Identity Unknown (A Parker & Coe, Love and Bullets Thriller Book 1) (8 page)

He studied me, as if weighing the possible consequences of what he was about to do, then handed me the bra and turned around. I strapped it on, then plunged a hand into my underwear and checked the fabric for anything unusual. To my surprise, I found something, but it wasn't attached to the fabric at all, and I suddenly felt a bit queasy.

Like a lot of girls my age, I tend to wax quite thoroughly, and there, directly above what Josh alternately referred to as my "snizz" or my "lady bits" (yeah, I know, I know—what was I
thinking?
) was what felt like a small Band-Aid. I peeled it back, ran my thumb over the inside and found a hard piece of metal—which, as Parker had described, was about the size and thickness of a dime.

How could I not have noticed this?
 

I mean, I'd been a bit distracted—but seriously?

I thought about Taggart's refrigerator hands taping the tracker in place, and felt the sudden urge to hurl those vending machine cookies I'd scarfed down at the office. It was an image I would never be able to un-see no matter how much I might try to bleach it from my brain.
 

My humiliation was now complete and my legs felt weak—but not in a good way.

I ripped the Band-Aid free. "Give me my clothes back."

Parker must have noticed the distress in my voice. "You found it?"

"Yes. Now give me my clothes."

He did and I handed him the Band-Aid and tracker and got dressed faster than a quick change artist at a Las Vegas magic show.

After tossing the device into the nearby Dumpster, Parker grabbed my wrist and led me out of the alley. "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"You have no idea."

There are three ten story dorm towers at Hunter City University.

Adjacent to the lobby of each are several private study rooms, a small communal kitchen, and a twenty station computer lab.

I was aware of all this because of a project I had worked on with a girl from my econ class several months earlier. She was a grad student like me, who had opted to be a dorm captain rather than move into her own apartment, and we'd spent many nights laboring at the computer in hopes of whipping the project into shape.

I had asked her a number of times if she wanted to come over to my place—which I was sharing with Josh at the time—but for some inexplicable reason she had always refused. I never bothered to ask what made her so skittish, and once the project was completed—(we squeaked a B minus)—she never spoke to me again.

I found out later, after Josh broke up with me, that he had been sleeping with this girl in the waning days of our relationship—in
our
bed, no less—and she had done everything she could to get out of doing the project with me. The chance of the three of us occupying the same space at the same time was apparently too much for her to handle.

Imagine that.

She reportedly had no problem with pink fuzzy handcuffs, however.

Anyway, since Parker and I couldn't go back to my apartment to use my laptop, the first thing I thought of were the HCU dorms, that had quaint names like San Jacinto Hall and Woodland Court, but were nothing more than tall stacks of gray cement with a lot of windows.

It was just past three in the morning when we approached Blue Ridge Court and waited for some late night partiers to come along and let us in.

We didn't have to wait long. HCU had always been known as a party school and had no shortage of drunken freshmen staggering toward their dorm rooms at all hours of the morning. We heard the peel of laughter and two girls in outfits that only a stripper could envy zig-zagged their way toward us, arm in arm, doing their best to hold each other up. When they got close, they gave Parker the once over (and who could blame them?), then whispered to each other and giggled before stumbling to the lobby door.

Parker and I followed, waited for one of them to use a key card, and a moment later we were inside and moving to a door next to the elevators marked
COMPUTER LAB.
Not surprisingly, this one was also locked, so Parker quickly turned to the drunken freshmen, who were now inside the elevator trying to figure out which button to push…
 

A few seconds and several giggles later, he held a shiny new key card. They probably would have given it to him even if they
hadn't
been drunk.

He let us inside and I flicked on the overheads, then moved to the first computer station and fired it up. A moment later I was online.

"So what is it you're planning to show me?" Parker asked as he rolled a chair over and sat next to me.

"I thought we'd go shopping for shoes," I said.

It was a joke, of course, but the soles of my feet were sore as hell and I wouldn't have minded a pair right about then. Going barefoot is highly overrated. Especially when you're on the run.

Parker ignored the comment and watched as I navigated to a page and started to log in.

He frowned. "Photogram? You're logging onto Photogram?"

Photogram was an online social network/photo sharing site that was popular among the students at HCU.

"Just bear with me," I said. "I've got a bunch of pictures posted and I'm pretty sure there's at least one of Emily here."

I typed in my username and password and hit send, but to my surprise a window popped up that read:

PLEASE ENTER A CORRECT NAME AND PASSWORD

 
Say what?

Figuring I must have typed too fast and made a mistake, I tried again, but got the same result:

PLEASE ENTER A CORRECT NAME AND PASSWORD

"This is just fascinating," Parker said, "but when's the part where you prove to me you're not Mia Duncan?"

"Look, I have an account. I don't know what's wrong."

"Maybe you're entering the wrong username. Try 'Contract Killer'."

I shot him a look and tried logging in a third time, but wasn't surprised when I was again prompted to enter the correct name and password.

Shit.

It was obvious to me now that Emily had hijacked my account and deleted it, destroying any photos of herself. Sure, they were probably still out there in the ether somewhere, but where? And how would I ever find them?

I sighed and bit my lower lip, feeling tears start to well up, but I knew it wouldn't do me any good to get emotional. Crying wouldn't solve this problem.

Then I remembered something and quickly started typing.

"Where to now?" Parker asked.

"The campus athletic site. There's an activities page that lists the Zumba class that Emily and I go to and the teacher likes to take a group photo every semester. We're both in it."

I hit a few keys and soon found myself staring at the HCU website. I navigated to the activities page, clicked on
Zumba Class
and waited for the page to load.

And waited.

And waited some more.

And after what seemed an eternity, a message filled the screen that said, "404 Not Found," meaning the link was broken.

