by Janet Dailey
Kenzie looked at the bed, frowning. “Okay. I guess I could lie down and look at the ceiling.”
“Good enough. And hey, don’t forget to call Mike Warren in the morning.”
Turning her back to him, she scrambled onto the bed without pulling down the coverlet and stretched out, her feet on the pillows and her dark hair streaming over the end. Linc knew when he was being ignored.
“Kenz, you should stay on track with the investigation.”
“I didn’t know there was one,” she said to the overhead light fixture.
He rolled his eyes, glad she couldn’t see him. “There is. That’s why a police lieutenant was assigned to the case.”
“Hmph.”
Linc returned his attention to the pearly laptop, clicking around. What he needed to do would take a while.
Kenzie didn’t make a sound.
After a solid forty-five minutes of following faint, very faint tracks buried deep in the drive, he rubbed his eyes and turned around again.
She had curled up in the middle of the bed, her head resting on her bent arm. Out cold. It would do her good.
He had to wonder why she was so eager to connect with the medic concerning Frank Branigan. He knew Kenzie had never dated the man, but the strength of her reaction and the way she clammed up about it made Linc think something similar had happened to her.
Kenzie had been stationed overseas for two years. A beautiful girl like her must have gotten a lot of attention. And she worked closely with the soldiers she trained as dog handlers. Maybe one she’d loved hadn’t come back.
He put that on the list of questions he wasn’t going to ask. If she wanted to tell him, she would. In her own sweet time.
Hours later, Linc was still at it. An indeterminate light filtered through a gap in the curtains, making him look up. Almost dawn. He went back to what he was doing.
He’d taken a break from his poking around to copy every single photo onto CDs for Mrs. Corelli and Kenzie. A couple of them made him chuckle, forgetting she was asleep so close to him. The sound woke her up. She came over for a look at the laptop.
He clicked on slideshow, the fastest way to display them.
Some of the photos brought a wistful smile to her lips. “Thanks, Linc. It’s nice to see them all again.”
“You’re welcome.”
She straightened and turned toward the bed.
“Wait. I had a question,” he said. “Do you want me to include one of Frank Branigan?”
Kenzie dragged a hand through her tangled hair and thought it over. “Yes.”
“Will do.”
She took a circuitous route around his stuff and her overnight bag on the floor and climbed back into the bed. This time she got under the covers.
He added a photo of the smiling soldier that he’d held back. Kenzie was right to include it. Frank was part of Christine’s life. The visual memory therapy made intuitive sense.
He’d heard that musical memory was even more powerful. Once Kenzie was asleep again, Linc went ahead and copied all of Christine’s music files, adding a separate list of titles by track.
Then he poked around in the laptop’s operating system for a while, examining apps and things like that. No alarm bells rang. But deeper down, there were blind alleys in the coding that didn’t belong there, not in this make and model of laptop. If he had to guess, he’d say they’d been deliberately created and left open for someone to wander into, just for the hell of it.
Traps. He stayed out of them, not wanting to trigger a total patty melt that would destroy the hard drive.
There were signs that everything on it had been copied. Recently. Cleverly hidden malware he could have found but didn’t want to deactivate just yet.
Christine could have downloaded it inadvertently or it could have been added. He wasn’t going to blast it out. Not if he could use it as a tracer somehow.
Cat and mouse. Back and forth.
There was no doubt in his mind that the stalker was viewing whatever he saw, simultaneously.
Linc leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. Then he picked up the laptop and turned it over, looking carefully at the thin plastic feet attached to the bottom of the case. He tested each, not surprised when one of the four gave slightly in his grip.
He used his car keys to pry it loose.
Interesting. It held a microtransmitter, not a type he’d seen before. It probably sensed electronic pulses from tapped keys. Had to be GPS enabled.
Linc pressed the plastic foot back into place. He wouldn’t mind if the stalker paid him a personal visit. Kenzie wasn’t going to be here after tonight.
CHAPTER 6
“You swear not to tell the cops everything?”
Kenzie and Linc were polishing off a fast breakfast in a room off the lobby. It was the usual setup for a budget motel: watery coffee from a large urn, powdered creamer in a jar. Do-it-yourself waffles. He dragged his last bite through the syrup on his paper plate and forked it into his mouth. The waffles were actually okay, considering the wafflemaker had an inch-thick crust of fossilized batter on it.
“Hadn’t planned to,” he said thickly.
“I just want to hear what Mike Warren has to say first. Then you and I can talk it over, see if what they say connects with what we know—”
“Damn little, so far.” He hadn’t told her about the blind alleys hidden in the laptop’s code. Too hard to explain.
The microtransmitter, she knew about. She was fine with the photo CDs—they held everything Mrs. Corelli wanted to use. The music files were a nice bonus.
“You finished?” she asked, licking a drop of syrup from the corner of her pretty mouth.
Weary as he was, he smiled at the sight. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
Kenzie stayed a few feet ahead of Linc, walking with the lieutenant.
“The insurance adjuster contacted me,” she was saying. “The company is sending a check for the replacement value of the car, and another for Christine’s medical expenses so far. And they’re covering a rental for me for the next few weeks.”
