Exacerbyte (Ellie Conway Book 3)

by Cat Connor

  Never leave home without business cards, tissues, clean underpants and a gun.

  Sam and I left the porters to their reading. I doubted there would be much reading happening now.

  I called Caine on our way back to the desk.

  “Problem?” he asked, without saying hello.

  “Just received a second picture of Carla, someone is watching. I have a photo of you and her talking outside her school. It was delivered to my room.”

  He thought for a minute; I could feel a disruption in the force. “I’m putting her in a safe house under armed guard. I’ll have someone escort her to school and back each day. There will be police doing regular patrols of the school.”

  “Sounds good. Make sure she knows she can’t go anywhere without an escort, this is serious shit.”

  “I’ll make sure she gets it. You want your dad read in?”

  “Yes, that’d be great. Tell dad I want him to keep an eye on her … you know … if she needs to go out and do girly things, have him take her.”

  “Simon will love that,” Caine replied. We both knew he really would.

  “I’ll keep in touch.”

  I put my phone back in my pocket.

  Eleven

  Smells Like Teen Spirit

  Lee spent almost all Wednesday morning searching through Melanie Talbot’s laptop. There were untold pictures of Rowan and the band, gathered from internet sources all over the world. A lot of music. Overall, we found her tastes to be eclectic even though her recent play lists were devoted to Grange. Conveniently, she had all her passwords to social network sites, email and many other frequently visited sites, saved. I reasoned she had no need to worry about snooping, being an only child.

  It wasn’t easy but I kept telling myself Carla was well taken care of and got on with the business of finding kids.

  Time to call Sean. “Sean, it’s Ellie. Will you look into the issues with the cell network and see if you can find out which of our missing girls are with the same provider?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks. I’m thinking some of them might have tried to call or even text for help but the messages weren’t received. I sent a text to each phone yesterday. There have been no replies. But I don’t know if the phones are on or off, or connected to a network that is failing.”

  “I’m on it.”

  I hung up.

  “Ellie. What do you make of this?” Lee asked, beckoning me over. I crouched next to him and looked at the Gmail screen open on the laptop.

  “I think we need to find out who Emmet Smith is,” I said reaching over Lee’s arm and scrolling down some more.

  Lee whistled through his teeth as another part of the email conversation became apparent. “According to this he’s a fourteen year old boy who loves Grange.”

  “Then why do I feel like he’s a forty-year old pedophile grooming this kid?”

  “That’ll be because you’ve become cynical due to this job,” Lee replied, sarcasm resounded in his voice as he read aloud the next part of the email. “ ‘What’s your cell number? I wanna text you. Then we can talk, just us.’ ”

  “Even his name sounds dodgy as hell,” I said. “See if you can find anything that suggests she has ever met him.”

  Sam spoke from the table. “Emmet Smith is fourteen?” I heard keys tapping. “Send me the link to Melanie’s Facebook and Twitter accounts will ya, Lee?”

  “That’s what he said,” Lee replied. “Sent already. Her passwords are in the email I sent you. Ellie, I sent you the log-in information for the kid’s Yahoo and Hotmail accounts.”

  I sat back on the couch and dragged my laptop across the coffee table. While Sam searched for signs of Emmet Smith and Lee read the contents of the Gmail account, I went looking through her other email accounts.

  Yahoo netted over a thousand emails. She belonged to a group devoted to Grange. The whole Grange obsession worried me.

  The coincidence of her disappearing and Grange being in town didn’t feel like a coincidence to me. It could be something as simple as her being desperate to go to the concert and running away. It could’ve been, if her mom wasn’t dead.

  Forty minutes later, I showed the team an email from her Hotmail account. Same sender as the Gmail emails. Emmet Smith.

  “Check it out. They were meeting yesterday morning at the ferry terminal. He gave her an itinerary of sorts. He says he has ferry tickets and that his parents will drive them to Christchurch. He promises to take her to the racecourse market on Wednesday afternoon and the Grange concert on Thursday night.”

