by Sandra Brown
“A bribed hacker won’t care what my interest is.”
“A bribed hacker won’t blink over taking your money, then—”
“Stabbing you in the back with it,” Gif chimed in.
“Your hacker would get the man in South Carolina on the phone and tell him there’s a guy in far-off Lexington, Kentucky, who’s spying on him.”
Gif picked up. “For more coin than you’re paying him, the hacker would sell you out.”
“Then it would be you, Special Agent Easton,” Mike continued, jabbing a stubby index finger at him, “who would be spied on, caught committing God knows how many violations and crimes, civil and criminal, and that would squash this and any future chance you might have to finally nail this son of a bitch, which has been your main mission in life.” He wheezed a deep breath. “Tell us we’re wrong.”
Drex sat down on the end of the bed, propped his forearms on his thighs, and dropped his head forward. After a moment, he looked up. “Okay. No hacker. I’ll moderate my approach. Satisfied?”
The other two exchanged a look. Gif said, “Exercise a little caution, some discretion.”
“Don’t go off half-cocked,” Mike said.
Gif added, “That’s all we’re saying.”
Drex placed his hand over his heart. “I’ll be cautious, discreet, and fully cocked. Okay?”
Neither approved of that last bit, and they didn’t look wholly convinced of his sincerity, but Mike said, “Okay. Next question?”
“Do you have a picture of him?”
“Only the one on his driver’s license.”
“And?”
“Looks nothing like he did the last time he surfaced.”
“Key West,” Gif reminded them, although they didn’t need reminding.
“You’d never know it’s the same man,” Mike said. “Which means I could be dead wrong about this fella.”
“If he is,” Gif said, “but you rush in hell-bent and create havoc in this guy’s life, you’ll land yourself in a world of hurt. Especially if Rudkowski were to get wind of it.”
“Rudkowski can go fuck himself.”
“Rumor is, he’s tried, but can’t quite figure out how to go about it.”
Gif’s quip got a rare snort of humor out of Mike and a reluctant grin from Drex. Gif was good at defusing a tense situation. Of average height and weight, with thinning brown hair, and not a single feature that was distinguishing, Gif’s averageness was his camouflage. He could observe others unnoticed and unremembered, which made him a valuable asset to the team. He was also a reliable predictor of human behavior, as he’d just demonstrated.
Drex’s impulse had been to rush in hell-bent and create havoc.
Needing a moment to collect his thoughts, he motioned toward the minibar. “Help yourselves.” He stood up and began pacing in the limited space between the bed and the window.
Mike and Gif made their selections and popped the tops off soda cans. Mike complained that he needed a crowbar to get the lid off the jar of mixed nuts. Gif offered to give it a try. Mike scoffed at that and called him a weakling.
Drex tuned out their bickering and focused his thoughts on his quarry, a man he first knew as Weston Graham, although that could be just another of his many aliases. Having eluded the authorities for decades, he could have turned up enjoying a Frosty at the Wendy’s across the freeway or burning incense in a monastery in the Himalayas, and neither would have surprised Drex.
He was a chameleon, exceptionally good at altering his appearance and adapting to his environment. Among the ones in which he’d lived comfortably and without arousing suspicion were a penthouse on Chicago’s Gold Coast, a horse ranch outside of Santa Barbara, and a yacht moored in Key West. Other locales that he had oozed his way through—those that Drex knew of—weren’t that ritzy. They hadn’t had to be. All had been extremely profitable for him.
When his cohorts had resettled, Drex asked, “What put you onto the guy in South Carolina?”
“I run my trot lines continually, but what finally tipped me?” Mike said around a burp. “An online dating service. Figuring he vets his victims somehow, I troll those services periodically just to see if something clicks. Day before yesterday, I came across a profile that did. The wording of it jostled my memory. Felt like I’d read it before.
“Took me a while to find it, but there it was. Except for the physical description of himself, it was word for word, comma for comma, identical to this most recent one. Likes, dislikes, five-year goals, philosophy of life and love. All that bullcrap. But the kicker? It was posted six months before Pixie went missing.”
