Flashbyte (Byte Series - Ellie Conway Book 4)

by Cat Connor

  “We need to go back to the hospital, Kurt. We have to look through every current patient file. We need to know who the target is.”

  “And Arbab was last seen entering the hospital. That is not happening.”

  “There is no other way.” I gave him a long look which met with his disapproving arched eyebrow. “Did you ask Grant about Arbab?”

  He shook his head. “I won’t. He knows too much already.”

  Too much about me.

  “There is no way around this. We need to be inside the hospital. There is a life in danger.”

  “Fifty-one files, not counting anyone admitted today for observation.”

  “Yes, but the common denominator is bad behavior. We only need flip to the nurses’ ER notes and see the comments.”

  His head nodded as he thought about it. “We need to get you into Grant’s office, so no one else sees you. I can get the files.”

  “Let’s do a drive-by and see if the silver car is still there,” I said, jumping to my feet. Holster. I picked up my holster from the nightstand and clipped it to my belt. It was good to put my gun back where it belonged. Heat or no heat, I pulled a lightweight jacket on to conceal my gun from prying eyes. My fingers fondled my badge. Instead of clipping it to my belt, I pushed it into my jeans’ pocket. If I had to, I could clip it on later. “I’m ready.”

  Kurt was already waiting by the door, carrying both laptops stowed in their cases. “Me too.”

  Ten minutes later we drove through the hospital parking lot and around the surrounding streets. There was no sign of the silver Galant. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Kurt looked relieved.

  We left the laptops in the trunk of the car. Accessible should we need them, but neither of us wanted to carry them around. Off we scurried into the hospital and through the corridors to Grant’s office. Kurt knocked once. Grant’s voice called out, “Come in.”

  Kurt opened the door.

  My heart pounded a jumpy rhythm and I felt sick to my stomach. Grant was alone. He even seemed pleased to see us.

  “The love birds. What can I do for you?”

  “A few things need checking,” Kurt said as we sat in the chairs we’d used earlier.

  “I saw your note,” Grant said to me and pointed to the large ‘six’ on his whiteboard. “Mean something?”

  “It may do.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Access to hospital records, current ones,” Kurt said.

  “All right. I’ll give you my pass codes to the system. You can access it remotely from your laptops.” Grant typed displaying some impressive speed. When he finished he said, “I sent you an email with a link to the system and my pass code, it’s valid for today. We change our codes every twenty-four hours.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem. I want to catch this person, Kurt, before anyone else dies.”

  “So do we.”

  Kurt took my hand. “Come on.”

  We could access everything ourselves from the safety of our hotel room. No need to hang around. Except I wanted to see Katrina.

  I smiled at Grant and went with Kurt. In the corridor I told him I wanted to get coffee and take some to Katrina. Not only did I want to know how many doctors were in the hospital, but she might have seen Arbab. I just hadn’t yet figured out how to broach that subject. It’d come to me.

  We bought coffee and chocolate muffins, then went into the emergency room and found Katrina about to leave for the day.

  Kurt muttered something about wanting to check on a patient from earlier. Kissed me on the top of the head and vanished into the rooms beyond the front desk.

  “Let’s not waste these,” I said, handing Katrina a coffee and a muffin.

  “Thank you,” she said, peeling the cling film from the muffin. “Been such a busy day. Half the town has been through those doors today.”

  “Do you get many tourists down here?” She gave me an odd look. I shrugged. “You mentioned half the town had been in. I wondered if this was a tourist destination.”

  “We get a few – had a funny one this afternoon. A man from somewhere in the …” She looked lost. “I don’t know where he was from but he spoke funny, like those terrorists on the TV.”

  “How exciting. Who was he?” I sipped my coffee.

  “I don’t know. He wanted to see a doctor then settled on finding the accounting department.”

  “Sick?”

  “No, looking for someone I think. A friend. Some girl he met a long time ago.”

  Oh crap. “Was his friend a doctor?”

  “I don’t think so. I think she was a patient here once.”

  “Wow.”

  “I couldn’t help him, everyone was busy. I pointed him in the direction of accounting and off he went.”

  Great. So he knew I’d been treated at Stonewall Jackson in the past. How was he getting his information? And what was he doing in accounting?

  Kurt popped back in. “Time to go, honey. Dinner plans, remember?”

  “Oh that’s right,” I stood up. “Sorry. I forgot we had plans tonight.”

  “That’s all right. I’m off now anyway.”

  Kurt escorted me out, one arm wrapped around my waist. I whispered in his ear as we walked, “Arbab was looking for someone who was treated here once.”

  “How would he know that?”

  “I have no idea. How does he know I used to live out in Mauryville?”

  “Good point.”

  I wanted to run away and hide. The minute the electronic doors opened showing our car sitting across the blacktop, I wanted to run to it. There was a great deal of control exhibited on my part, and it was due in no small part to Kurt’s firm grip. Maybe he sensed my desire to run away.

  “He also wanted to talk to someone in accounting.”

  Kurt ushered me into the car then climbed in himself.

  “Arbab isn’t an idiot,” Kurt said, turning the key in the ignition. “There is no record of you ever being treated at Stonewall Jackson, but he believes you were. The one place that will have records is the billing department. Someone has to pay.”