  Sam was on the phone before I finished talking, trying to get a ship’s manifest to locate the person who purchased the ferry ticket for Melanie Talbot. Five minutes later, he threw his phone at the wall.

  We waited.

  “Any fuc’n moron can purchase tickets on the ferries. No ID required. You can do it online. You can use any name you fuc’n well like. No one checks to see if names match as passengers board, or leave, the vessel. There is no record of any ticket purchased for Melanie Talbot or Emmet Smith. But minors cannot travel alone. Either he’s an adult as we suspected, or looks a hell of a lot older than fourteen; know any fourteen year olds that look eighteen?”

  “Not so many.” I looked over the email again.

  Lee blew air out his mouth. I looked over to see him staring at the screen. “What?”

  “Emmett Smith was a character played by Bruce Willis in a movie called In Country.”

  “And we’re looking for Hudson Hawk …” Sam added. “This doesn’t feel coincidental.”

  “No it fuc’n doesn’t. But right now, all we have is an email saying they were on the 10:00 a.m. sailing, no confirmation and a loose itinerary. Let’s work it. Find out where this market is. We’re going for an afternoon wander.”

  “Just for shits and giggles I looked up Bo Weinberg. You gonna love this, Ellie,” Lee said with a crooked smile.

  “Thrill me.”

  “When I put in Bo Weinberg and Bruce Willis I got the 1991 movie Billy Bathgate.”

  “Curious how Willis movies keep occurring,” Doc commented. “What do you think it means?”

  “That someone is a fan,” I replied. “Just maybe there is something to this Willis thing, fucked if I know what, yet.” It also meant that it was probable the passport Weinberg carried was indeed fake. I was anxious to hear back from the forensic examiner. “Let’s do this market thing. We might get lucky.”

  Three quarters of an hour later I watched heat rise from the pavement. Ahead of me on the road I saw waves of hot air undulating, distorting the white lines and blurring my vision. I could smell hot tar as it melted and anticipated tar stuck to my boots.

  My tee shirt plastered itself to me. Sweat trickled down my brow. I wiped it away impatiently with the back of my hand. We hadn’t even got to the market yet, we were still walking down the car-filled lane. Exhaust fumes added to the discomfort. I could see the sense in leaving our cars out on the main street but, in the heat and fumes, I’d have preferred to be in air-conditioned comfort.

  My arm brushed my side occasionally, bumping the holster I wore on my hip under my tee shirt. It was a comfort thing. I felt more relaxed knowing I was armed and dangerous.

  Some would say I never ceased being dangerous, armed or not.

  Some would be right.

  A digital camera swung from a lanyard around my neck. We all carried photos of the missing girl we hoped to find. Despite searching her laptop, we couldn’t find any pictures of Emmet. His Facebook page had pictures of friends but not of him, or at least none we could find. He wasn’t tagged in any photos on ‘friends’ pages. True to form, the friends all seemed to be young girls; males were conspicuous by their absence. Knowing what we knew about his name, we were expecting a forty-year-old male.

  We avoided tripping over people while making like tourists, the entire time scanning faces of kids, searching for anyone we might have seen recently. Lee and Doc scanned the cars that rol
led by us. Sam eyeballed foot traffic while I kept my eyes firmly on the movement of people ahead of us. I started out looking for men with young girls and then for families that didn’t seem quite right. By the time we reached the actual entrance I had committed several groups of people to memory and was set to get as close as possible to hear any conversation and hopefully determine how legitimate they were.

  A scream.

  I spun around looking for the origin and saw a kid pointing at us.

  Another scream rang out followed by a young girl’s voice. The kid squealed, “Tony!”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I bitched at Sam. “Does this shit have to follow us all over the city?”

  Lee’s lip curled in a horrified snarl. A guy his size had nowhere to hide and the screaming was coming closer.

  “We gotta get him outta here,” I muttered to Sam. Special Agent Ridiculously Good Looking was a liability.

