Strings of Fate (Mistresses of Fate)

by Dore, Deirdre

  Chris was about to get huffy about the “ignorant” comment when his insinuation hit. “Helping him? How?”

  The two Feds looked at each other, frustration coloring their expressions. “You’re creating him.”

  9

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, I’m creating him?”

  Helmer scowled. “Those are his words.”

  “Whose?”

  “The unsub’s.”

  “You’re in contact with him?”

  “Not directly. We believe he’s been posting messages on a blog called The Mysteries of Fate. Have you heard of it?”

  Disgust tugged down the corners of Christina’s mouth. She’d heard of it. Boy, had she heard of it. Ten years ago, when TV shows about witches and vampires and the undead had just started to become popular, an ex-stockbroker named George Mills had retired to Fate and started a website about the local legends, including the witches, the crop circles, the ghosts, the unexplained deaths of an entire family in 1926, the Cherokee legends, the Civil War stories, and the unexplained missing. He called himself FateFriend101. Give me a break, she thought sourly.

  Chris didn’t actually have a problem with stories about the town legends; she did have a problem with George Mills, who was not a big believer in fact-checking. He’d been the one to name Chris, Tavey, and Raquel the “Mistresses of Fate” for their mission to find the missing, and he tried to interview her about Summer every year, even indicating that the reason she didn’t want to talk was because she’d killed Summer herself. Still, he was slightly famous. His stepson, Brent Burns, was an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, and actually seemed to have some affection for the old turd, mentioning that his stepfather’s obsession with local legends was what led him into filmmaking. So the blog drew tourists, which drew money, which kept everyone in their tiny town employed, even the farmers, who had taken to selling their goods at a farmers’ market in the main circle every weekend.

  Chris didn’t understand why a serial killer would post to the site, though. There were certainly more direct ways to get a point across. She knew that not all serial killers were the antisocial freaks portrayed in movies, but many were attention-seeking egomaniacs. So why post messages about insane proclivities on a random blog about the town? Had he even killed anyone from Fate? Chris was sure she would have heard of it if he had. Their town had maybe three thousand people in it on a regular basis. So why Fate? Why her, for that matter? Chris was pretty disappointed in the Feds, if they believed a serial killer over her. She’d been helping them catch predators and recover missing children for years. Why would she be involved with a serial killer?

  Agent Helmer—he was definitely Agent Helmer now and not Ryan, even though he was kind of hot—stopped pacing and loomed over her. Chris tugged her knee a little tighter to her chest. His eyes were a little wild and he seemed pretty riled up for a seasoned FBI agent; you had to be careful of the crazy ones, you never knew when they were going to do something nuts, like accuse you of being involved with serial killers.

  “Ms. Pascal”—he seemed to be struggling for patience—“we’ve been tracking this unsub throughout several counties in northwest Georgia, gathering evidence from various local agencies.”

  “Which there isn’t much of,” Agent Midaugh chimed in.

  Agent Helmer glared at him. “We received a tip that you may be involved. On further investigation, we discovered that each of the identities that he’s used to contact his victims was initially created by a computer at this address.”

  “What?”

  Chris had another one of those weird-out moments, focusing on the hard muscles of his forearms, which seemed amazingly defined, but in a way that looked effortless. He was like an oak tree, strong by inherent design rather than intense concentration. The reddish hair that covered his skin sparkled like copper stars.

  “I said, he’s using the personas that you’ve created.” His voice had gentled just a little, and he squatted down. He looked like someone who should be wearing construction worker boots or mountain climbing gear, not your standard FBI suit.

  “That’s impossible,” Chris protested, but her body certainly seemed to believe him—she felt her blood pressure drop and little black fuzzies gather at the corners of her eyes. She immediately bent over and put her head between her knees. Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. She’d helped that motherfucker kill people. She felt like throwing up.

  Agent Helmer, Ryan, was touching her shoulder. “Ms. Pascal, are you okay? Or is this another yoga move?”

