Snake Skin (29 page)

She called the sheriff's detail, asked them
to put her on a private line with Melissa. "I need the truth about
Jon Tardiff."

Melissa coughed and Lucy could almost see
the former model's hand going to her throat. "I already told—"

"Melissa, I know he's been in town all
week."

"It's not what you think. He had nothing to
do with Ashley."

"So she never saw him?"

Melissa's sob whined through the phone. "Of
course she saw him. He was here to ask me to marry him."

Hell, that could change everything—if Ashley
stood in the way of Tardiff getting the woman he'd wanted for
years…."What happened?"

"What do you think happened? Ashley threw a
fit, said she wasn't leaving Pittsburgh, that she'd go live with
her father."

"But she couldn't, could she?"

"No. Gerald refused to have her. Said he has
his own life to live." Bitterness flooded her words. "And Jon can't
leave his work, move here."

"What did you decide, Melissa? Who did you
pick?"

A long pause, the only sound the other
woman's breathing. "I told Jon we'd have to wait. Until Ashley was
grown and on her own. I chose my daughter."

Shit, shit, shit. "Why the hell didn't you
tell me before?"

"I couldn't let you think—Jon didn't have
anything to do with this. He couldn't."

"Give me his number. The one you use. The
private one."

"How'd you know?"

Because they weren't stupid and Tardiff's
registered cell hadn't been used recently. Lucy didn't bother to
explain. Instead she took the number Melissa gave her. Then she
told the deputy with Melissa to keep Melissa away from the phones
until further notice.

She turned to Taylor. "Looks like we might
have our man."

He pivoted away from his computer. "No shit?
That's great. What 'cha gonna do?"

"First let's see where he is—can you ask the
guys to track this cell?" Taylor interfaced with the H-Tech guys
better than she could, spoke the same language.

He got on his phone, gibbering away
eagerly.

Bobby kept pounding the keys on his
computer. His body was shaking, covered with sweat. Lucy crouched
down until she was at eye level and lay her hand over his. It
fluttered like a firefly trapped in a Mason jar. He wrenched his
gaze away from the computer and stared at her.

"Do you need a break? Maybe this wasn't a
good idea."

His jaw clenched with determination. "No.
I'm fine. Sometimes when I get a strong feeling about something, my
body over-reacts." He grimaced in embarrassment. "Part of the
nerves and reflexes being all tangled up."

"I know how that feels and I don't have any
excuses. Can I show you something my husband taught me? He's a
psychologist, deals with soldiers and other people with a lot of
stress."

"You mean like guys who've been blown up,
lost their legs and stuff?"

"Right. Now close your eyes for a second and
focus on your breathing." She kept her voice calm and steady, a
close approximation to Nick's and led him through a quick deep
breathing exercise. Cube breathing Nick called it. It worked when
you could take a moment and concentrate on it—only problem was that
Lucy seemed never to be able to find the time to do that when she
felt most stressed.

Like before she blew up at her husband
outside their daughter's hospital room.

As Bobby took deep, soothing breaths, she
massaged his hand between both of hers, stroking the pressure
points Nick had showed her. She felt her own tension retreat as she
guided Bobby. Hmmm, it felt good to drop the weight from her
shoulders, to unclamp her jaws.

He opened his eyes, now clear, his face
relaxed, the sweat and trembling gone. "Thanks."

"No problem." She rotated her neck,
producing some loud cracks, and stood again. "We really appreciate
your help finding Ashley. She's very lucky to have you as a
friend."

"Got him," Taylor exclaimed, snapping his
phone shut. "He's on I-80 headed east. The State Police just pulled
him over."

"Is Ashley with him?"

He shook his head. "No. The car was empty
except for Tardiff. They're bringing him back here for
questioning."

Lucy blew her breath out. The tympani in her
ears had returned. "Okay, back to work on tracking her through the
game."

"You do know that we may never get a link to
a physical location?" he asked. "This is virtual reality."

"Right now it's the only thing I've got."
The only thing Ashley had. She closed her eyes as the men turned
their backs to her. Had she fucked up again, lost Ashley because
she hadn't twigged to Tardiff sooner?

