Secretive

by Sara Rosett

  Just to be sure, she double-checked the box, even slitting all the flaps and opening it completely, but it was empty. She pried up the stamp and examined the back. Nothing but adhesive. She frowned at the box, which was now splayed open on the island, like a weird dissection in a biology class.

  Okay, what else? Earlier today, she’d thought it could be an account number, like a bank account, but just an account number wouldn’t do her any good. She needed at least a hint—a bank name or address. She mentally left “account number” on her list of possibilities then ran through other options. GPS coordinates? She turned on her computer to do a search.

  Because it was practically an antique, it took a while for the computer to chug through its opening sequence. While she waited, Zoe paged through the file of articles, noticing that Jenny Singletarry, a reporter for a Dallas newspaper who had been instrumental in breaking the story about GRS, had apparently gone out on her own and now wrote only for her blog, The Informationalist, which had a mix of hard news and local entertainment reviews. Jenny had contacted her several times, asking for an interview after Zoe returned from Italy, but Zoe had turned her down. There was no way she was giving information to the media.

  Zoe was deep into the stack when an article, this one from a British news website, caught her eye. She’d printed it two months ago because it mentioned Costa, but hadn’t read the whole thing at the time, just skimmed it. The headline read, “Cyber Crime Gets Organized.” A photo she’d seen before in other articles was set into the text. The cutline under a fuzzy picture of Costa noted the photo was the last sighting of him.

  Striding up a busy street, threading between mopeds and pedestrians, Costa looked to be in his late forties or early fifties, but there was no middle-age spread on him. His suit fit snuggly on his lean frame as he threw a cocky grin at the camera.

  Zoe scanned the article. After making a fortune in the chaos following the fracture of the Camorra into several warring elements in the early 2000s, Costa disappeared, and investigators believed he’d abandoned drug trafficking and turned to cyber crime. “Cyber crime is difficult to trace and highly mobile,” she read. “In the past, cyber crime was often committed by individuals acting alone, but now organized crime syndicates are getting involved and moving the schemes to a whole new level.” Zoe’s gaze snagged on one paragraph, which read, “Costa was believed to be involved in a virtual theft of millions of dollars from banks throughout Europe. ‘It’s the new frontier for the mafia,’ said the leading expert on Victor Costa’s new criminal enterprise, a London-based computer crime consultant, Dave Bent.”

  Zoe dropped the article onto the stack. The phrase “virtual theft of millions,” echoed in her head. Cyber crime would be the perfect activity for a man in hiding. Was Costa really out of the picture? It didn’t sound like these experts thought he was retired.

  Her computer finally came up, so she opened a browser window and went back to trying to decipher the numbers on the blue paper. She looked up information on GPS coordinates, which torpedoed that idea pretty quickly. She needed two sets of numbers, latitude and longitude, for an exact location. She cringed, thinking that her seventh grade geography teacher, Mrs. Roberts, would have been ashamed that she’d forgotten such a basic fact.

  So, it wasn’t a geographic location or a phone number. If it was an account number, she didn’t have enough information to make it useful. She swiveled her legs from side to side on the barstool, thinking that if Jack had sent the ring—and she thought it was from him—and he’d taken the trouble to put the paper in the box, he wouldn’t send something that she couldn’t figure out. She couldn’t picture him sending a second package with the key to the code. And, God knows, if he depended on Donna to get a second package to her, they were sunk. Donna had barely managed to get the ring to her.

  No, the more she thought about it, the more she believed the answer had to be right here in front of her, in the number. At first, she’d thought the dots were to disguise a phone number, but since it wasn’t a phone number, then maybe the dots needed to be there. What items used strings of numbers separated by dots?

  Too many dots to be a library call number. She stopped in mid-swivel and typed the numbers directly into the address bar on the browser. She’d thought of one of her dog-walking clients, a freelance web designer, who had a personalized welcome mat at his house with his web address—not the name of his websites, but the digital name—a line of numbers separated by dots.

  She hit return and a page about Covent Garden loaded. A photo of the popular shopping area filled the top of the screen along with a description of the area, which had once been a fruit and vegetable market. Zoe was familiar with Covent Garden from her guidebook copy-editing and knew it was a popular tourist venue with shops, restaurants, and performers. She quickly skimmed the rest of the website. What was Jack trying to tell her? Was there something in one of these pictures, or in the text she should recognize? Was he at Covent Garden? Or, had he been there when he sent the package?

  It was a massive website, providing details on the history, the architecture, upcoming events, and hotels and services in the surrounding areas. Maybe she was completely wrong and the webpage was a coincidence. But there was the London postmark, too...

  After studying page after page of shops and restaurants, she pushed away from the computer. She hadn’t seen anything that she could even remotely link to Jack. She needed a break. She changed into her running clothes, laced up her Asics, and pulled her hair up into a ponytail.

  She set off at a brisk walk to warm-up, enjoying the fact that she didn’t have to wait until almost twilight to run, which is what she did during most of the summer. The humidity never really went away in the summer, but it did lessen a little in the late evening. She checked her street and didn’t see either a strange silver car driven by an unknown driver or the equally disconcerting brown car driven by the FBI guys. She set off on her usual jog—a three-mile loop through the neighborhood, which was quiet in the early afternoon. It was the lull before the carpool moms hit the road for afternoon pick-up and commuters were still trapped at their desks.