  “Fuck off,” she muttered through clenched teeth, and he stopped touching her.

  After a few calming breaths—which actually worked, yoga wasn’t just a bunch of bullshit—she straightened.

  “Okay, so why are you guys talking to me here? Shouldn’t I be in a small dark room with one of those mirrors?”

  The two agents looked at each other, but Agent Midaugh explained, “The investigator in charge of Cherokee County’s Criminal Investigation Division, Tyler Downs, mentioned that he knew you and gave us some insight into your reputation.”

  Chris nodded; Tyler had gone to high school with her. She was surprised he hadn’t volunteered to come along. Actually, on second thought, she wasn’t. Tyler was Tavey’s archnemesis—so he avoided all three of the women on principle. It was a pity, actually. Tyler was hot, too.

  “Okay. Fine. I’m telling you that I am not helping a serial killer, not on purpose, anyway, and if you need to take my computers or see what I’m doing, that’s fine. I’m perfectly okay with it.”

  The two agents looked taken aback. Chris supposed suspects weren’t generally that accommodating.

  Agent Midaugh nodded. “That would be helpful, Ms. Pascal.”

  “All right, then,” Chris agreed, and stood abruptly, nearly bumping heads with Agent Stick-Up-His-Ass—his new name—and he reached out and caught her arm, steadying her. She wished he hadn’t done that. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been touched by a man, and his strong hands made her skin tingle at the contact. He smelled good, too—like the woods in the summer or something.

  “Follow me, boys.” She marched through the living room, past the bathroom door, and down the hall into her bedroom.

  She opened the door and gestured them inside.

  “Damn.” Agent Helmer stopped abruptly on the way in.

  She knew what he was seeing: the wall in her bedroom dedicated to the missing. Heavy-duty plastic folding tables were lined up along one side and covered with monitors and stacks of papers. Corkboard tiles pinned with pictures of missing children papered the walls above, including the picture of Summer.

  Chris’s messy twin bed, her quilt trailing on the floor, was shoved against the adjacent wall, along with a dresser. More gauzy lace curtains framed a window above her bed, the sill lined with small rocks in various shapes and colors. To the right, just inside the door, a window looked out at the wrought-iron staircase that led down to the street.

  They were thinking that she was more than a little crazy, Chris supposed, and they’d be right.

  Chris moved past them and leaned over her desk to wiggle her mouse. The computer monitors came to life, each showing something different. On one, she was building an online profile of a man named Dylan Fennick; he was going to be the boyfriend of a divorcée in Miami named Laurie Bonds, who wanted a sexy boyfriend for her high school reunion. On another, she had the computer searching and compiling references from social media for Lobelia Curso; on yet another, she had six different Facebook pages running; and there was a monitor featuring the Martin Hays case, and so on. Her world, other than the yoga studio, consisted of this tiny room and these large screens.

  Christina waved a hand at the machines. “Here you go. Look away.”

  “Our plan was to take it with us and give it to our Cyber Crimes Division.” Agent Midaugh put his thumbs in the loops of his
belt, making his jacket flare outward around a substantial stomach.

  Chris looked doubtfully at the assortment of computers. “ ‘It’?”

  “We thought you had a single laptop or something.”

  Chris looked at him like he was an idiot. “Look, I can give you all my sites, my passwords”—she waved a hand to indicate et cetera—“but it’s gonna take someone who knows computers to prove I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “We have someone on the way,” said Agent Helmer, who seemed uncomfortable in the small room, looking at the furniture as if he might break something. “He’s one of our Cyber Crimes agents.”

  “Great. When is he getting here?”

  Agent Midaugh held up his phone. “He should be here soon.”

  “Awesome.”

  “In the meantime, why don’t we go back in the living room and talk for a bit?” Helmer was trying for conciliatory, but he managed to make it sound like he was reasoning with a four-year-old and expected a tantrum at any moment.

