Exacerbyte (Ellie Conway Book 3)

by Cat Connor

  Sam chuckled. “What did he really say?”

  Lee said in a gruff Caine-like voice, “You on vacation Conway? You better be okay down there because I want the joy of causing you serious harm when you come back sporting a tan.” He finished with an exaggerated double twitch of his mouth.

  He knew Caine well.

  There were two messages from Carla; both said she thought someone was following her on her way home from school the last two days. Crap!

  My call went straight to her voicemail so I left a message. “Hey kiddo. I want you to call Caine Grafton at my office and tell him what’s going on. You know Caine, he’ll be happy to hear from you. Tell your caregiver and have her call the police. Tell a teacher. Tell everyone you can think of that you think someone is following you. Do not go anywhere alone. Call me when you can. Be good.”

  I tossed the phone at the sofa and watched it bounce twice before sliding toward a cushion. Lee and Sam were staring at me. I did a quick calculation of the time difference between New Zealand and Virginia. We’re a day ahead and it was dinner time back home. Carla would be eating, which would account for the call going to voicemail. Caine would probably be eating as well. Seemed smarter to call him after my breakfast and not to interrupt his meal, and there was nothing he could do until morning anyway.

  “Carla thinks she’s being followed,” I said. “No surprise given the photograph stuck in the airport bathroom.” Fear began building, stacking up little blocks of doubt in my gut and creating havoc. “We think Hawk’s here, yes? He can’t be in two places at once.”

  Sam nodded. “He’s here. You can feel it as well as we can.”

  “So he left someone stateside to follow Carla.”

  “There’s a plate here for you,” Kurt said, indicating a place at the table. “Sit yourself down and eat. Talk to Caine after breakfast, he’ll take care of Carla.”

  “True enough.”

  Kurt took a sip of his coffee and voiced his burning question. “Who is Carla?”

  Sam grinned. “She’s family.”

  Breakfast was fine.

  Fine.

  I ate. I drank a chilled, freshly squeezed orange juice and it was fine. While Lee and Sam ploughed through a mountain of food and an entire pot of coffee. Kurt and I read the files. Four missing kids now, that wasn’t enough. I would’ve put money on there being more than four kids missing from New Zealand. Didn’t seem like a profitable trip for Hawk. I picked up my cell phone and sent a text message to each of the missing girls’ phones. It read, ‘I am Special Agent Ellie Conway. I can help you. Text me or call me.’ If they had their cell phones on, hopefully they would get the message and try to make contact.

  But then, if they had cell phones, surely they would’ve called or texted someone and said what was happening? The file said police had tried making contact with them via their cell phones and had received no response. There were no reports of cell activity from any of the phones.

  “You three can finish going over the files. There’s something seriously fucked up with this whole situation. A dead cop – which seems unnecessary. The low number of missing kids, which makes me think there are some we don’t know about yet. If that’s the case, there could be bodies.” Feelings of inadequacy writhed in my gut, suggesting I wasn’t focused. I needed to get some exercise. “I’d like to get in a workout or maybe a run.”

  Showering later would’ve been smarter. Oh well, cleanliness is next to godliness. Deep down I knew there wasn’t enough water in the world to make that true.

  Lee was the first to react with a slightly suspicious tone as he stated, “You’ve showered already, now you’re going to work out …”

  “I know, I’m wasteful – all that water down the drain.” I smiled. “I’ll see if the gym’s free,” I replied, lifting the telephone receiver from its cradle and calling the concierge.

  I was in luck and was able to book an hour and a half starting immediately. I turned down the offer of a personal trainer. That was pushing things a little far; all I really wanted was some thinking time.

  The decision to workout led to a hunt through my bag, until I found my iPod. Music encouraged thought, so logically thinking, time required music. It was anybody’s guess what was actually on my iPod. I changed into my academy sweats and sneakers. As I opened the bedroom door, I heard my phone ringing.

  “Toss me the phone?” I asked Sam.