Shit, shit, shit.

Emily again.

This couldn't be a coincidence.

"Either you're wasting my time on b.s.," Parker said, "or you've got the worst luck of anyone I've ever met. What now? Facebook? Google Plus? Liars R Us?"

"I know you think you're funny, but you're about one joke away from a smack in the face."

"Ahh, so now your true nature comes out."

Oh, I so wanted to hit him. Especially after what he put me through in that alleyway.

"Tell me something," I said.

"Yeah?"

"Why did you even agree to come here? You're still acting as if Emily is a figment of my imagination, so why are we here?"

He shrugged. "We've got time to kill, and you gave such an impassioned speech in the truck, I figured it wouldn't hurt to let you play this out."

"Then you really
don't
believe me."

He sighed. "I was a deputy U.S. Marshal for three years, remember? And in that time, every single perp I ever encountered tried to convince me I had it wrong."

"So I get punished because of them?"

"That's usually the way it works, yeah."

I shook my head. "I think
you're
the one who's lying."

"About what?"

"I think you really do believe me. Even more than before."

"You have no idea what's going on in my head."

I held up my hands. "Still no cuffs. That must mean something."

"We've been running a lot. You move faster without them."

"You turned your back on me in that alleyway."

"A mistake. Believe me, it won't happen again."

"You are
such
a man."

"Meaning what?"

"You're stubborn, you're arrogant and you're letting your need for that reward money override your instincts."

He shook his head. "My instincts tell me that I should assume you're trying to fake me out and get my sympathy." He gestured to the computer screen. "And so far you've shown me nothing that proves otherwise. Just a story like all the other stories."

I
really
wanted to hit him.

But he was right. I had nothing. And unless I could find a photo of Emily, there was no reason for him to take my word for any of this.

Still, I didn't think
I
was wrong, either.

Parker
wanted
to believe. As tough and cynical as he was trying to be, I could feel it in the way he looked at me. I may not be the best judge of character in the world, but that brief moment in the bathroom told me that beneath the skin he was a reasonable, caring human being.

He looked around the room. "Are we done yet? Because I wouldn't mind getting a little sleep before we hit the road and this place is a good as any." He produced a pair of cuffs. "And you
will
be wearing these."

A sudden thought occurred to me and I returned my attention to the computer screen and started typing. "I just remembered something."

"Another dead end?"

"Maybe," I said. "But a couple weeks ago I emailed a photo of Emily and me to my work address so I could print it out and put it on my desk."

I navigated to my office's encrypted web mail system and quickly logged on. And I can't say I was too surprised that all of my emails had been wiped from the folder.
 

But as thorough as Emily had been, I didn't think she would know that all of our deleted emails were diverted to an archival backup server, in case someone needed to retrieve one.

I clicked over to that server, keyed in a special code and found all of my messages waiting there. It took me a moment to find the email I was looking for, but the one with the photo attached was still there.

Thank God.

My hands were trembling as I clicked it open. Then the screen filled with a shot of Emily and me—a selfie we had taken at The Hungry Mug, the campus coffee shop. Emily's hair was pulled back, while mine was down, but there was no doubt that we looked a lot alike. She had those glorious, athletic arms that I'd never been blessed with, but other than that it was easy to see why she had chosen me.

I turned to Parker and he was staring at the screen, a look of disbelief in his eyes.

And disappointment, too. Like a man who has just seen a very hefty reward slip away from him in an instant.

"I don't believe it," he said.

"But you do. That's my point. You know I'm telling the truth."

He looked at me, then back at the screen again, then back at me—as if this would somehow change things.

He lowered his head. "Shit."

"Imagine how I feel."

"No, you don't understand. You don't realize what this means."

"It means I've got a bunch of killers chasing after me for no good reason. It means that Emily or Mia—or whatever her name is—is out there laughing at all of us."

"It also means that Haley is screwed."

"Haley?" I said. "Who the hell is Haley?"

He looked at me again. "My niece. The girl I was on the phone with back at the motel. And without that reward money, she's as good as dead."

It's funny how a few simple words can alter your perception of someone.

But then maybe it wasn't the words themselves, but the subtle defeat in Parker's voice and that faraway look as he told me about a little girl born with a heart defect. All the macho bluster, all the arrogance, vanished in an instant, and the tender man from that motel bathroom surfaced again.

"I won't sugar coat it," he said. "My sister had a lot of problems with drugs and alcohol, especially after she found out she was pregnant and Taggart dumped her. So Haley came into this world with a couple strikes against her."

We were sitting on the floor now, our backs to the wall. The overheads were off, and only the light of the computer screen illuminated us.
 

"How old is she?"

"She had her third birthday three weeks ago."

"So Taggart's the father?"

"He denies it. Accused Chelsea of hooking up with someone else and who knows, maybe he was right. Either way, he's had nothing to do with Haley and that's a good thing."

"No kidding," I said, trying to suppress the image of those big hands touching me.

"Believe it or not, he wasn't always corrupt. But he was drawn to the darkness—even when we worked together. Part of our job was transporting inmates to the federal prison and they didn't always get there in perfect shape. I tried to get him to stop, but I was the rook and he was married to my sister, so I turned a blind eye." He paused. "Not something I'm proud of."

"How did he get involved with the Ukrainians?"

"I'm not sure. But he was always looking for ways to score big and they must have wanted something he could provide. He probably hooked up with them once he realized there was no fighting the fact that he's clinically insane."

"He didn't have anything to do with your sister's death, did he?"

"If he had," Parker said. "He wouldn't be alive himself. No, Chelsea's body finally just gave up on her. She died a few months after Haley was born. Taggart and I weren't working together by then, but I foolishly tried to get him to take responsibility for his daughter. That didn't go over so well."