“I’d say that’s already happening with John talking to the media,” Paul pointed out.
“He’s doing what?” Kylie ran her fingers through her hair, shaking her head in growing aggravation.
“They’re going public with this one. John and the Chief are meeting with reporters and the Simolis’ now.”
She wasn’t surprised, especially with Paul having told her the Simolis’ were a prominent family in the community. They were used to a high-profile life and probably would have gone public without the law if they hadn’t agreed. “It would have been nice to have a bit more time.”
“Want me to send out a forensics team?”
“Yup. The police will probably be here soon and I’d just as soon get a good sweep of the scene before they mess with it.”
“Sending them out now.” The sounds of explosions and continual laser fire never stopped. “Rita Simoli was talking to a guy named Peter on her family’s computer. Your cop, Mr. Flynn, just left there a bit ago and reported in to his Chief. We got the information a few minutes before you called. You need to narrow in on this guy and set up another meeting.”
“I’m working on it.” She grabbed the evidence bag out of her trunk, then locked her car, which she’d parked on the side street on the back side of the store, and sprinted across the parking lot. “So far we keep missing each other with instant messages, but I’ll see if I can lure him out later tonight. If I can, that means he’s either disposed of Rita or locked her up somewhere so he can focus on his next prey.”
“If the Web site is connected to him, he’s locking them up and not killing them.” Paul grunted. “At least not right away.”
“We also need to consider the possibility that Peter could be more than one person.” Her insides churned at the thought of these teenagers being locked up like animals and tortured. “How soon before Forensics is here?”
“You should have a couple agents there in a few minutes. I suggest you take off.”
She tried not to breathe too heavily into the phone after running from her car back to the sidewalk. But pulling on gloves and then sliding the shoe into the ziplock bag, she sealed it and grabbed the receiver from the pay phone, sliding it into another evidence bag. “I’m bringing the shoe and receiver in; then I’ll see if I can get Peter on the horn and arrange for a meet.”
Kylie headed down the sidewalk toward the back of the building when she glanced at the entrance to the parking lot from the main road. A tan sedan, similar in make and model to the ones parked at the FBI field office, pulled into the parking lot. It parked at the end of the sidewalk, but the driver kept the motor running. One of them saluted her when two men got out of the car. She recognized the special agents from when she was down at the office, but didn’t know their names.
“I’ve got confirmation your team has arrived,” Paul said in her ear as one guy walked to her and the other popped his trunk.
“That’s a ten four,” she told him. “I’ll brief these two and talk to you soon.”
“Roger that.”
Kylie walked the two men through the crime scene and helped rope off the scene with yellow tape. A news van entered the parking lot and two other cars, one unmarked and one city police, followed.
“Crap, the circus has arrived.”
“You’re going to blow your cover,” one of the guys warned her.
“Nope.” Kylie hated leaving the scene but trusted the two men to do their job. “Time to get out of Dodge.”
“You’d better fly,” the guy closest to her said, grinning.
“I’m on it, Batman.” She bolted down the length of the building, pretty sure no one saw her.
An hour later they had confirmation that the shoe belonged to Rita Simoli and her frantic parents once again turned to the press, offering a large reward for the safe return of their daughter. There were fresh prints on the receiver that matched prints on the pole that had been scratched, but Rita had never been printed. There was no way to make a positive ID other than using the assumption they were hers based on the shoe. Kylie managed to escape the cameras and snuck back to her house unnoticed.
After adjusting the volume on her TV so she could hear the news, she settled in the middle bedroom, keeping an eye on her monitors as well as focusing on her buddy list. Anticipation riddled her insides, like the feeling she got when a case was about to explode wide open. In spite of suspecting she was on to the right guy after learning that Rita spoke to Peter with the same screen name, Kylie guessed her stomach tied in knots for several reasons.
She didn’t doubt Perry would be pissed when he learned she hit his crime scene and tagged it before he could, even though he wouldn’t know she was the agent who reported to the scene. That wasn’t the only reason trepidation ran hot and heavy through her veins.
Dani was speaking with Peter, too. Even though she had told Kylie another girl would meet him this Friday night, that didn’t ease Kylie’s nerves any. There would be another meet and she knew when. If only she knew where. Somehow she needed to learn where Peter was meeting Lanie Swanson, Peter, or Petrie, wouldn’t tell Dani and even if he did, getting Dani to tell Kylie would be harder than pulling teeth. She’d feel a hell of a lot better if she knew without any doubt Dani wasn’t going to meet him.
Kylie continually glanced at the monitors. Something told her Perry would be by tonight, and just thinking about him showing up at her home made her insides swell with expectation. He wouldn’t be the only one wound up from working a case. Although she couldn’t share with him anything she’d found out or learned, she could show him what to do with all that energy that needed an outlet.
Heading over to the Facebook profile she’d created, she began searching, going from profile to profile, reading every line and checking out pictures and comments posted to each profile. It sickened her how openly teenagers discussed their social lives on one another’s profiles, making it so easy to get to know them if anyone wished to take the time and sift through the millions of profiles on the site to find the ones of interest.
