To Trick a Hacker: Women of Purgatory 3

by India Kells

  “Hey, easy! How are you feeling?”

  Dylan moved her shoulders tentatively, making sure not to turn her head too fast. “Like I did a bad trip in the 70s. Have any of you been contaminated by the powder?”

  Owen slid closer, cupping her cheek so he could examine her. “No, as soon as you dashed out of the house, Wesley brought Mac and Mom through the back door until we were certain the living room was safe again.”

  “How long have I been out surfing colors and seeing winged bunnies?”

  Owen smiled as she hoped he would. She disliked seeing the worried frown on his face. “Two days.” He turned to look at the window and then at his watch. “A little bit over fifty hours, but I must admit, it had been the longest two days of my life. You were in a delirium, sometimes eyes wide open, unseeing, other times, eyes closed, mumbling indiscernible words. If not for a quick analysis of what drugged you and Luke keeping tabs on you from a distance, I would have gone insane.”

  Dylan nodded, taking his hand away, keeping it between hers. “Yeah, the same effect I had when Knudson used it on me. The effect was even worse when he injected it to me, giving me scarier dreams.”

  “He did that often?” His voice sounded detached, but she knew that he didn’t accept what happened to her. It was preferable to evade for now.

  “Please tell me we’re still not at your mother’s.”

  Owen stayed impassible, not agreeing with her deflect, but willing to indulge her for now. “No, when you went down, Lance successfully reached Gabrielle and Beatrice through a maze of phone lines who relayed the location of the safe house you chose for Mom. Wesley and Mac accompanied her. It’s for the best as Purgatory is still in shut-down mode. Bea suggested another location for you. We’re back at Seattle, in my apartment above my club. On tight lockdown. Lance arranged for transportation and came with us for the entire drive. He’s still here but will go relieve Wes and Mac soon.”

  Owen smiled, bringing her hand to his lips. “The only up side to this drug is it forced you off your knee for a good while. Are you feeling well enough to take a shower? Luke told me that after the poison dissipated, it felt more or less like a hangover.”

  “Yeah, close enough. But the headache’s receding. A shower will help speed things up.”

  “Good. Take a shower and I will tell you what your brilliant, delirious mind uncovered and what Lance made of it. Did you know you are very talkative when drugged?”

  Before she could ask more questions, he kissed her hard and fast, then set his cheek against her, his breath close to her ear. “You keep frightening and impressing me, Dylan.”

  And he left her in the room, still stunned, oblivious of her pounding head, her aches turning into pulsing desire. As she padded to the small bathroom, she decided that something needed to be done about it. For his redemption and her salvation.

  Chapter 32

  Once her head had cleared up enough to make sense, Dylan was dumbfounded not to have recognized Owen’s bedroom in the first place. Through the window, rain slowly fell over the city. As she got out of the bathroom, wrapped in a large towel, she noticed a pair of jeans, underwear and a dark blue long sleeves T-shirt on the bed. Long sleeves. Owen’s thoughtfulness made her smile. Taking a moment to twist her long brown hair into a loose chignon, she saw her image in the mirror and was satisfied to see she looked human again.

  Refreshed and dressed, she crossed the living room to the kitchen. Owen was at the stove, cooking something that looked like a chili. Lance was sitting at the kitchen table, using her laptop, his face fierce in concentration.

  As she appeared, both men lifted their heads in perfect sync. Owen winked at her while Lance got up and in two strides came to her. Surprised, Dylan didn’t have time to evade as he took her in his arms, holding her so tight her feet left the floor. In reaction, she tensed, but forced herself to breathe and relax. She may have gotten accustomed to Owen’s embrace, but Lance’s touch was still provoking a strong negative reaction inside of her.

  When she looked at Owen from above Lance’s shoulder, she saw that he had left the stove, taking a step in her direction, waiting for a signal from her. He might have been his brother, but he would intervene if she couldn’t deal with the contact.

  “Mmm, Lance, you don’t know everything about me, but I’m not comfortable being touched. Unless it’s unavoidable. It provokes panic attacks.”

  Lance stilled, but didn’t let her go. His face turned serious as he looked at her. “It’s caused by your trauma?”

  Dylan took a deep breath. “It’s a long story, some psychiatrist theory, and I would prefer to skip it for now. Maybe hold it for another time?”

  “Owen touches you.” Lance frowned, but she saw curiosity in his blue eyes.

  “It was a long process. Don’t get me wrong, I like you, a lot.”

  Again, he didn’t let her go. “Are you having a panic attack now?”

  Dylan waited a beat, analyzing her body’s reaction. There was discomfort, but no immediate anxiety. She knew her clothes to be thick enough to prevent him from noticing her scars. Lance was so warm, a furnace so similar to Owen.

  “No, it’s under control for now.”

  Lance’s bright smile returned with a vengeance. “It must be the Sorenson’s touch.”

  That made Dylan grin. “The Sorenson’s touch?”