“Good. Glad to hear it,” the lieutenant said.
They came to the car, which Linc noticed had been moved to a different spot and cordoned off.
The other man gestured toward the wreck. “Here it is and here it stays. Not going to the scrapyard, in case you were wondering.”
Linc was still several steps behind as they surveyed the black-and-yellow wreck for a few moments.
“I completed a preliminary examination of the car,” the lieutenant said. “That is, what’s left of it. Your friend was lucky, very lucky. In a strange sort of way,” he added awkwardly, seeing Kenzie flinch.
Linc caught up with them.
“Hi there. I’m Mike Warren. Didn’t mean to ignore you.” The officer extended a hand as Kenzie moved aside. He seemed to assume they were a couple. She’d been too preoccupied to introduce them and shot Linc a look of wordless apology.
“Linc.” He left off his last name on purpose. “Nice to meet you.”
They shook hands. Mike Warren struck him as capable and intelligent at first glance. He was older, with steel-gray, close-cropped hair and blue eyes that didn’t miss much.
“Okay. Let’s get a better look at the vehicle, you two. I’ll explain as I go. If you have any questions, just ask.” He squatted by the wrecked car. “We look at the obvious things first. See the long dent on the driver’s side?”
“Yes,” Kenzie answered flatly. Linc sensed what she didn’t want to say out loud. Tell me something I don’t know, Lieutenant.
“That’s a sideswipe. Now, that could have been an accident, but this one was a hit-and-run. If we can catch the driver, he or she will be charged for leaving the scene.”
“And what if it wasn’t an accident?” Linc asked.
“Off the record, someone may have tried to run Christine Corelli off the highway.”
“Road rage?” Linc posed an obvious question.
; “Maybe. Or something else. Let’s say that he—for now I’ll assume the other driver was male—spotted her at the wheel and deliberately caused an accident.”
“Why?” Kenzie asked.
“To force her out of her car. A woman on a lonely stretch of road at night is an easy target. But these guys can be brazen. We’ve had victims taken from mall parking lots in broad daylight. A staged bump, an argument, and it only gets worse from there.”
Linc and Kenzie exchanged a look. “Go on,” she murmured.
“Getting back to Christine, we figured she couldn’t call for help—there was no cell phone in the car or at the scene. We searched twice. Once on the day of the accident and once the day after.”
“With the rollover and the crash impact, it could have landed away from the car,” Kenzie said.
“True. I plan to send a couple of officers back, maybe go myself. Third time’s the charm sometimes.”
Linc knew that Kenzie had found the cell phone in Christine’s apartment, but it wouldn’t hurt if the police kept looking. There could be other clues awaiting discovery.
“Fortunately, the young lady had the presence of mind to trigger the GPS emergency alert in the car just before the crash. That’s how the EMTs and the patrol cars got there so fast. I checked the reports and arrival times.”
“No one’s come forward?” Kenzie asked. “No witnesses?”
“None, sorry to say,” the lieutenant cut in. “Outside of the TV crew, there was no one but us at the site until the rubberneckers showed up.”
“How can you be so sure of that?” Linc asked.
The officer cleared his throat. “Okay, maybe not a hundred percent sure. But our cars got there first, plus first responders from other towns, in what, seconds? Then the TV crew. Damn reporters are all over our radio frequency. Sometimes I think they hack into our computers too.”
“Anything for a headline,” Linc said.
“Yeah, that’s right. You in the media?” Mike Warren asked him.
“No. I have a couple of friends who are, that’s all.”
“Oh. Well, maybe you noticed that the story got dropped pretty quick. Not exciting enough, I guess.”
Linc heard Kenzie draw in her breath. In control. She generally was. You had to know her to see her vulnerable points. He was getting a little better at it.
The lieutenant looked sideways at Kenzie. “I did have a couple of questions for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did Christine ever mention someone bothering her, being followed or harassed, anything like that?”
“No. Never. And we talked almost every day, saw each other often.”
“How about an ex-boyfriend?”
“She was on good terms with him—his name’s Geoff Chase. The others too. Not that there were that many,” she added.
“Jealous pal?”
Kenzie shook her head. “Everybody really liked Christine.”
“Any problems with male or female coworkers?”
“Not so far as I know,” Kenzie said thoughtfully.
“That brings me to another thing,” the lieutenant said. “We found her wallet, but there was no company ID in it or business cards. Just her driver’s license, cash, and a couple of credit cards.”
That was an interesting detail. Linc filed it away.
“I can tell you why. She had this funny little ritual,” Kenzie said. “She would take stuff like that out of her wallet on Friday and put it back in on Monday. She used to say that the company didn’t own her on weekends.”
“What company was that again?” the lieutenant asked.
As if he didn’t know. Mike Warren was playing by the rules of official question-asking.
“SKC. She was an administrative assistant,” Kenzie said.
“Oh, right. The big military supplier.”
“That’s the one. Could we get back to the accident?” she asked.
The lieutenant didn’t seem to notice who was directing the conversation. “Sure. Where were we?”
“Was it random or planned?” Linc said.