Patricia Montgomery, known as Pixie to her friends, had vanished from her Tulsa mansion, never to be seen again.
“Coincidence, Mike,” Drex said. “Acquaintances of Pixie’s who were interviewed swore that she never would have used a dating service to meet men.”
“The acquaintances of all the missing ladies have sworn that. They’ve also sworn their friend was too savvy to be taken in by a con man. But Pixie disappeared within days of selling her stocks and emptying her bank accounts of her oil fortune.”
Gif said, “The only thing missing from her home was her PC. Her seducer left behind tens of thousands of dollars in jewelry and furs but took an outdated computer.”
“So there wouldn’t be evidence of an online flirtation,” Mike said. The leather seat beneath him groaned as he leaned forward to take the near-empty jar of nuts from Gif. “You’re frowning,” he said to Drex.
“I want to be excited, but this is awfully thin.”
“You’re right. Thin as onionskin. So I went back to his victim after Pixie. At least the one we suspect to have been his victim.”
“Marian Harris. Key West.”
“Eight months before her disappearance, the same damn profile was posted. Different dating service, but one that also caters to ‘mature’ clients with ‘discriminating tastes.’”
“Word for word?” Drex asked.
“Like a fingerprint.”
“Bad joke,” Gif said.
The man they sought had never left a fingerprint. Or if he had, no one had found it. Freakin’ Ted Bundy.
Mike shook the last of the nuts straight from the jar into his mouth. “Pittsburgh didn’t take him as long,” he said as he noshed. “He solicited ‘companionship’ with ‘a refined lady’ only three months before Loretta Doan’s disappearance, more than six years ago.”
“Are all the services you scanned nationwide?”
“Yes. Relocation isn’t a deterrent to him. I think the asshole likes the changes of scenery.”
“When was this most recent profile put out there?”
“Couple of months back.”
Drex grimaced. “He’s looking for his next lady.”
“That’s what I deduced. So I gave it a test run. I replied, using buzzwords I figured would make me sound like a prime target. I described myself as a childless, fifty-something widow who’s financially secure and independent. I enjoy fine cuisine, good wine, and foreign films. Most men find me attractive.”
“Not me,” Gif said.
“Me neither,” Drex said.
Mike gave them the finger. “He must not have, either. He hasn’t taken the bait.”
Gif thoughtfully scratched his forehead. “Maybe you oversold yourself. You sounded too self-assured, sophisticated, and smart. He looks for women with a dash of naïveté. Vulnerability. You scared him off.”
“Or,” Drex said, “he picked up on the buzzwords, smelled a rat, figured that this dream lady was actually a fed on a fishing expedition.”
“Maybe,” Mike said. “But another, more likely possibility—the one I fear—is that he jumped the gun. Solicited too soon. He hasn’t responded because he hasn’t ditched his current victim yet.”
It was a reasonable theory to which Drex gave credence because it caused his gut to clench. “Meaning that she’s in mortal danger as we speak.”
“Worse than that
.”
“What’s worse than mortal danger?”
Mike hesitated.
“Give,” Drex said.
The heavy man sighed. “I repeat, Drex, I may be wrong.”
“But you don’t think so.”
He raised his catcher’s mitt–sized hands at his sides.
“Why do you think it’s him?” Drex asked.
“Just promise me—”
“No promises. What makes you think this guy is our guy? My guy?”
“Drex, you can’t go—”
Gif said, “Rudkowski will—”
“Tell me, goddamn it!” Drex said, shouting above their warnings.
After another pause, Mike mumbled, “He’s married.”
Drex hadn’t seen that coming. “Married?”
“Married. Do you take? With this ring. I now pronounce you.”
Gif confirmed it with a solemn nod.
Drex divided a perplexed look between them, then shook his head and huffed a laugh of bitter disappointment. “Well, that shoots everything to hell, and you’ve wasted my morning. If we hurry down, the restaurant will still be serving breakfast.” He pushed his fingers through his hair.