  Owen snickered, returning to the stove. “He’s inventing that. There is no such thing.”

  Lance shook his head. “Don’t listen to him. Owen is too much of a pragmatist. And a downer.”

  “And that’s why you’re still carrying me around, to prove that you’re not?”

  Lance shook his head. “I’m a toucher. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for you protecting Mom.” He barely loosened his muscled arms around her before giving her a noisy kiss on the mouth. “She started to have stronger headaches last year, and I can’t imagine what that stuff would have done to her, and to the medication she’s taking for it.”

  Gingerly, Dylan patted the wide shoulders. “I wanted to protect every one of you. When I caught that scent, the one Knudson had used, I knew something was wrong. What I don’t know is how our psycho brunette could have known about it. For that I blame myself.”

  Lance put his head on her shoulder, and Dylan reveled at the demonstrative man, the most of the three brothers. Relaxing a bit, she put a hand in his platinum hair and kissed his temple. It was impossible not to touch him in return. From the corner of her eye, she saw Owen still intently looking at them, assessing.

  “Not that I’m ungrateful, Lance, but I kind of like when my feet are touching the ground.”

  The body of the giant SEAL shook and she realized he was laughing. Instead of putting her down, he swung her until she was solidly in his arms and carried her into the dining room. Just as he rounded the table, Owen blocked his brother’s path, and Dylan fluidly changed carriers. Immediately, she relaxed in his familiar embrace, and her arms naturally wound around his neck. So close to him, and totally out of character, she kissed him, too tame for her taste, but knowing that much needed to be cleared between them first. Only later.

  Lance came beside them and scooped her back into his arms. She yelped in surprise, and Owen turned back to the stove while keeping a watchful eye on her.

  “If you’re doing anything else but recuperating or eating, I’m taking over. Until I judge otherwise, I’m providing the royal treatment. You protected my family and I’m returning the favor. My name is Lancelot after all.” And he gently put her down before sitting back in front of her laptop.

  Dylan reached for it but he slapped the top lid closed.

  “Hey, be kind with my equipment, Sir Lancelot!”

  Smiling, Lance pushed the laptop farther away before crossing his arms. “No touching technology until you eat something.”

  Owen came to her side and placed a fuming bowl of chili and a spoon in front of her. Unable to help herself, she took hold of his hand as he sat beside her.r />
  “Eat.” Owen squeezed her hand before letting her go and pushing her bowl closer to her.

  Famished, she started eating. After a few very delicious bites, she sighed, and Owen brought her some store-bought cornbread and a cup of tea. As hunger lessened, her brain cleared, making what the guys had found much more interesting than the food before her.

  “I’m eating, now speak. What have you found?”

  Owen leaned back on his chair, touching her thigh. “As long as you keep eating, we will keep talking. Lance?”

  Lance opened the laptop again and typed a couple of commands before turning the screen for her to see. Her spoonful of chili stayed suspended in midair. In front of her, the brunette, passing a security point. Unclear where.

  “You got her. That’s new footage. You’re brilliant, Lance.”

  Lance beamed. “Nah, I’m only the brawn. It’s your brain who did the work and helped me find her. I saw all the work you have done before the incident. It was easier for me to pick up where you left off.”

  Carefully setting her spoon back in her bowl, Dylan leaned forward, first looking at the screen and then at Lance. “I couldn’t find anything on her, how were you able to chase her and keep her visible?”

  Owen squeezed her good knee, silently asking her to turn around.

  “It’s you who made the suggestion. As we fled Dallas to come here and hide, you were delirious, talking nonsense, shivering and sleeping in erratic order. As I was with you in the back, Lance was driving. At one point, your words became clearer, making more sense than they had one hour earlier. You talked about her, the brunette, about her connections, or lack of them, with the victims, their families. It was like you were remembering your case files, one by one. And then, when you went into every dead end, every possibility, your mind reverted back to Knudson, and how you couldn’t see a relation between him and her. Something about it was bugging you. You questioned the fact that she was too young at that time to be a possible victim or a possible groupie of the man. Again, no way she could be a girlfriend, and it was known that Knudson had no siblings.”

  “No known siblings.” Lance leaned back on his chair and linked his hands behind his head. “And the emphasize must be put on the word known.”

  Dylan shook her head, pushing the half-eaten bowl farther away. “Lance, I have gone through William George Knudson’s life layer by layer. His mother died from a cancer two years after he was born and his father never had other children. He has no possible sibling.”

  “Your logic is without fault, but your research not that perfect. Maybe because your mind is not as twisted as the reality I’m about to reveal. You were right about the brunette face bugging you. Brace yourself, but Knudson has a sister.”

  Dylan blinked before shaking her head. “He does not. Nothing is registered to that effect.”

  Owen nodded. “It’s registered, just not under Knudson. Hear me out. You know that Knudson’s father had a sister.”