  Chris rolled her eyes as she led the way out of her bedroom. Yeah, they were all going to sit down for a nice chat—that was it.

  Once they’d all resumed their places, Agent Helmer leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. Outside the window, evening had settled, and Chris absently noticed that the old-fashioned streetlights in the circle had come on.

  “Can you turn on the lamp?” she suggested to Agent Midaugh, indicating the old-fashioned lamp with a tasseled shade.

  He pulled the little chain and a warm golden light filled the living room and made her feel better, at least until Agent Helmer began talking again.

  “So, what you’re saying, Ms. Pascal, is that you haven’t had any contact with the unsub.”

  “No, I’m saying that to my knowledge I’ve had no contact with a serial killer.”

  “Not to your knowledge.”

  “Yeah, not to my knowledge. People contact me all the time through my website. I create online identities for people. You want people to think you’re dating a supermodel? Fine. I take faces from the Internet, mash them together, a nose here, an eyebrow there, and presto, a girlfriend to make your ex jealous. I run a background check on everyone who submits a request, but it’s just a standard check.”

  “Not many people can want this.”

  Chris shrugged, digging her bare feet into the faded Persian rug her father’s assistant had rescued from the auction. “You’d be surprised.”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t.” He sounded a little disgusted. Agent Midaugh just looked resigned.

  “So, if you tracked the identities the man was using back to me, he must be communicating with these women through, what? Email? Dating sites? Chatrooms?”

  “We’re not at liberty to share that information with—” Agent Helmer began, but Midaugh forestalled him by holding up a hand.

  The younger man subsided, but he was clearly displeased.

  “We’ve already told you too much, Ms. Pascal,” Midaugh insisted. “If you weren’t known to the FBI, based on the information we’ve discovered . . . well, let’s just say we probably wouldn’t be sitting on your couch having this chat.”

  “Hmm.” Christina pulled her legs close to her body and wrapped her arms around them. “So, clearly he knows me. Knows who I am.”

  “He doesn’t seem to be threatening you directly, Ms. Pascal,” Helmer muttered.

  “And yet there are two Feds in my house.” Chris chewed on her lower lip, thinking about it. She stood abruptly. “I need some wine.” She’d left it in the kitchen. “You two?”

  “No, we’re—”

  Christina waved him off. “On duty. I get it. Coffee, then? In the movies, the popo are always drinking coffee.”

  “The ‘popo’?” Helmer looked incredulous.

  Chris rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You want coffee or not?”

  “I’d love some.” Midaugh nodded. “Sugar and cream, if you’ve got it.”

  “Yeah, sure. You want anything, Agent Helmer?” she taunted, leveling her gold cat eyes on him. He looked up and met her gaze.

  In that moment when their eyes caught—gold to gray—she realized, absurdly, that there was something fundamentally appealing about his face—so rough-hewn and friendly. She felt as if she’d touched his face before. Weird. She didn’t even like him. For a moment it seemed that he also felt the strange connection, maybe uncomfortably so, because his response, when it came, was a terse, “Black. Thanks.”

  Chris pressed her lips together like she was about to whistle, making her way back into the kitchen. She wrinkled her nose at the smell, which was truly horrific, and pulled her Mr. Coffee out of hiding.

  She blew some dust off it. She tended to drink green tea when she was home, and coffee from the café on the other side of the circle when she went for a run in the mornings. Her Mr. Coffee was a bit neglected, to say the least.

  She located a tin of Folgers that didn’t look too stale and used a paper towel as a filter.

  She hummed a Portishead song, “Wandering Star,” while she made the coffee. If it weren’t for the two FBI agents sitting in her living room, she could almost believe that it was just a lovely fall evening, with a slight breeze floating in from the window and the cheerful sounds of people eating at the Alcove.

  While she was pouring herself more wine she heard a knock at her door, but Helmer called to her, “It’s our man. I’ll get it.”