  Lee was pissed. He griped, “How am I supposed to do my job with this bullshit happening?”

  “Come on,” I said and grabbed his arm. I began searching for a way out without screaming girlies blocking our path. “This way …”

  The four of us ran away from the screaming, ducking behind stalls. We moved as fast as possible and stayed as low as possible.

  Screeching followed but not quickly. Every time it started to die down someone would shout and the screaming would climb to reach fever pitch again. I flipped my phone open and called Sean.

  “We’re at the market at the racecourse … Lee’s causing a scene. There is hysteria and we need a way out.”

  I hoped like hell there was only one market and one racecourse, because I was sadly lacking in directional information.

  Sean sucked in air noisily and I pictured him trying not to laugh.

  Dust rose up above the stalls on our left. The horde was coming.

  “Now!” I said. I looked over to a row of stalls behind us; beyond them was a gravel road and beyond that a grassy field with cars parked on it.

  Stall owners were watching us with way too much interest. They were about to give our position away to the pack.

  “Never mind, we’ll get out.” I shut my phone, tapped my gun for good luck, and pointed to the field full of cars. “That way, stay low.”

  We moved as fast as we could without creating a telltale dust cloud and without causing undue attention by regular market-going folk. It was quite a feat, keeping people’s attention away from us.

  Past the edge of the last rows of stalls and over the gravel road, there were rows and rows of parked cars. I scanned the area for signs of the screamers.

  All clear.

  We crossed several rows and found a spot among a group of large four-wheel drive SUV’s. As long as the boys kept their heads down no one would spot us.

  “We’re going to stay here until the screamers disperse or find someone else to throw themselves at,” I said.

  “This is not making our jobs any easier,” Lee grumbled.

  There was a smile on my face that just wouldn’t quit. What could I do? This whole hysteria over Lee thing was starting to really float my boat.

  He glared at me. “You better not be finding this amusing!”

  It’s not as if I could help how I found it. An idea sprouted.

  “Stay here,” I told them. “Sit down and stay put. I’ll be back.”

  “What are you doing?” Lee whispered.

  “With the intention of finding a way out, I’m heading back to the market to see what I can find by way of a disguise,” I replied. “We need to get you out so the rest of us can get to work.”

  It wasn’t Lee’s fault he was the pre-teen target of the moment but short of calling in the real Tony to parade about in front of the screamers I needed a disguise to get Lee out, safely. My safety concerns were more for the screaming kids than Lee. I saw a murderous look in his eye.

  “Hurry,” Lee replied, with a dismissive wave.

  “You want company?” Doc asked. I looked at him in his now-dusty charcoal suit. Who wears a suit to a market?

  “Nope.”

  I skulked back toward the rows of stalls. It wasn’t going to be easy. The first stall contained backpacks and cowboy hats. Cowboy hats were a definite no-no, unless the object was to intensify the screamers’ experience. It would take his Tony Sharron look and turn him straight into Richie Sambora. I suspected the reaction would be the same.

  Oh Lordy, he has his hat on.

  Four stalls down the row I spotted baseball caps and tee shirts. They would do. I brought four shirts and four caps. At the next stall, I saw sunglasses. Perfect. I needed to replace, temporarily, Lee’s aviators with something slightly more run of the mill.

  On a whim, I bought us all new sunglasses. It seemed like a good idea for us all to look a little different.

  My phone rang; it was Carla. “Everything okay kiddo?” I clutched the bags of clothing and glasses while I did a quick reconnoiter to determine the whereabouts of the screamers. They’d broken into two packs and were scouring the large stall area. The area was vast and it would take them a while to find me.

  “Yeah. Caine is cool. He’s okay to hang with”

  Cool? Don’t think I’d ever heard him described as ‘cool’ before.

  The hordes weren’t covering much ground and appeared to stop for scream breaks.

  “Good. Sweetheart, I have to go – I’m sort of in the middle of something here. I promise as soon as I get home I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “K, just wanted to say I was okay and that Caine is watching out for me.”