  Dylan remember the file well. “Yes, her name is Janine. She came to live close to William’s family when his mother died, but then, she moved away again, on the other side of the country. Analysts and psychologists thought that it was because Janine didn’t agree how her brother was raising his son. They didn’t stay in contact. I suspected that he may have become violent with his sister as he was with his wife. There were police reports about it. The night before she moved away, Janine was admitted at the hospital with clear signs of battery.”

  Lance acquiesced. “Correct. But what is not on paper is why Janine Knudson moved and hid well for a long while. On and off, she popped on different documents, such as leases and employment records, bank accounts. Nothing out of the ordinary, until five years after that fateful night, Janine registered her daughter to kindergarten in the fall under the name Harold.”

  Five years. Dylan’s blanked for a moment, until her cop mind shook at the realization. “I know the name Harold. It’s Knudson’s mother’s maiden name. That night she was admitted to the hospital, it wasn’t only battery, Janine had been raped. And she had kept the baby. Shit, I didn’t search that far. They had been estranged for such a long time, and when we sent officers to interrogate her, nothing stood out of the ordinary. But she never said a thing about a daughter. And why would she? She hid her well under another name.”

  Dylan rubbed her temples, her mind going a mile a minute. “But it doesn’t explain why Janine’s daughter, Knudson’s half-sister, would turn berserk, following in the psycho footsteps of her brother. Her mother decided to keep her, protect her, shelter her.”

  Lance put his elbow on the table, his head sagging. “Again, the good in you is blinded. We followed the daughter through her school results. She went to college, majored in computer science and criminology, but beyond a stellar student, when I dug deeper, I saw that it wasn’t the nurturing environment you may think. In fact, it’s a miracle she could finish school at all. Her mother, Janine, was a known addict. And from what I could find, it started right after she had the baby. And it never truly stopped, on the contrary. She died six months ago. The final and fatal overdose.”

  “Again, I was raised in more foster homes I could remember, it didn’t make me a murderer.”

  Owen touched her shoulder. “But you didn’t have the same faulty genes.”

  Lance drummed his fingers on the table. “And, inspired by the work of the infamous Dogberry, I dug even deeper and found that despite brilliant results, at school, Knudson’s spawn had behavioral issues, to put it mildly. She had been on the verge of being expelled too many times to count, but as she was also very intelligent, with a great future ahead of her, they all let her off the leash. Each and every time. And, with more resources or computer skills, I wouldn’t be surprised to find sealed juvenile records with her name on it.”

  Dylan nodded. “Yeah. It would make sense. Where did you find that picture of her?”

  “Airport control points from two years ago. All I had to do was cross reference with the airport security data.”

  “How come? I did that kind of search and nothing came out of it.”

  “Ah, that’s because you didn’t access the brand new facial recognition software that is under trial at the NSA. Thank God for old friends in weird places.”

  “I’m impressed! How did you know it even existed, let alone accessed it? Are you hiding serious hacker skills from me, Lance?”

  The blond warrior winked at her. “Nah, I’m better knee-deep in mud with a gun in my hand heading for an impossible mission. Someone I knew told me about it. You ladies of Purgatory are not the only ones with connections.”

  “I hope you didn’t pay too dearly for that favor.”

  Now his smiled turned wicked. “I’m in good shape, I should be able to pull through.”

  Dylan shook her head at his innuendo, but turned serious again. “What’s her name?”

  “Meet Miranda Harold. Knudson’s sister and heir of the worst serial killer of our era.”

  Chapter 33

  It took Dylan a moment to realize that she was alone in the kitchen. Once Lance had revealed everything he knew about Miranda, he left. His accessing this kind of information came with a price that had to be paid immediately before he headed to where is mother was guarded. Owen went with him for a moment before he left and then told her he was going to take a shower.

  She dismissed him as her mind wouldn’t find rest until she could unearth every single piece of detail about her nemesis, about a woman who found pride in a man who made so many people suffer.

  After having a name and a mighty new tool in her hands, it hadn’t been difficult to retrace the steps of Miranda. The girl had been laying low in Dallas for the time being, probably unaware that the whole Sorenson clan was safe. It would be easy to go to that hotel and take care of her, but Dylan knew too well that it wasn’t the best solution. She needed the girl more isolated, where she could be taken down alone. If the police came into the mix, the warrants on her head,
the way Miranda had probably spun the murders of Dee, Bear, and Amaryllis, with possible videos and twisted proofs, would play against her and offer Knudson’s sister a chance to escape forever. Dylan wouldn’t risk it. She had to act smart, plan for any and every possible outcome.

  Again, she researched every aspect of the girl’s life, unable to accept that a human being, raised with difficulties, maybe a little like her, could turn so bad. But every clue that Lance had given her lead into that dark and ugly path. The last piece of the puzzle, the one that slashed away at any of Dylan’s hopes was an innocuous receipt. One of a tattoo shop not too far away from her college. An amazing amount of money not for tattoos but extensive scarification. How sick was that? Some details did not jive though. Knudson and Miranda never met, there was no possible way certain details about the torture and the murder could have been known of her.