as to why
they had never contacted me when the unusual charges were made.
They informed me that they had called, citing an incorrect cell
number, one digit off. They had even sent a certified letter last
week which I found unopened in a box on my desk in the den. They
provided as much information as they had on the purchases in
question, none of which were mine.
    It was a new card with a high spending limit for my
business. I hadn’t lost it, and the only place I had ever used it
was at the spa, so someone up there must have duplicated it or
stolen the numbers. The bank assured me the charges would be
reversed within sixty days, but the damage had already been done.
Taking both our small business loans into consideration, our
mortgage lender would not relent and loan us the money until my
card’s balance was cleared. And since the house was under a short
sale agreement, the homeowner’s lender refused to wait while other
qualified buyers were still interested. So they backed out of the
deal, and we lost the house.
    I filed a fraud report with the bank and major
credit agencies then called the Napa police to report the theft.
They asked me to come in and swear out a formal complaint. The
investigator assigned to my case was a bookish young man named Mike
Tucker, who, with his boyish face and horn-rimmed glasses, looked
more like a computer programming student than a cop. He sat down
with me and explained how cases like mine usually worked.
    “See this, Mrs. Karras?” he said as he held up a
narrow, palm-sized plastic box with a deep groove down the center.
“It’s a skimmer, easily attainable over the Internet. Thieves
simply swipe a victim’s card through it to store the stolen account
numbers. Then they use the security code on the back of the card
and any additional information they can glean from the victim as a
means of creating a new card, as well as a new identity, either for
themselves or, most often, to sell to a third party. We see it all
the time, but the crimes are hard to trace and difficult to
prosecute. So at this point, there’s really nothing you can do
except close the account and dispute the charges.”
    “I’ve already done that. Now I want to find out
who’s behind this, who did this to me.”
    “Well, unfortunately, that’s very unlikely, but, if
by chance we get a hit somewhere, we’ll be sure to let you
know.”
    I looked at him in confusion. “A hit?”
    “Yes, if someone tries to use your card where there
is video surveillance, we can get a photo and try to match it up to
known offenders. If it hits on one, we’ll call and see if you can
identify him. Or her, since you think you know who it is. Your ID
isn’t required,