Exacerbyte (Ellie Conway Book 3)

by Cat Connor

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll look into it, Ellie.”

  “Thanks Dad.” I paused trying to gauge what just happened. “I expected a lecture.”

  “Sweetheart – you know what you are doing. If you didn’t you would’ve said … this is what I want to do, am I doing the right thing? And you did not. When you know your own mind I have no need to lecture.”

  I smiled. “So it’s true, you do know me better than I know myself.”

  “That I do. Now I’ll find a lawyer who’ll help you bring Carla home, where she belongs.”

  “Meanwhile, will you find out about getting me temporary guardianship – I don’t want her in foster care while we’re trying to make this permanent.”

  “That’ll be my priority today.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I slid the phone back into its base and listened for the beep that told me it was charging. In my office, I dropped Grange’s new album, Nocturnal Drifter, into the DVD/CD player of my desktop computer and chose ‘Play All.’ It was funny hearing Rowan’s voice coming from my speakers, now that I’d met him.

  The music followed me to the kitchen while I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and coffee. I text messaged Carla, knowing she’d be getting ready for school. I just wanted her to know that I was home and trying to get custody of her A-sap.

  Back at my desk, it was time to update the readers on the Foundation site. My hand strayed to my desk drawer; I opened it before I realized what I was doing.

  Looking for cigarettes.

  Old habits die hard. I pulled my hand from the drawer, ate my sandwich and took my mind off smoking.

  My Foundation blog was typically light-hearted and fun to write. The intent was always to make the young people of the Foundation feel like a part of my day without giving them any detail. I wrote:

  There’s no place like home. I’m back from a short trip. During which I met a rock star and was offered an opportunity to write a few songs. Isn’t that the coolest thing ever? When we make the formal announcement, I’ll post it here. Until then, you’ll all have to wait. You may speculate all you like.

  It’s something very different for me.

  You all know the drill … email me anytime. The moderators are here to help with any questions you have. (Don’t ask them who the rock star is.)

  Next time I shall tell you tales of my dumpster-diving days of fun.

  Y’all take care now, ya hear.

  SSA Ellie.

  I switched off my desktop and picked up my work laptop from the desk.

  The joy of mobility.

  Out in the living room my intention was to lie on the sofa with the rest of my coffee and some mind-numbing TV, while I surfed the World Wide Web and checked work email.

  The blast still affected my head a little, despite my pretending I was okay. I made a mental note to call my doctor first thing in the morning.

  With my laptop open I began the arduous task of checking my email from various accounts.

  Among the regular emails I expected to find at my work address, there was one from an unknown. Normally I’d delete it out of hand but this one had an interesting subject line.

  Don’t all viruses have interesting subject lines?

  I ran the virus checker over it first before opening and reading the contents.

  Welcome home SSA Conway,

  I hear you know about the chat rooms. Aren’t you clever? Of course, knowing about them and stopping me using them are two entirely different things. Wanna watch me work? You owe me. You owe me three pretty little girls. Give Carla a kiss from Uncle Hawk.

  Yours with true appreciation,

  Eddie Hawkins.

  I called Caine. I needed to hear his voice and response, while I frantically tried not to panic.

  Not good.

  The second he answered, I started talking, “I’m putting my work laptop on a courier. I think there is some kind of spyware on it, maybe another keylogger.” I felt like my voice was racing as fast as my heart.

  “Hi Ellie,” Caine said.

  “This is old. I mean this grew old during the Son of Shakespeare’s days … now I have Hawk dropping in spyware. Are all criminals cut from the same drab piece of cloth?” His greeting sank in. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and said, “Hello, Caine.” I never gave him time to reply. “This is fucked up beyond belief. He’s saying he is hunting in the Grange chat rooms and we can’t stop him! He mentioned Carla!”

  “Ellie! I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  The red haze of anger lifted slightly. “A keylogger and Hawk saying he’s using chat rooms and he said ‘Give Carla a kiss from Uncle Hawk.’ How the hell did he drop a keylogger onto my work laptop?”

  “Because every time we come up with a new way to protect our information, some little dick hacks it for fun.”

  I inhaled deeply and let it out slowly, releasing the final traces of anger.

  “You got email from Hawk?” he asked in typical gruff fashion.

  “Yes. I’ll print it and attach a hard copy to the case file.”

  “For now Carla is as safe as we can make her without pulling her from school and hiding her in a bunker.” Caine growled less and less the longer I knew him. This time his growl gave way to concern. “My experience tells me teenagers are best not stored in bunkers.”

  “Okay.” I don’t quite know how ‘okay’ fell from my mouth; it wasn’t even close to the hysterical screaming I heard in my head.

  “You’re all right? With this new development, the email, I mean?” Caine asked.

  Caine could read my voice like no one else and anyway, I’d ranted at him, which I suspect gave him a big clue as to how I felt.

  “I think ‘me’ and ‘all right’ parted company the minute I opened the email.”

  “Sam, Lee, Kurt?”

  “They have the next few days off; we’re all a bit shattered after the trip.”

  “Is there any reason to suspect Hawk knows where you live?”

  “Not at this stage; he seems to be content with following me in the virtual world and all around Christchurch, New Zealand.”