  About a mile in, she realized a car was closing in on her from behind.

  Chapter Six

  ––––––––

  ZOE heard the engine and moved farther toward the side of the street. She didn’t like to run on the sidewalk because of the driveways. All that up and down messed with her pace, so she ran at the edge of the street, practically in the gutter.

  She flicked a glance over her shoulder and saw it was a van. Not a suburban mom with a minivan, but a boxy utilitarian van contractors favored. The van came even with her, hugging the gutter. There was plenty of space for it to get around her. There wasn’t another car on the road, and there was no need for it to squeeze so tightly next to her.

  She skipped up on the sidewalk and continued running at her regular speed. The van paced her for a moment, which wasn’t that usual. The neighborhood was notorious for its frequent police patrols that encouraged drivers to keep their speed down, but when Zoe glanced to the side and made eye contact with the driver, she involuntarily slowed down. He had a shaved head and a low dark unibrow. He stared at her, sparing only a quick look at the road ahead to make sure no one was coming. Zoe felt a shiver of cold anxiety, despite the layer of sweat on her body.

  The van sped up, then veered into the driveway of the house in front of her with a screech of brakes, cutting her off.

  She halted. Her thoughts leapt to those news stories about women who had been attacked, abducted...horrible things. But that couldn’t be happening, not now. Not to her. She wanted to turn around and run in the opposite direction, but that would look silly—like she was afraid. The driver was probably turning around. He’d back out in a second...

  The panel door slid open and a second guy, this one tall and stocky, hopped out, his gaze fixed on her. He was several feet away, but another cold wash of fear blanked out every thought. She went wi
th her instinct—run.

  Zoe turned and sprinted back the way she’d come. She ran as hard as she had ever run, adrenaline making her fast and nimble. She ducked under a low-hanging tree branch and swooshed by a set of low hedges, their stiff leaves scraping her legs, but she barely noticed.

  She twisted her head to look behind her, expecting to see the guy chasing her, but he’d vaulted into the van as it reversed out of the driveway. He closed the panel door with a thud. The driver threw the van into gear then accelerated toward her. She only had a lead of a few feet.

  She scanned the deserted street. Why wasn’t someone out checking their mail or walking their dog?

  The van roared closer, its daytime running lights glowing just behind her shoulder. Large cottonwoods with sturdy trunks marched down the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. Zoe was sure that if the trees hadn’t been there, the van would have jumped the curb to get closer.

  The tree trunks flicked by. The van’s engine surged and it accelerated in front of her as they approached a cross street. Whispering Wind Court, Zoe thought with relief. She cut diagonally across the yard of the house on the corner and sprinted into the small cul-de-sac.

  It was part of her regular route. She normally jogged down the stubby street to add an extra couple of tenths of a mile to her jog, but there had been that day when rain poured down unexpectedly, and she’d used the easement between two houses on the far end of the cul-de-sac as a shortcut to get to her own street.

  The van turned onto the cul-de-sac, brakes squealing. Zoe’s feet pounded through the thick grass as she made for the opening between the two houses. Leaves brushed her shoulders as she sprinted down the narrow opening between the hedges. She checked her speed slightly. Hadn’t there been a drop off? The ground dipped away from the homes into a narrow basin then rose again to meet the backyards of the homes on Zoe’s street. She stepped cautiously over a stack of tree limbs near piles of grass clippings. This was the dumping ground for the yard waste from the homes on the cul-de-sac. With the sudden slow down, her labored breathing sounded loud.

  Brakes screeched and the solid whoosh of the van’s panel door sliding open carried across the quiet neighborhood. She high-stepped through the grass clippings, found the drop off of about three feet and skittered down, bringing a shower of dry grass and leaves with her. A few steps through some squishy, damp ground at the low point, and then she scrambled up the far side through more leaves and loose branches. She couldn’t help taking a quick look over her shoulder.

  The stocky man burst out from between the hedges, spotted her on the other side of the depression, and hesitated. Zoe could see that he was torn between following her and going back to the van. Zoe didn’t wait to see what he decided. She dove into the dim corridor between two houses, crossed the lawn, and hit the sidewalk at a run, automatically turning in the direction of her house.

  It was only three houses away, and her feet flew across the short distance. She cut across her yard and sprinted up the driveway, then jerked to a stop.

  Did they know where she lived? They obviously knew where she jogged. Breathing hard, she looked longingly at her house. She wanted to run inside and deadbolt the door, but if they were coming here, that was the last place she should go.

  Zoe switched direction, sprinted to her neighbor’s house, and reached over the gate to unlatch it from the inside. She walked Torrie’s dog a few times a week, but this week Torrie was visiting family, and she’d taken her labrador with her. Zoe was as familiar with Torrie’s house as she was with her own. Zoe went to the brick patio, pried up the third brick from the left and removed the house key from its hiding place. The rough brick slipped from her trembling fingers and fell back into place.