She stumbled onto Dani’s Facebook profile after finding a profile for the Mission High School drama department. Although Dani’s profile said she was ninety-seven years old and lived in Lebanon, there were quite a few references to other kids, and after Kylie checked out each profile she realized who some of them were.
The sound of someone signing on startled her. She was so engaged in what she was doing that she’d even drowned out the TV from the other room. Immediately a chat box popped up in front of the Web site she’d been scrutinizing.
Where were you earlier tonight? I’ve been bored all evening and no one was online.
Convenient opening line. And an obvious guilty conscience. Peter probably just finished dealing with Rita. There wasn’t any reason he should suspect her. Apparently, he felt a need to put in writing he never left the house due to some warped line of thinking that somehow that proved his innocence.
Sorry. I had homework, she typed, and flipped his box behind the Web site to search and see if she could find Rita’s profile. She didn’t, but there were links on all of the pages she went to for Dani’s and some of the other profiles connecting them to a Facebook profile.
Are you done with it now? Talk to me, Kayla. I really need a good friend.
I’m right here. Is something wrong?
Yeah, there is something wrong. It’s my birthday and my parents are leaving town.
She didn’t get the connection but knew he was plotting a good three or four messages ahead of her. Kylie minimized the Web site behind her so she could focus better on the conversation without distractions.
It’s your birthday? she asked, deciding she’d approach the comment about his parents being out of town next. There wasn’t any doubt in her mind where he was heading with that one. And from what she’d learned about teenage girls since she started this case, any of them would be sharp enough to guess why he would bring that up.
Not today—Thursday. Bu
t both of my parents are going to be out of town on business. I don’t get a birthday party.
If they’re going out of town, you can have a bash. She cringed after sending it, praying her choice of words didn’t sound too square for a teenage girl.
Call me a nerd if you want, but they would kill me if I had a party while they were gone. And well, it’s not right.
What the hell was his motivation? Maybe he wanted her feeling sorry for him and agreeing to meet him. Or possibly he believed if he portrayed himself as a compassionate soul, she would like him even more and be more likely to do whatever he suggested.
Then it hit her, and without commenting on what he said, she pulled up the Facebook Web site and quickly went to her own profile. She read what she’d written about herself.
It was right there in front of her, on display for all to read: I want someone not afraid to do the right thing even when peer pressure pushes for him to do something else. Show me you stand out in a crowd, honest to a fault and not afraid what your friends might say, and I will go anywhere with you.
“Two points, motherfucker,” she mumbled.
He chimed again. She’d waited too long to respond. Hey, nerds need love, too.
LOL. Are you going to have a birthday party when they come home? Will I get an invite?
I’ll have a party when they get back. But nothing at all is going to happen on the day of my birthday. I’m sure this has never happened to you. You don’t understand how sad that makes me.
She understood more than she would tell him. Her fifteenth birthday had gone by unnoticed. It was such a devastating experience she remembered it today as if it were yesterday. Her sister was gone, raped and murdered, which raped and murdered their family, too. Nothing was the same after that. Something as trivial as Kylie’s birthday couldn’t be dealt with after losing Karen.
Kylie never told her parents they forgot. Even today, when bridges with her mom and dad finally were being mended, Kylie couldn’t bring it up to them. There wasn’t any point in opening old wounds.
That would suck, she typed, and hesitated, wanting to say just the right thing without sounding too obvious, so he would suggest another meeting. Maybe you could ask your parents if you could get together with a few special friends.
You’re a special friend to me.
Good. I feel the same way about you.
If my parents say it’s okay, you’ll see me on my birthday. He didn’t make it a question.
“Okay,” Kylie said out loud as she typed the one word and clicked “send.”
Good. Plan on seeing me Thursday. Tell your parents you’ll be at a birthday party for a couple hours. And thank you. You’re going to make this birthday one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
Kylie was sure it would be a day both of them would remember for the rest of their lives. At the same time, she noted that Peter just gave himself a couple-hour time frame, which she bet he did with every girl he snatched. And with a couple-hour run time, it made it damn hard for the law to chase him down. Hard, but not impossible.
“This all ends Thursday,” she vowed to herself. If she could get Peter to capture her, there would be no worries about Dani, or any other girl, meeting him Friday.
Chapter 15
Kylie sat lost in thought but didn’t realize her eyes were closed. Nor did it quite hit her what had brought her back to the present. Twenty minutes had passed since the last entry typed in her chat with Peter. Her thoughts had drifted from Karen to her mother, and her last visit to Dallas and the time she and Kylie had spent together.
Her mom had been friendly, almost loving, when Kylie went down there. There were years of mending for the two of them to go through, and up until the last couple years neither one of them had exerted too much effort to allow the healing process to start between them. But now, with her father sick, something compelled Kylie to return home when she could, even if just for the weekend.
Something her mother said suddenly rang through strong in her thoughts.
“I’m so proud of you.” Her mother said it so casually, as if she told Kylie that every day.
Had her mother ever told her that before?
Something pulled her out of her thoughts. She stared at her monitor, but Peter hadn’t said anything. She swore she heard something. Maybe her mom’s voice in her head came through louder than she thought.