  “Catch,” he replied, throwing it right into my hands.

  I took a breath and flipped the phone open. “Caine?”

  “S.S.A. Conway. Do you have an update for me?”

  “Not yet.”

  In that nanosecond, I had a flash of knowledge or maybe it was an instinctive knowing. Something in my gut spoke and I knew Hawk was here. I knew without any doubt there were more missing kids and bodies in the country, somewhere. Now we had to find them.

  “Caine, I can’t talk about the case right now. I need you to do something for me. Carla left me a message saying she thinks she was followed home from school the last two days. Check on her for me. I gave her a list of instructions – she should be calling you soon.”

  All my thoughts jumped into linear order but remained my thoughts. Someone knew I was going to Cassie’s. Someone also knew I went to Carla’s that day and was going to my brother’s for dinner. Someone knew who the cop was who was meeting us in Christchurch and what time.

  “All right,” Caine replied, his tone said he understood it was important.

  “This could get real ugly, real quick. I think someone is watching her. I also think we’ve got an in-house problem.”

  “Stateside?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Watch your back.”

  “I’ll call you back later today. What’s the time difference?” I rapidly calculated the time zones. “Jesus … I’ll call you, hopefully at a reasonable time.”

  “I’ll go visit Carla tomorrow.”

  “Take care of her.”

  “As if she were my own.”

  I hung up.

  Halfway to the gym, I changed my mind. What I needed was to run. Far far away, or at least long enough to clear my head. I needed pavement under my feet and the sun’s warmth on my back. I pushed my hands through my long hair pulling it back off my face. I didn’t have sunglasses or a cap.

  Because I was supposed to be in the gym, I mumbled internally. Didn’t have cash either but the hotel had a store where I chose a pair of sunglasses and a black cap with a silver fern on it, which I charged to the room.

  On my way out of the hotel, I grabbed a brochure with a map on it figuring I might need it to find my way back.

  The minute my feet hit the pavement a soothing lull came over me. It annoyed me that I seemed incapable of thinking my way around the investigation. I came up with two possibilities: we weren’t getting enough information or maybe my brain was simply on strike. I switched my iPod on and settled into a rhythm.

  Christchurch’s flat streets made running just as peaceful as back home and felt normal. It was early and there was hardly any traffic. All in all, a pleasant way to spend half an hour.

  I found a river and ran along the grassy banks until I came to an inviting willow tree. The music in my ears flowed from country to country rock and back again. The mix ran from Lorenza Ponce to Kevin Costner and Modern West with a large dose of Bon Jovi mixed with Grange in between. The irony of having Kevin Costner on my iPod didn’t escape me.

  The prying eyes of yesterday were back and I seemed unable to outrun them.

  Under a willow tree, I stopped to stretch. Out on the water ducks quacked and swam up to the bank. Guess they wanted breakfast. I moved on to another willow tree in a more peaceful duck-free environment.

  The run hadn’t worked. My focus needed work. The disjointed feeling from my topsy-turvey life stayed with me. The eyes watched.

  A giant wave of fury surged through me. Someone I trusted was responsible for leaking information to Hawk.


  The desire to scream grew.

  Look where my job took me … there I sat under a willow tree beside the Avon River in Christchurch, New Zealand, and all I wanted to do was scream bloody murder.

  The newly-disappearing children, Hawk being back, it all felt so close and personal I reminded myself it wasn’t personal when we faced off last time, not to start with anyway. He’d set an elaborate baited trap to work out which Delta team was available and who would lead the team prior to his killing, kidnapping spree.

  Go Ellie!

  Having some fucktard kill Cassie and send me a message by having me kidnapped. Now that’s personal. Killing a cop – my husband – and messing with Carla was personal. The worst part of my thought process was knowing someone I knew, within the FBI, was feeding information to Hawk. I started ticking off names.

  Sam.

  I picked up a stone and tossed it across the river. It skimmed. Four jumps.

  Lee.