  She shoved it into alignment and raced up the steps to the kitchen door. She got the door unlocked with only a little fumbling then punched in the code to disable the alarm.

  Zoe closed the kitchen door and leaned against it for a second, listening for the sound of the van in her driveway next door. The wind rattled a window screen. The solid tick of the grandfather clock in the living room measured the silence. She ran a shaky hand over her mouth. Her fingers smelled of dust from the brick. She sucked in a deep breath then blew it out, trying to calm her racing heartbeat as she went to peek out the living room window to the street.

  The white van cruised by in one direction, moving slowly. The driver, Mr. Unibrow, swiveled his head from side to side. Zoe swallowed and watched the van reach the end of the street, make a three-point-turn, then retrace its route. It didn’t slowdown at her house, but continued at a slow pace until it reached the other end of the street. It sat there for a moment, red brake lights glowing, and then it made a hard right and accelerated away.

  Zoe let out a whoosh of breath, but didn’t move from the window. She stayed there a full fifteen minutes. She knew that much time had gone by because the grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour twice, each time nearly giving her a heart attack. She decided that they really weren’t coming back.

  Zoe locked up Torrie’s house then scurried over to her house. The first thing she did was check every door and window. Had the attempt to get her been a random thing? Had Mr. Unibrow and his stocky companion gone after her simply because she was a lone female in a deserted neighborhood? She came slowly down the stairs, running over the whole incident again.

  No, she didn’t think it had been a coincidence. There had been something about the way Mr. Unibrow studied her as he slowed the van to her pace. He had thoroughly checked her face before he blocked her path. She shivered, despite still having a sheen of sweat on her after her frantic race home.

  And, there had been two of them, a team. Not some loner weirdo, attacking women in a deserted area, like she heard about on the news. She paused on the last step, her hand tight on the banister. No, it had been coordinated, and it was only because she knew the neighborhood better than they did that she was here at home and not in the back of that van.

  Faintly, she heard a car move down the street. Her heart rate, which had settled into a normal rhythm, jumped back to high gear. She moved stealthily toward the living room window. The tension drained out of her as she watched a familiar SUV cruise by. Zoe recognized the driver, a mom who lived down the street and seemed to spend half her day in the SUV, shuttling her kids to and from school and activities.

  Zoe spun away from the window, suddenly angry that the sound of a car moving down her street made her afraid. She stalked into the kitchen, snatched up the phone, and found the card the FBI agents had left. But instead of dialing, she switched the phone from hand to hand. She didn’t have much to tell them, no specifics—just a white van and general descriptions about the two guys. She didn’t have a license plate number or even a witness. Sato in particular was already doubtful about the silver car. What would he say when she called with the news that another vehicle had not only followed her, but a passenger had come after her?

  No, she wasn’t going to open herself up to more questions. Donna hadn’t been big on life lessons or making good choices, but one thing Zoe had absorbed from growing up with Donna was not to trust anyone. She’d trusted Jack and look where that had landed her. No, better to stay wary of everyone, including the FBI. It didn’t matter that Mort had seemed to believe her about the money. Sato hadn’t. And, he’d doubted her story about the silver car. The last thing she wanted to do was come off as a crazy conspiracy theory nut.

  Another car hummed down the street and she tensed, leaning sideways to check the small section of the street she could see out the window over the sink. A small red Accord motored by and she relaxed.

  The file folder was still open on the kitchen island. Maybe the skull and crossbones sketch hadn’t been meant to indicate that Jack was in trouble. Maybe it had been meant for her, a warning.

  She replaced the phone and bit her lip as an idea took shape. Staying here was out of the question. It wasn’t safe. Even if the guys in the white van didn’t
know exactly where her house was, a few days parked on the street in a different car, and they’d be able to find her. Whoever had been in the silver car definitely knew her address. Were they working together?

  She ran her hands over her hair, pushing a few strands, which had come loose, off her forehead. She didn’t have time to worry about the possible variables of the silver car and the van. She needed to get out of here, get somewhere safe. Her first thought was Helen’s house, but she didn’t want to put her in danger so that was out.

  A second, crazier, idea came to her as she stared at the file folder, which was still open on the island. She needed to get out of town and go someplace where no one would find her—or even think of looking for her. If she needed to leave town anyway, why not go to the place that kept popping up? Why not London?

  She went to her laptop. First, she pulled up her bank account and checked her savings balance, which made her cringe—her usual reaction—then she did a search for airline tickets to London.

  While she waited for the page to load, she reread the article on cyber crime that mentioned the leading expert, Dave Bent, who was based in London. Maybe she should hire this Bent guy to help her find the money. Not that she had any money to pay him with, but if it came down to her word against the FBI, she would need someone on her side, and as much as she knew Helen’s lawyer husband would help her out, he wasn’t a criminal lawyer. Wouldn’t it be better to have a computer expert searching for the money?

  The airline webpage loaded, and she bit her lip when she saw the price. Even off-season, a roundtrip ticket would wipe out her savings. But what choice did she have? Hide out here and wait for the next person to follow her? Confide in the FBI and hope they believed her and could protect her? But how could they protect her when she wasn’t even sure what she needed protection from?