  That was not good news until I gave it more thought. Even if he found the record of payment, the address shown would be Mauryville, maybe.

  “How much could he find out?”

  Kurt grinned. “As it happens, nothing. There is no patient record for you, nor is there a billing record.”

  “How so?”

  “Caine paid the bill for a Jane Doe, unknown age, and unknown address, using a Federal Bureau of Investigation credit card. Not even the date matches your admission or discharge.”

  I leaned back and smiled.

  Don’t underestimate the FBI.

  Twenty

  Runaway

  A poem revolved through my mind. I knew it by heart. Line by line I watched the words form. A hand I knew painted them, with soft strokes from a sable brush on a huge pale-blue canvas. The black letters faded to gray as the paint on the brush needed replenishing.

  Incorporeal you.

  Bending time to catch a glimpse

  of the realm in which you exist,

  standing before a rift in time

  watching, as our worlds combine,

  swirling together that which was lost.

  Faces tumbling in the mist.

  Unsure of reality –

  obsessed by insanity.

  Slipping through a crack

  into a sphere I can’t explain.

  A place where I am whole again.

  Hearing your voice,

  seeing your smile,

  torn by forces unseen.

  Plunged into a disturbing dream.

  Standing alone before a fissure in time

  wishing our worlds could forever entwine.

  Unsure of reality –

  Gripped by insanity.

  The last of the words dripped off the bottom of the canvas and formed a red cap on the ground under the easel. Missing
Mac wasn’t going to help me figure out how Arbab was tracking me. Thoughts whirled. Or was it? He was tracking me now, but a me that existed a long time ago. He was visiting places where once I had been, and now am again.

  It was all too freaky: No one could’ve foreseen this trip to Lexington, certainly not someone stepping out of my distant past and coming from Saudi Arabia. And anyway – I sensed the voice of reason entering the room – that didn’t explain why he was in Roanoke, killing a random Conway.

  Roanoke. I couldn’t think of a time I was there for anything more than a brief visit. It didn’t make sense like the other sightings. Part of me knew none of it made sense, but that wasn’t the part that spoke to Mac on a regular basis. I see dead people. I speak to dead people. Not people exactly, but Mac. It’s not like everyone who’d ever died comes back to visit. Just Mac and sometimes Mom. I refused to allow the faces of dead crime victims I’d helped swim into focus. Mac and occasional visits from Mom were enough.

  “Conway, you with me?”

  My eyes flashed up to find Kurt crouched in front of me.

  “Sure, why?”

  “You’ve been staring at something over there.” He pointed to the easel. “For almost an hour.”

  “The easel?”

  “No, the nothing. There is nothing there.”

  I looked at the easel and watched it dissolved into a puddle of pale blue on the carpet. Black words swirled on the blue, like ripples on a still lake. The puddle grew smaller and disappeared. Taking Mac’s red baseball cap with them.

  “Nothing.” I shrugged.

  “What did you see?”

  “A canvas with a poem painted on it.”

  “Coffee?” Kurt asked and stood up.

  “Sure, coffee would be great.”

  I was waiting for him to get freaky over the easel thing. When he didn’t, I followed him to the kitchenette and changed the subject.

  “How is Arbab following me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s like he’s going back in time and following a trail left during …”

  He set down the cup he was holding and turned to face me. “You’re talking about the Son of Shakespeare, aren’t you?”

  “How insane does that make me?”

  “Off the charts. Or it would be, if I hadn’t had a similar thought.”

  “How is this happening?”

  Kurt’s eyes met mine. “I don’t know. But I bet it’s an interesting explanation.”

  “The odd place out is Roanoke. But DC, my home – which was Mac’s house – visiting my old property in Mauryville and visiting Stonewall Jackson hospital … they are all places I was during the Shakespeare case.” It was conceivable that killing the first Conway woman in DC could’ve just been due to me being FBI, and a total case of mistaken identity. The woman in Alexandria upped the ante somewhat; I had been there. I stayed in a hotel there during the Son of Shakespeare case. But the explosion at home, didn’t that mean he’d found me? And the other DC death made some sense if he thought I lived in DC. But like the Roanoke death it was not somewhere I’d been. I had no ties to northeast DC at all.

  “Where could he go next?”

  “I need the original case file.”

  My laptop was sitting on the floor by the couch. I fired it up and logged into the FBI system. Accessing old case files was easy: Everything was digital now and there was also hard copy stored in a giant secure records room. I skimmed the front page of the file. There was a log, stating who had opened it and when. It was last opened a month ago by Special Agent Timothy Stenton.

  “Interesting,” I said. “Someone accessed the file.”

  Kurt looked at the screen. “Have another look.” He pointed to a comment at the bottom of the page. “They’re using it at the Academy as a training case.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I’d delivered a few talks on the case at the Academy over the years, more as a warning of how things can go wrong from the perspective of an agent who was the intended victim of a very clever killer.

  “They’re teaching with that case, that’s awesome. Let’s hope the baby agents learn something.”

  I scrolled through the pages, looking for the timeline I knew was there. It was there and if this guy had access to this case, it wasn’t good.