  I threw another one and counted five jumps, the last narrowly missing a duck.

  Chrissy.

  I chose another flat stone. This time I threw it with purpose. My target was the opposite bank.

  Caine.

  Time to catch that fucker Hawk and go die hard on his ass.

  I let another stone loose and watched as it skipped across the river, leaving a shimmering wake in its path.

  Kurt.

  The willow’s trunk provided a comfortable place to lean against while watching the last ripple disappear. Something new entered my world.

  Peace.

  I gave it a minute to consolidate, in case it was the beginning of a migraine or maybe a transient ischemic attack. I found my rationale disturbing and was fully aware that most people wouldn’t think they were having a mini-stroke because they suddenly felt peaceful.

  Then again, two significant head injuries in three years weren’t normal either. I consoled myself with the idea that my mind embraced the notion of a migraine or transient ischemic attack and not a hemorrhagic stroke, from which I would not recover. Considering the darkness I fought on a daily basis and the current that persistently tried to tow me under, I think that showed promise. So many times I had wanted to just let go, to stop fighting the miseries of life and to sink into the oblivion, in the hope of being with Mac again.

  I took a deep breath and set the thoughts free on another stone. A ripple contorted on the surface of the water. In fascination, I watched as it created Mac’s face. He smiled, his mouth opened and words glistened in the air becoming audible as they dripped back into the river. “Someone’s out to get you, Babe.”

  “Yeah, but who?” I whispered at the sparkling watery image of Mac.

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  “What about Hawk?”

  “It’s all about the music.”

  Mac’s facial features drifted farther and farther apart until he was just a collection of tiny ripples.

  His reference to music confused me. Really, I should’ve been more concerned about talking to a river and believing it was my dead husband. That seemed insignificant in relation to what he said. In the back of my mind was a looming apprehension regarding my sanity.

  The one person I could always trust was dead and someone close was feeding information to Hawk. Carla was in danger and I was on the other side of the world. Not great.

  The ground vibrated behind me.

  Pounding feet.

  With one hand on the ground, I leaned around the tree trunk and peeked to see who was running, expecting to see Doc and maybe Sam. It wasn’t any of my team. One of the running men was Rowan Grange, the lead singer of Grange. Knowing they were in the country was one thing but seeing Rowan Grange out running caused a hint of fan girl to rise up within me. I allowed myself to enjoy my first-ever sighting of him in the wild. A new song came on; listening to Lorenza’s voice as she sang ‘Soul Shifter’ and watching the water for signs of Mac, pushed thoughts of Grange from my mind. The combination of music and water were causing ripples of ideas to form about the case.

  I stood up, stretched, threw a couple more stones and then turned back toward the hotel. Opting for a slow jog, I headed back along the riverbank, eager to see something recognizable that would show where I’d come from.

  At an intersection, I stopped and consulted my brochure. Finding it next to useless I threw it in a trash basket by the cross lights.

  It became obvious that I was going to have to rely on my instincts working in a flat southern hemisphere city, just as they did in northern Virginia. Or find someone and hopefully recall the name of the damn hotel.

  Autopilot kicked in and I cruised along trusting blind faith. Before long, a door opened for me and then a familiar concierge in the lobby greeted me with a flourish of impeccable camp.

  With a smile, I removed my earphones and took the elevator back to our floor. Right then I changed my mind and hit the gym instead. I wasn’t done yet and I’d already booked the gym. Ideas were forming but not cementing. At that stage the ideas were like mist or smoke, I could see shapes but not hold them all together. There was a struggle going on as the incorporeal shapes fought to become substantial entities.

  Inside the spacious well-lit gym, I found a row of treadmills with a view over the inner city. I pushed the earpieces back in my ears and switched my iPod on and the volume up.

  I set myself up at a decent pace.

  Focus.

  The missing kids swirled with the faces of those we’d rescued last time Hawk came along. Before I knew it, I was whirling out of control with no concrete plans on how to approach the problem. Anger surfaced again.