  Whoever has been watching Carla probably knows where I live.

  “I’m not happy about this.”

  No fuc’n kidding?

  “What’s he going to do, knock on my door?” As the words left my mouth, I mentally slapped myself. Good one, Ellie!

  Caine exhaled with force, then sharply sucked in air as he said, “Do I have to remind you how it all turned out when someone did that?”

  No, that wasn’t necessary at all. I still have the nightmares and the scars. My fingers ran along the scar under my bangs.

  “Days off or not, either Lee, Sam or Kurt need to be shadowing you.”

  I agreed but only because if I didn’t, Caine would call them direct or worse, send someone else to baby-sit in the meantime.

  Back in my home office, I plugged the printer into the laptop and made three copies of the email. One for me. One for Caine. One for the file. Then I copied the URL that lead to all the transcripts from both chat rooms into an email and sent it to myself. Just because he said I couldn’t stop him didn’t mean I couldn’t analyze the conversations.

  I powered down my laptop and closed the lid, then shoved it into a courier bag and addressed it to Cyber Division. One copy of the email went into an envelope addressed to Caine. That would go with the courier too.

  Someone had rifled through my personal files, either in person or by means of a nasty program created for such things. It was as bad as someone going through my drawers. If someone rifled through my files in person it had to happen while we were away. I took my work laptop with us.

  The courier company had someone pick up the package and letter.

  What was I missing apart from brain cells? Hawk was hunting kids, this time without the gory trail of bodies left by his previous employees. He was still killing, just not as prolific
ally.

  As far as I could tell, he now did not use the Foundation.

  What was with the involvement with Grange? Was it convenience, was it because they were one of the most famous bands currently touring? Was he using other band chat rooms too?

  It was feeling personal but there was no way Hawk could have envisaged my meeting with Rowan Grange. If he did, then he had one amazing crystal ball.

  I thought about how we arrived at the decision to go to New Zealand. Hawk misbehaved, we followed him. Although we weren’t a hundred percent certain it was him, until we got to New Zealand. He led us to Christchurch. He led us to the Grange concert.

  The nagging, chilling feeling I’d experienced, when I knew it was Hawk, returned. It was too easy finding those kids. And why leave such a mess of bodies?

  How could he have known I would see the Russian at the Casino? My thoughts were pointing to a scary scenario. If he were watching me like the photographs suggested, he would’ve known Rowan and I were in a private dining room overlooking the casino floor. That explained why the Russian looked up that night.

  And the references to Bruce Willis movies: what the fuck was that all about?

  I owed him?

  I owed him set of steel bracelets and a date with an electric chair.

  Knowing I couldn’t put off calling Lee any longer I picked up my cell phone. I decided to open with an apology.

  “I’m sorry to do this to you.” I hoped I sounded as sincere as I felt. “Caine thinks I maybe a target, all leave is cancelled. To make it fun, you’re on bodyguard detail.”

  “Cancelled?”

  “More relocated … to my place.”

  Lee chuckled. “I got nothing planned, Chicky. I’m on my way.”

  “I’ll let Sam off today, we’ll pull him in tomorrow,” I said. “I heard a whisper he has a girl, plus he’s recovering from the blast.”

  “I heard he had a girl,” Lee replied. “See you in an hour or two. Lock the doors. Call Kurt in.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Hey, bring that bug detector thing.”

  “You think something’s in the house?”

  “I dunno.”

  I hung up.

  Doors. I was feeling decidedly antsy. I checked all the doors and windows. I checked upstairs, looking in all closets and under the beds. I even checked the showers.

  It didn’t help. Antsy was how it was going to be.

  Violation does that to a person.

  The comforting old creaks and groans of the house didn’t alleviate the problem either. Usually I found them soothing, like a collection of songs written for me.

  Not poems. No, not poems.

  It was daytime but it didn’t help. The trees were naked; I could see all the way across the yard and deep into the woods. It didn’t help. I wandered up the stairs and into my bedroom. I opened the french doors that lead to a small balcony overlooking the backyard, and a cold wind hit me. The sun tricked me into thinking it was warm. It wasn’t. Yet twenty-four hours ago, the wind was warm and the sun hot.

  A bang from downstairs jolted me back to Virginia.

  It sounded like a door. The front door hitting the doorstop.

  I grabbed my badge from the top of my dresser and dropped the lanyard over my head. Without even thinking about it, I pushed my holster back onto my belt. My fingers wrapped around the grip of my Glock. A muffled thump at the bottom of the stairs made me pause. A thump, like someone dropping something. A bag maybe. An interior door opened. I peered over the banister and looked down the hall. Had I shut the office door?

  If I did, it was now open. Either way, I needed an explanation for the shadows I saw moving across the floor through the open door.

  It’s the cat.

  The smile faded as I heard the computer power up. Not even our cat was that smart. Then I remembered the cat was with my brother.

  Walking down a few stairs, I was acutely aware there was no cover. The landing a few more steps away had a small bookcase and a phone. Mac and his love of phones; one upstairs in our room, one on the landing, one in the kitchen and another line into the office. A few more steps.