  “We went from the hospital back up to Fairfax, to Mac’s parents’ home, then to Richmond – to my father’s and to the hospital. It ended there.”

  Kurt’s hand rested in my shoulder. “I know, I remember.”

  “If he’s following this case, trying to find me—”

  “This is his starting point. A high profile case that had you as the intended victim. Everywhere you went is a place that holds more discoverable knowledge for him.”

  I picked up my phone and called Caine.

  “It’s me. This is going to sound peculiar but I need you to do something for me.”

  “Go ahead.” His voice never flinched. Caine was well used to me and peculiar things.

  “We think ...” Because it’s not as insane if two of us think it. “I think Arbab could be heading back to Fairfax to the Connelly’s old house.” Maybe.

  “Good luck to him,” Caine growled. “They bulldozed that place two years ago.”

  “I know, but he doesn’t.”

  “I’ll have agents waiting, if that’s where he’s heading we’ll grab him.” Caine grumbled to himself. “I’ll send a black-and-white to the Connelly’s place just in case he comes up with a current address. This idiot seems to be resourceful.”

  “Let Noel know and tell him I’ll be in touch soon.”

  I hung up. I’d had little to do with the Connellys since I’d adopted Carla. The judge who granted the adoption also issued a protection order stating that Mac’s older brother, Eddie Connelly, was not allowed anywhere near Carla. That made a difficult situation all the more treacherous. I adore Mac’s father, Bob. He and my father work for my Foundation. The Butterfly Foundation that Mac and I founded to help the kids of mentally ill parents. Carla was one of those kids. Mac and I were survivors of mental mothers.

  Mac’s mother was not someone I wanted around my child. The protection order against Eddie pissed her off, and she stormed out of my life, throwing nastiness and hateful accusations as she went. I saw Bob at the Foundation whenever I could. The others I did not miss. I knew enough about Eddie Connelly to know that given the chance, he’d rat me out like the scumbag bastard he truly was. Hence the situation with the Connellys was tricky: Trying to sneak past Beatrice and Eddie but still let Bob into my life was akin to walking through a minefield.

  Kurt was still scrolling through the old case file. “Ellie, how much of this case was in the news?”

  “Shit, I remember seeing news footage of our house on the BBC the night we left for Washington. But I don’t know how much else was broadcast.” My memory was foggy when it came to media surrounding the case. A newspaper. “There was a letter to a newspaper from The Son of Shakespeare. We were back in Lexington when I saw that, I think.”

  “Did he mention he knew where you were?” Kurt searched for attached media references. “Never mind, he didn’t.”

  “There was a story on the six o’clock news about the body found in a dumpster in Richmond,” I said. “I was linked in that story because she was my best friend, way back when—”

  “No, I’m looking for any public references to Mac’s parents’ home, or any other places you may have gone.”

  “He referenced them in a poem, I think. But it wasn’t made public. None of the poems were.”

  “You sure?”

  “Uh huh.” I nodded.

  “Then what’s this?” Kurt opened an attachment. It was a PDF containing all the sick little Post-it poems written by the killer, Charles Boyd, aka Son of Shakespeare aka Jack Griffin.

  “They’re evidence … why would they be in a PDF?”

  “Because someone created it as a teaching tool.”

  “How many ti
mes has it been downloaded?”

  “Over a hundred.”

  “Can we trace each download?”

  “There is a log – all downloads were from the Academy at Quantico.”

  “Downloaded, and it’s possible they were printed and ended up in agents’ notes. So what happens to notes once you finish at the academy?” I knew what I did with mine, I kept them. They burned in the explosions along with my house in Mauryville.

  “I still have mine,” Kurt said.

  “I would’ve if they hadn’t burned. So people keep them, like they do their sweats.”

  “And someone may have taken, read, or copied, someone else’s notes.” He followed his thought with some other notions. “Sharing an apartment or something. A roommate finds them or a party attendee. My point is, no one would think of them as being sensitive, they were used to teach a class.”

  “That’s true. But the notes wouldn’t make any sense to anyone who wasn’t involved in the investigation, or didn’t know anything about it.”

  “People remember things and all it takes is the right key word to bring that memory out.”

  Scary thought.

  “Six months ago I was linked to Rowan by a reporter during our sojourn in New Zealand. Then I was linked again at an award ceremony. It’s possible Arbab recognized me on one of those occasions. So, let’s see who downloaded this file and the PDF in the last six months.”

  “Notice how often six comes up?”

  “Yep. Beginning to really dislike that number.”

  “Me too.” Kurt pulled up a list of people who had shown interest in the case file and downloaded the PDF. There were twenty names. “I’ll email the list to Sam. Perhaps he can get to all of them and ask the right questions.”

  A heavy knock shook the door in the frame.

  Kurt set the laptop on the coffee table and drew his weapon. I moved to the door, Glock in hand. A quick look through the peephole revealed Lee.

  I nodded to Kurt then turned the handle and pulled the door inward.

  Lee stepped in wearing a grin a mile wide.

  “I smell coffee,” he said, shutting the door behind him.

  Kurt and I holstered our weapons.