  The damage had already been done. Hawk already knew where we were and where Carla was. I needed to focus on finding the kids and then worry about finding the traitor.

  The anger, however well hidden from the world, had to go.

  I ran.

  If I ran long enough and hard enough, I could outpace the anger. If I ran far enough, maybe I wouldn’t remember why I was angry. If I ran until I couldn’t stand, maybe then it wouldn’t hurt any more.

  Five songs into my run a noise beside me penetrated through the ear buds.

  A muffled American voice. I looked, expecting to see Doc. It wasn’t. My heart pounded in an odd fashion. I knew who it was but my mind wouldn’t accept it.

  The man smiled at me from the treadmill next to mine; his mouth moved.

  I dropped one ear bud.

  “Sorry I didn’t catch that,” I replied. Music blared from the ear bud dangling on my chest.

  “I said ‘hi’,” he repeated and then continued in a light conversational tone. “I’m not surprised you didn’t hear. You always listen to music that loud?”

  “Only when I’m on a treadmill,” I replied. His New Jersey accent sent a shiver up my spine.

  I looked around expecting to find someone behind me, watching. I filed away the feeling of eyes watching me, intending to discuss it with Lee or Sam, if I could find a way of doing so without sounding like a lunatic. I convinced myself there was probably a security camera somewhere.

  The only person in the room was right next to me. My eyes flicked to his hands: no knife. Of course there was no knife. He was a rocker not a killer.

  He smiled and indicated the iPod and the current song. “I like that one too.”

  I smiled without commenting, nor did I put the bud back into my ear. It was time to pay attention to life.

  “You’re a long way from home,” he said.

  “So are you,” I replied and introduced myself. “I’m Ellie.”

  We dispensed with the whole handshake introduction; it didn’t seem appropriate on treadmills.

  “Pleased to meet you Ellie, I’m Rowan.”

  Like I didn’t know his name? With introductions made, it was now seemly to have a conversation.

  “You were out running this morning by the river,” I said.

  I decided that the other guy I’d seen was a personal trainer or maybe a bodygua
rd. I put my money on bodyguard. A scene from the movie with Kevin Costner played in my head.

  “You saw me?” He seemed surprised.

  “You ran by with your bodyguard.”

  He smiled and inclined his head, subtly. “You should’ve said something.”

  I’m not some lunatic fan.

  The next song started up. My iPod was on shuffle. Rowan smiled and looked out the window. I could see his reflection. Sun streamed in, the temperature rose, I wanted to push my sleeves up but resisted. People who saw the scars on my arm tended to leave quickly.

  “You like that record?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I really do. Do you like it?”

  He never moved his head but his eyes met mine in the reflection of the glass.

  “What’s your favorite song?”

  Answering a question with a question. How surprising.

  “ ‘Everybody’s Broken.’”

  He smiled. It was infectious.

  A responding smile spanned my face, catching my reflection by surprise.

  He asked, “Why?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  My mind screamed curses as I considered the implications of what I’d said.

  I snapped like a little fuc’n twig. Now I was having some kind of brain episode and I thought I was talking about Bon Jovi with Rowan Grange.

  My hallucinations exhibited exponential growth. Part of me started to think having Dr. Kurt along on this trip was a good thing.

  He nodded. “ ‘Lost Highway’ is one of their best.”

  “I like your new album. You’re on tour now?”

  A smile traced across his lips leading toward his eyes. “Yes,” Rowan replied. “You’re south eastern … Virginia?”

  I watched his eyes reading the lettering on my sweatshirt in the window. He could read mirror images. Conway, G, was written next to the FBI seal.

  “You’re a special agent? Like a field agent?”

  I nodded. “I’m a Supervisory Special Agent.”

  He switched off his treadmill and with two smooth strides was standing in front of me.

  “Ellie Conway, the FBI poet,” he announced. “I friended you on MySpace and on Facebook … you’re The Poet with a Gun.”