“Right.” Mike Warren studied the wrecked car for a few more moments. “Honestly, at this point it’s impossible to say with absolute certainty. Keep in mind that the evidence hasn’t been analyzed.”
The equivocal reply seemed to irritate Kenzie, Linc noticed.
“However, if I had to call it, and believe me, we’re weeks away from doing that”—he straightened and stood by the wreck—“I’d categorize it as an attack.”
“Why?” Linc asked.
“Similar cases, no survivors,” the lieutenant said simply. “We know what to look for. If that’s what happened, the charge will be vehicular assault with deadly intent.”
The lieutenant didn’t add anything to that. He surveyed the car again and shook his head.
“Well, that about wraps it up for today. We’re definitely on it,” the police lieutenant assured her. “I’m coordinating the case.”
She looked at her car.
“We’re starting with the wreck. There are paint flakes all over that scrape and a whole bunch of dings. Sometimes we can match those to a particular finish or type of trim. Just so you know, we’ve got a couple of officers checking repair places and junkyards. That kind of grunt work often pays off.”
“Any tips come in?” Linc asked before he remembered that Kenzie had ventured essentially the same question.
“Not yet. Keep in mind that finding solid clues and following up on leads could take weeks.”
He hesitated, looking at Kenzie for a long moment, then spoke again.
“There were no witnesses that we know of, unless someone comes forward. And the victim—your friend, I mean—isn’t able to help us.”
Kenzie seemed lost in thought. “No. I saw her yesterday.”
“We’ll be talking with her parents at some point,” the lieutenant said. “And some of her colleagues, of course. Anything you think of, just shoot me an e-mail or call. Everything helps to fill in the picture. We don’t expect civilians to get into the nuts-and-bolts investigative stuff. That’s ours.”
“Right,” Linc said noncommittally.
“Guess that it’s for today.” He addressed his next words to Kenzie. “Thanks for coming in. And please let me know if you or your friends think of other names. We have your contact info on file—and here’s mine.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card, handing it to Kenzie. “Nice to meet you both.”
“Thanks.” Linc said the one word for both of them. He put an arm around her shoulders and walked her away.
Kenzie shrugged off his light hold when they reached the impound parking lot.
“He didn’t tell us anything.”
“Don’t assume that he has to,” Linc replied. “It’s an active investigation now. He seemed like he was on the level to me.”
Kenzie picked up her pace. He lengthened his strides to stay at her side. He heard her cell phone ring and wondered who it was this time. She didn’t dodge the call.
“It’s Donna,” she said, tapping the screen to pick up the forwarded e-mail. She turned the phone away from the sun’s glare and read it. “Okay. She says Randy Holt was on that medevac. So he’s confirmed as a good guy.”
Kenzie was on her way to deliver Christine’s insurance paperwork to SKC. She could have just mailed it, but she wanted to be sure it was with someone she could call, not lost in one of many mailrooms. The company was huge.
Linc had insisted on sweeping her car for bugs and other hidden things before they left the motel for the impound lot, using a radio-wave interceptor that looked like a glow-stick without the glow. His invention, of course.
Give her a smart dog any day.
But it was nice of him. He hadn’t found anything and seemed surprised. Which didn’t mean the stalker wouldn’t try to plant a bug some other time, who knew when. Still, when Linc was around, Kenzie had to admit she felt a little safer.
Maybe Linc was ev
erything she needed right now. She smiled to herself. He still got under her skin. In a good way. She had to admit it, if only to herself. Kenzie knew a good man when she saw one.
As far as what had happened two years ago—she couldn’t live in the past. Not with Linc doing everything he could for her in the present.
She pushed her sunglasses up higher on her nose and turned off at the ramp. A windowless gray block, SKC headquarters came into sight over the top of distant trees. Even from here, it seemed immense, towering over the forested land that surrounded it.
Closer, she couldn’t see where the complex ended, catching glimpses of many similar buildings from the road, clustered around the tower.
Kenzie almost drove past the guarded entrance. She hadn’t made an appointment.
She pulled to an abrupt stop just before the guard station. Quickly, she flipped down the driver’s side sun visor and ruffled up her hair in the mirror and bit at her lips to plump them. Confused and pretty—she could play that. All the guard had to do was call Melvin Brody’s office and get her a pass.
He leaned out of the guard post as she approached, waving at her to stop before a striped bar swung into action. She came to a halt with the bar down across the hood of her car.
“Oh my gosh. I am so sorry,” she squealed. “I didn’t see that thing.”
“Back up.”
“Of course.” She put the car in reverse and rolled it back a foot or two.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes. With Melvin Brody.”
The guard checked a small handheld. “You’re not on the list.”
“I should be,” she said anxiously. “Could you call his office, please?”
“Just a minute.” He seemed to be listening to someone on his earphone. “Can I see some ID?”
She moved the gearshift to park and scrabbled around in her purse, making him wait while she pretended not to find it at first. “Here it is!” she crowed, handing over her driver’s license.
The guard went back into the post with it while Kenzie stared straight into the surveillance camera. She uncapped her lip gloss and used the driver’s side mirror to apply it.