Kylie forced herself to quit daydreaming, or was it night-dreaming since it was now officially after midnight? This time, though, she knew she heard something, and it didn’t come from the TV. It was like a scratching sound, like a dog trying to get its owner’s attention by dragging its claws down the door. Except Kylie didn’t have a dog.
Quickly saving her chat with Peter, she then cleared the box and minimized the Web sites she’d been browsing. Focusing on her monitors, she pushed the button to rewind them ten minutes to see if anyone was outside. A couple minutes of quiet images of her front yard went by before Perry’s Jeep pulled up in front of her house. Then it backed up along the curb until it was out of range for the cameras to pick it up.
“Crap,” she hissed, jumping up and grabbing her phone. Her gun was in its thigh holster, which she’d worn when she investigated the crime scene earlier this evening. “Sheez, woman, you don’t need it against Perry.”
But she did need to make sure he didn’t see this room. She returned her attention to her monitor in time to see Perry sprint across her yard, running fast enough that the cameras barely picked him up. In a matter of seconds, he was gone from the images playing back for her.
“He ran around the side of the house. Son of a bitch.”
Her attention shot to her hallway when the scratching sound repeated itself. Perry knew there were cameras outside and had tried dodging them. Any lesser-quality surveillance equipment probably wouldn’t have picked him up. He was trying to sneak up on her.
“Well, two can play this game,” she whispered, grinning at the thought of beating him at his own game.
Double-checking to make sure everything was in order in the room, Kylie turned off the light but then turned toward her window. Moving in the dark, she leaned over her computer and moved the closed blinds just enough to peer outside. It was a moonless night and her front porch light hindered her ability to see the car parked in front of her neighbor’s house clearly. She assumed it was Perry’s Jeep, and she also guessed the blur that had raced across her front yard was him. But what if it wasn’t?
Grabbing her gun, she lifted her skirt and strapped the leather holster to her thigh. The cold metal and stiff leather always gave her a sense of security. She closed the bedroom door silently, then locked it. If Perry was in the backyard, possibly at her back door, he wouldn’t see her turn off the light. Nor would anyone else who might be out there.
She didn’t bother with the hallway light but instead stood silently, her body pressed against the cool, flat wall, and listened. A popular drama and repeat she’d seen one too many times was on TV. It wasn’t hard to tune it out and focus on the other sounds in her home.
Kylie moved down her hallway without making one floorboard squeak. She knew how to hunt the predator; in fact, she was damn good at doing it. At the end of her hallway, she paused, not moving while she took in her quiet living room and the glow of the TV that accentuated the dark corners.
Convinced no one was in her living room, which was easy to do because her alarm system would go off if anyone entered her home, she started along the edge of the room toward the kitchen. The blinds were all closed over the back windows, and from where she stood she could see all of them. Her living room opened into her small dining room and then the other end of her house, a small alcove where more chairs could be but where she had nothing. Sliding glass doors were her only view to the backyard, and they were black against the night outside.
Her only advantage was that it was also dark in her house, shy of the glow from her TV. As impossible as it was for her to see outside, an intruder would have
as much problem seeing inside right now.
Nonetheless, prickles of anxiety and anticipation rushed over her flesh, giving her chills. Years of experience handling situations so much more terrifying than this helped her remain calm and evaluate her situation carefully before making her next move. And she took her time deciding her best plan of action. Unlike other scenarios where she stalked a killer, this time she was stalking Perry. A smile tugged at her lips. She wouldn’t be blowing her cover by besting him at his game. Possibly proving to Perry she wasn’t completely helpless would make him back off a bit.
If there was one thing she would change in the man it was his hell-bent determination to make her submit. She’d have to give him a bit of leeway, since his pushiness stemmed from Perry being a good detective. Something told her even if he knew the complete truth about her, he would still push her harder than she could tolerate. And training him to submit might be damn near an impossible task.
After listening another minute and not hearing anything, Kylie walked quietly into her kitchen. And barely had time to react when a dark shadow leapt at her. Strong arms wrapped around her and she was yanked backward, all the air flying from her lungs with a loud grunt when she slapped against a body of steel.
Try as she would to turn the grunt into something more civilized sounding, a gloved hand crushed over her mouth.
“Why do you have surveillance equipment installed in your home?” Perry whispered against her ear.
Adrenaline hit her hard enough to make her dizzy. Then hearing Perry’s voice, his rough whisper that tortured her ear and the flesh on the side of her neck, sent other emotions skyrocketing out of control.
Instead of answering, she bucked, doubling over and then swinging back hard with her elbow. He was mocking her with the question, showing her no level of security could keep him out of a place if he wanted to enter. It was obvious he didn’t like being monitored, which fit with his nature. Perry didn’t want anyone having the upper hand. By breaking into her home successfully, he proved to her that she could monitor anyone, but not him. Kylie could show him, instead of tell him, a few things of her own. She didn’t need to rely on that equipment as her only means of protection. She was perfectly capable of protecting herself.
Strong, Sleek and Sinful Page 21