  I made my way back to the car park area.

  “Be good, stay safe. And I’ll see you soon as I can.”

  Then she blurted out something that took me by surprise. “I want you to be my mom, that’s what I want for my birthday.”

  Well, that ain’t a laptop. I took a breath. “I’ve been thinking about that too. We’ll see what we can do about it when I get home.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I love you. Now be good!”

  A smile nudged at the sadness that still dwelled on the edges, ready to take over my life. Now I just had to convince the court that I was fit to raise a teenager. I shoved my phone into my pocket and crept along the rows of cars trying desperately to remember where I left my team. The cars all looked the same and there were at least six rows filled predominately with SUV’s and trucks.

  My phone rang again. I hooked it from my pocket with my free hand and flipped it open. “Yep.”

  “Where are you?” Sean.

  “In a field filled with cars, you?”

  “Front entrance of the market.”

  “I think we’re way way at the back.”

  “Stay put, I’ll come to you. There’s a road that goes all the way around there.”

  “Okay. I’ve gotta find where I left the boys.”

  “You’ve lost them?” The incredulity in Sean’s voice rang clearly in my ear.

  “Not lost … misplaced temporarily.” If one or other of them would just stand up, I wouldn’t have a problem.

  Sean laughed.

  “Hurry up,” I told him and hung up.

  I text messaged Sam’s phone and stood quietly until I heard his phone go off. As Mr.T bellowed, “Pity the fool that texts me!” I pinpointed the direction to somewhere on my left.

  I waited. A hand rose above the roof of a car and waved.

  Sam.

  After a check for screamers, I quickly covered the distance between me and the cars concealing my team.

  “Got stuff,” I said and sat on the grass in front of them. The plastic shopping bag rustled as I pulled out tee shirts, caps and glasses.

  I pulled my tee shirt over the one I was already wearing. Sam and Lee did the same. “Doc, lose the suit jacket and button down shirt,” I said handing him a tee shirt.

  He folded his jacket inside out with his shirt and shoved them into one of the plastic bags. He pulled on the tee shi
rt. Lee swapped his glasses for the cheap pair I gave him. We jammed blue baseball caps on our heads. I looked at Lee. The cap and glasses combination made it worse. I didn’t even need to squint to see the resemblance.

  “Take the glasses off,” I said.

  He did. It didn’t make a difference.

  “Put ‘em back on.” I sighed. “We’re too easy to spot together. They’re looking for you, but bad-ass Sam, Doc and I are making you stand out even more.”

  Sam chuckled. “You’re right. A big black dude like me, the suit and a little blonde thing like you, we’re like a neon signpost for Tony here.”

  Lee shot him a filthy look and got a sparkling grin for his trouble.

  “Sean’s on his way to us,” I said.

  Sam nodded. “You go with Lee; me and Doc will go with Sean. We’ll separate. Meet back at the hotel.”

  “It’s like you can read my mind.”

  My phone jangled.

  “Someone wave or something. I’m standing out here looking like an idiot,” Sean said.

  I shoved my phone into my pocket then stood up and waved. He cut through the rows of cars, nodding politely to a few older folk who were leaving.

  Sean scrutinized the party. “Touristy, the NYC caps are a nice touch.” Our tee shirts sported an outline of New Zealand with a big star where Christchurch was. “Always struck me as odd that people would buy NYC caps at a New Zealand market. Now I know people who have.”

  “Are we off?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Sean replied. He even managed to keep the smirk from his voice. Impressive. “Kurt, Sam and I are walking through the middle of the market. Hopefully we’ll draw some attention.” Sean looked at Lee and me. “You two, follow the road that skirts the whole thing. It goes behind buildings and hedges. You’ll be mostly covered until you get to the road you came in on. When you see that coming, jump the hedge you’ll have on your left and cut through the race course.”

  “Got it,” I replied.

  “We’ll be fine,” Lee added.

  “On your way out, try to spot anyone who could be one of our missing kids,” I said to them.