“Shit! Here I was getting all excited, when what it looks like is that our lonely heart has struck out again and is still seeking his soul mate. But he’s not our man. Because a wife doesn’t jibe.”
“It did once,” Gif reminded him.
“Once. Not since. Matrimony, do you take, with this ring, hasn’t fit his profile or MO in years. Not in any way, shape, or form.”
“Actually, Drex, it does,” Mike said solemnly.
“How so?”
Gif cleared his throat. “The wife is loaded.”
Drex looked at each of them independently. The two men couldn’t be more dissimilar, but they wore identical expressions of fear and dread.
He turned away from them, and where his gaze happened to land was on his reflection in the dresser mirror. Even he recognized that, since he’d last looked, his countenance had altered, hardened, become taut with resolve. There was a ferocity in his eyes that hadn’t been there only minutes ago, before he had learned that a woman’s life hung in the balance. Delicately. And dependent on him to save it.
He kept his voice soft but put steel behind it. “Tell me his name.”
Chapter 2
Need help?”
Drex set the empty cardboard box on the curb, turned, and had his first face-to-face with his nemesis.
If this was indeed Weston Graham, he was around five feet eight inches tall and, for a man of sixty-two, extraordinarily fit. His golf shirt hugged firm biceps and a trim waistline. He had a receding hairline, but his graying hair was long enough in back to be pulled into a blunt ponytail. His smile was very white and straight, friendly, and wreathed by a salt-and-pepper door knocker.
Drex swiped his dripping forehead with the ripped sleeve of his baggy t-shirt. “Thanks, but that’s the last of them.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. I only offered to be nice.”
The two of them laughed.
“I’ll take one of those beers, though,” Drex said. “If you’re offering.”
His neighbor had crossed the connecting lawns with a cold bottle in each hand. He handed one to Drex. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”
“Thanks.”
They clinked bottles, and each took a drink. “Jasper Ford.” He stuck out his right hand and they shook.
“Jasper,” Drex said, as though hearing the name for the first time and committing it to memory, as though he hadn’t had to wring it out of Gif and Mike, as though he hadn’t spent the past week gleaning as much information on the man as he possibly could.
“I’m Drex Easton.” He watched the man’s eyes for a reaction to his name, but detected none.
Jasper indicated the pile of empty boxes Drex had stacked at the curb. “You’ve been hard at it for two days.”
“It’s been a chore to lug everything up those stairs. They’re killers.”
He chinned toward a steep exterior staircase that led up to an apartment above a garage that was large enough to house an eighteen-foot inboard. The structure was a good thirty yards behind the main house. Drex figured it had been positioned there to take advantage of the concealment provided by a massive live oak tree.
He squinted up through the branches and pretended to assess the apartment from a fresh perspective. “Moving in was worth the backache, though. It’s like living in a tree house.”
“I’ve never seen inside,” Jasper said. “Nice?”
“Nice enough.”
“How many rooms?”
“Only three, but all I need.”
“You’re by yourself, then?”
“Not even a goldfish.” He grinned. “But, despite the ban on pets, I may get a cat. I spotted some mouse droppings in the kitchen area.”
“I can see how a mouse could sneak in. The owners are snowbirds, down here only during the winter months.”
“So Mr. Arnott told me. They come down the day after Thanksgiving, stay until the first of June.”
“Frankly, when I learned the apartment had been rented out, I was concerned.”
“How’d you hear about it?”
“I didn’t. You showed up and started carting boxes upstairs.”
Drex laughed. “And going through your mind was ‘WTF?’”
By way of admission, the man smiled and gave a small shrug. “I have Arnott’s number in case of an emergency, so I called him.”
“I was an emergency?” Drex glanced down at his ragged shirt, dirty cargo shorts, and well-worn sneakers. “I can see where you might think so. You got one look at me and thought ‘there goes the neighborhood.’” He flashed a grin. “I clean up okay, I promise.”
Jasper Ford laughed with good nature. “Can’t be too careful.”
“That’s my motto.”
“Good fences make for good neighbors.”