  Chris mentally shrugged and inhaled the enticing scent of coffee. She sipped her wine, one hip propped against the counter, her right foot resting on her left shinbone.

  She heard the door open and the quiet thrum of male voices.

  “Ms. Pascal, this is Agent Sandeep Patel with our Cyber Crimes Division at the Atlanta Field Office,” Helmer said, introducing him from the living room, but the man came forward, carrying a case and a coat folded over his forearm. He was a short, brown-skinned man with a pleasant face and glasses. He smiled at her and held out his free hand. “Ms. Pascal, a pleasure to meet you.”

  Chris smiled and shook his hand in return. “The pleasure’s mine, Mr. Patel. I take it you’re here to look at my computers?” Like he was a member of the Geek Squad, armed with antivirus software and extra copies of Office 2013.

  “I am, yes.”

  “Great. Would you like some coffee?”

  “I would, with sugar and cream.”

  Chris nodded. “Two sugars and creams, one black.” She saluted Helmer, just because he seemed like he wanted to be saluted, but oops, no, he looked irritated again. She shook her head, setting down her wine and hunting in the cabinet above her head for enough coffee cups to go around.

  In the end, she found two mugs and a teacup with dainty red roses lined with gold leaf. She kept that cup black and poured sugar and cream in the other two. She hoped they’d meant a lot of sugar and cream, because if you asked her, there couldn’t be too much—that’s why she never made her own coffee.

  She put everything on a plastic tray with little dog bones on it. She was sure it was meant to be a dog bowl tray, but what the hell, it worked. She added her wine, hoping she didn’t spill it along the way, and carefully walked back toward her bedroom, where she figured the menfolk were busy invading her privacy.

  They were, all three of them crowded around her monitors, Agent Patel in the center clicking away like the expert he obviously was.

  “All right, boys, coffee’s here.” She set the tray down on her dresser, picking up the mug she’d designated as Mr. Patel’s and delivering it to him, while the other two men went to her dresser, clearing some room next to the computers for their cups.

  “Agent Patel.” Chris set the mug on an empty space between all the papers. “Your coffee.”

  He looked up at her as if she’d appeared suddenly out of the woodwork, the screens reflected in his glasses.


  “I haven’t really touched anything, Ms. Pascal. Can you show me how everything is organized?”

  Chris complied, showing him her various websites, as well as the search programs she had running for the signs of the missing.

  “You maintain all this?” He sounded impressed.

  Chris sipped her wine, letting her gaze roll over the various screens, searching, ever searching. She’d become a watcher, she realized. At some point, she’d stopped looking for her own life and started looking for theirs.

  “Yep. I can walk you through everything.”

  “Call me Sandeep, miss.” He handed her the mouse.

  “And I’m Chris.” She turned and looked over her shoulder at the other two agents. “There are some folding chairs in my yoga studio downstairs. In the closet next to the bathroom. The keys are on the little table by the door.”

  Agent Midaugh nodded. “All right. I’ll get them. Helmer, why don’t you stay here?”

  “Yeah, Helmer, stay here and make sure I don’t do anything naughty.” She didn’t look at him when she made that comment, her attention on the screens, but she could see his reflection. He looked . . . displeased. Good. That’s what she’d been going for, although she usually reserved this level of aggressive aggravation for her father, the librarian (Mrs. Cooley), and the Triplets’ Aunt Jane. The only thing those three people had in common was their unquestioning disapproval of everything about her.

  10

  RYAN FOUND HIMSELF looking over his shoulder toward the living room more frequently than necessary. For whatever reason, he couldn’t quite get her out of his head. She was different than he’d expected. He’d expected her to be a little bizarre, and she was—she jumped around like a damn June bug, she was distracted as easily as his four-year-old niece, and she seemed to like antagonizing him—but damn, there was something about her. Something about those big gold eyes and curly brown hair.