  The shadow moved.

  I snatched up the phone and pressed in Lee’s number while I continued moving. Being caught on the stairs would be stupid. I could be dead before I turned around to run. I made it to the bottom before Lee answered.

  “Hello?”

  With the phone to my shoulder to muffle his voice, I moved into the living room. I’d left that door open. With three rooms between the office and me, I felt a little safer speaking.

  “Someone’s in the house,” I said in a whisper, as I watched the doorway.

  I heard the office door close and listened for footsteps. None. Whoever it was had shut themselves in the office.

  “How many? Where? And where are you?”

  “I don’t know how many. Someone is in the office and has turned on my computer. I’m in the living room now.”

  “Get out,” he said.

  “It’s my house, I won’t.”

  “Get out, Ellie. I’m sending police.”

  Contrariness kicked in.

  “It could be Aidan,” I suggested, not believing it for a second.

  “Get out. Aidan wouldn’t sneak in, he’d yell out.”

  Would he? What if my dear brother was sneaking around looking for poems for another surprise poetry book? I considered that a possibility and therefore he deserved to be found by police.

  I took a breath and crept into the hall. I had an urge to close my eyes and run for the front door. I didn’t.

  The door was shut. I shoved my gun into my holster and held the phone in my mouth. I needed two hands for the door: one to turn the handle and one to hold the edge of the frame so I could get my weight behind a decent lift-and-pull maneuver. The door had a habit of sticking. Mac never got around to fixing it.

  Whoever opened the door, didn’t know it would stick. That explained the bang as it flew open. I sighed as I closed it behind me. It wasn’t Aidan. He knew about the door and complained about it often.

  With the phone to my ear, I hurried behind Mac’s truck. From there I could get into the garage if the need arose. I could also see out to the street. My car was behind Mac’s truck. The keys were in the office. Spare keys for Mac’s truck were in the garage but there wasn’t enough room to maneuver with my car and the house so close.

  “Police?”

  “On their way, Chicky. What can you see?”

  “No car. It’s probably parked farther up the road. Can’t see anything inside the house.”

  “Keep your head down,” Lee said.

  I could hear traffic noise and a siren over the phone. “Who’s coming?”

  “Fairfax PD.”

  “Can you get hold of the attending officers?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “No lights and no sirens. I want this person caught without any fuss.” Of more importance, I didn’t want the person to escape.

  “You got it.” The noise over the phone stopped.

  “You close enough to turn the noise off?” I asked. Thinking he was making incredible time.

  “No, but traffic is lighter than usual, have my flashers on and people are getting out of my way for a change.”

  In the distance, I heard sirens and hoped they weren’t heading for me.

  He used the radio in the car to call the PD dispatch and relay my request. The sirens stopped. Guess that meant they were heading for me and had received the message.

  My attention returned to the house. Something fluttered or shimmered near a back window.

  “Unsub has moved to the kitchen.”

  “Line of vision?”

  “Not close enough to the window for a good view of the driveway area.”

  “Head down, Chicky.”

  “I’ll keep it firmly attached to my shoulders. I’m hanging up and going for a look.”

  “Bad idea!”

  I hung up.

  I could g
o to the kitchen window and look in. I put the phone down on the ground by the truck so it wouldn’t ring and give me away, then snuck toward the garden that ran under the window along the back of the house to the kitchen. I saw a shape in the kitchen. I stood up for a better view and watched someone riffling through my drawers. Why would anyone go through kitchen drawers?

  Is that how so many teaspoons disappear? Are they stolen?

  Furious almost covered how I felt. I spied a bag on the kitchen table. That could’ve been what I heard drop onto the floor. There I stood, staring straight into my own kitchen watching some moron go through my stuff and he didn’t even know I was there. I could just make out the sound of cars stopping quickly out on the road.

  I pulled my gun from my waistband, held up my badge to the window and knocked with the barrel of my Glock. The guy jumped about four feet in the air. He grabbed the bag and took off. My guess was for the front door. The slow crunch of footsteps approached from the driveway. I shoved the gun back into its holster and crept toward the front door. I wanted to see his face when he found the cops waiting.

  He hauled ass out my door, right into the path of four uniformed police. I made my presence known with an amused cough. A tall blond officer pushed a young man to the ground and cuffed him. Another officer stepped up. He looked at me with a huge grin plastered across the faded summer tan on his face.

  “Agent Conway,” said the familiar officer.

  “What are the chances of you turning up on my call out, Josh?” I replied with a smile.

  “Heard you were working the Butterfly Murders case again. I hope you get him.”

  “Me too,” I replied. I hadn’t seen Josh since Mac’s death. Josh was inside the crime scene that night with Sam, Misha, Lee and me. “Find out what that little prick was doing in my house and on my computer. Don’t let him out on bail. FBI will pick him up when you’re done with your interrogation.”

  He was now a loose end. We knew what happened to loose ends: they tended to die unpleasantly.

  “Will do.”

  I poked the man on the ground with the toe of my boot. “What’s your name?”

  He turned his head against the roughcast of the driveway; a bloodshot eye looked up at me. “Malcolm Crowe,” he said.

  A penny dropped. That name I did know.