“Except that there’s no fence.” Drex looked across the uninterrupted expanse of grass between the two properties. Coming back to Jasper Ford’s dark gaze, he said, “I’ll confine my rude behavior to this side of the property line. You’ll never know I’m here.”
Jasper smiled, but before he could comment, his cell phone signaled a text. “Excuse me.” He took the phone from his shirt pocket.
While he was reading the text, Drex arched his back in an overextended stretch that caused him to wince, and took another swallow of beer.
“My wife,” Jasper said as he thumbed off his phone. “Her flight has been weather delayed. She’s stuck at O’Hare.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Happens a lot,” he said somewhat absently as he glanced over his shoulder toward his house, then came back around to Drex. “How about some surf and turf?”
“Pardon?”
“I’ve got crab cakes ready for the pan. Steaks marinating. No sense in half of it going to waste.”
“I couldn’t impose.”
“If it was going to be an imposition, I wouldn’t have invited you.”
“Well…” Scratching his unshaven cheek, Drex pretended to ponder it. “I haven’t stocked the pantry or fridge yet. I’ve been subsisting on fast food.”
Jasper chuckled. “I can do better than that. See you at sunset. We’ll have drinks on the porch.” He reached out and took Drex’s beer bottle. “I’ll toss this for you.”
Drex stepped out of the shower and reached for his ringing cell phone, which he’d balanced on the rim of the sink. He looked to see who was calling, then clicked on. “Hey.”
“How are you faring?” Mike asked.
“Right now, good. I’m standing naked and wet under a ceiling fan.”
“Spare me.”
“The fan squeaks, but this is the coolest I’ve been since I got here. Why didn’t you tell me this apartment wasn’t air-conditioned?”
“You didn’t ask.”
Once it had been decided amon
g the three of them that Jasper Ford warranted further investigation, Drex flew to Charleston. He wasted no time in driving to Mount Pleasant and locating the Fords’ home.
Google Earth hadn’t done it justice. The two-story house was built of brick, painted white. Classically southern in design, a deep front porch ran the width of the façade, twin columns framing a glossy black front door with a brass knocker in the shape of a pineapple. The house was surrounded by a sprawling lawn and shaded by decades-old trees.
The residence looked lived in. Blooming flowers in all the beds. Thriving ferns on the porches. An American flag hanging from the eaves. Newspaper and mail delivery.
By contrast, the house next door looked less tended, and for the three nights Drex surveilled it, lights came on at the same time, went off at the same time. Timed to do so. No flowers, ferns, or mail.
He returned to Lexington, briefed Mike and Gif, and instructed Mike to find out who owned the property neighboring the Fords’, which appeared to be a second home or otherwise infrequently occupied.
Mike did his due diligence, got a name and contact info off tax records.
Then Drex did his thing. He made a cold call to Mr. Arnott, who, with his wife, resided most of the year in Pennsylvania, but, upon retirement, had purchased the place in South Carolina to escape the cold and snow.
Drex, laying it on thick, told him of his situation, which was a complete fabrication. Then he got down to the heart of the matter. He was seeking temporary lodging in or near Charleston. During a scouting expedition to see what might be available, he’d crossed the Cooper River into Mount Pleasant, and as he was driving around getting the lay of the land, so to speak, he’d spotted the garage apartment. It was ideal: Secluded. Quiet. A “cabin in the woods,” within the confines of a scenic and safe neighborhood.
The apartment would provide all the space he required. He would live there alone, no pets. He was a nonsmoker. And, in the bargain, he would keep an eye on the main house.
“Honestly, Mr. Arnott, if I’d been a burglar, I’d have chosen your house to break into. It’s obvious that you’re an absentee owner.”
When Arnott hedged, Drex was tempted to play his FBI card. He didn’t, fearing it would be tipped to Jasper Ford that he had a fed moving in next door to him. Instead he provided Arnott several fictitious references, all written by Gif, whom Arnott actually called to confirm his high recommendation. Mike also got a call to verify the reference letter signed by him. Between them, they convinced Mr. Arnott that Drex Easton was a man of sound mind, good character, and everything he claimed to be.