"Hey, Draco," Taylor said, totally lost in
cyber-land once more. "Look at this. What if we tracked back from
here." Both men began working their machines as if they were racing
for a prize. Lucy had no choice but to wait.

Twenty minutes later Taylor's phone rang and
he jerked back, shaking his head as if surprised to find himself in
the real world. He grabbed it. "Yeah. No shit. Okay, keep working."
He hung up and turned to Lucy. "The H-Tech guys discovered the
origin of the program that wiped Ashley's computer. It's one of
ours."

"Ours as in government?"

"Ours as in Homeland Security. Specifically
ATF, FBI, and ICE."

An electrical shock tingled along Lucy's
nerve endings. She began to pace the room, her hands bunching into
fists then opening again in time with her steps.

"Does Tardiff have any government
connections?"

Taylor shook his head. "No and I ran his
life under the microscope. No way he could have gotten that program
on his own."

"So either he's not our guy or he had an
accomplice." She thought hard. "If Tardiff's motive was to marry
Melissa, why would he create Shadow World, use it to trap Ashley?
Surely there's easier ways to take care of a surly teenager." The
easiest involving a shallow grave, but she didn't want to think
about that. "The whole thing doesn't make sense."

"How could Tardiff have predicted that
Ashley would even want to play Shadow World?" Taylor asked.

"Maybe it's a chicken and egg thing," Bobby
chimed in.

Lucy stopped. Considered. Bobby's words
tickled her, an itch that couldn't be scratched. He was on the
right track, she was certain.

"So our guy isn't Tardiff?" Taylor's
disappointment colored his voice, as if he'd been personally
insulted by their lack of progress. "We're back to ground
zero?"

"No. Not quite. We know a helluva lot more
than we did yesterday. Our guy has to be local to have planned out
the Tastee Treet meet," she said, thinking out loud. "Computer
skills, enough to build Shadow World and cover his tracks. He's a
white male, mid-twenties to late thirties, never married, probably
no long term relationship except with his mother—might even still
live with his mother. He's not a pedophile."

"He's not?" Taylor asked, his gaze never
leaving his screen. "I thought these guys were all pedophiles."

"Not this one. He's looking for someone he
can control easily, a woman he can mold to his needs. That means a
younger woman, emotionally immature. He wants a long term
relationship. He's not driven by a sexual obsession with youth,
he's more like Frankenstein, trying to create the perfect
mate."

"So the game, Shadow World, was his hunting
ground?" Bobby put in.

She hesitated. It was total speculation—far
fetched speculation at that. She should call Nick, get his
professional opinion, facts rather than fantasy. But she didn't
want to distract him from Megan. Guilt stabbed through her at the
thought of Megan alone in the hospital. What if Nick was right? She
was just transferring her fears about keeping Megan safe onto her
job?

If so, she might be condemning Ashley,
wasting time chasing a shadow.

No. This felt too right, she felt close to
this actor. She knew him. What he wanted. How he thought.

"Bobby's right. He created Shadow World to
test his subjects. It's his honey trap," she continued, waiting for
the men to contradict her theory. But instead they both nodded,
even though their eyes never left the computer screens. "Probably
invited them into private discussions, learned as much as he could
about them. Then he'd groom them—see how far he could manipulate
them, how pliable they were."

"Like seeing if they'd sacrifice their best
friend if he asked them to?" Bobby asked.

"Even that. I think you were a real obstacle
to him. Ashley thought it was you she was meeting on Friday, not
him."

"Me? But we haven't talked in like a
month."

"How hard would it be for him to monitor
your conversations, learn everything he needed to know about
you?"

"The on-line stuff, that'd be easy. A lot
were in the Shadow World chatrooms, at first anyway."

"I'll bet he inserted a Trojan horse into
Ashley's computer," Taylor said. "He'd be able to monitor every key
stroke she typed."

"He'd know her passwords, everything."
Bobby's eyes narrowed in anger. "That sonofabitch. He cut me off
from Ashley—probably pretended to be me, told her I had a new phone
number or email address, sucked her right in."

"He's been watching her for a long time,
would know everything about her," Taylor said.

"Watching her—" Lucy was close, there was
something slippery just beyond her grasp. "Monitoring her." She
made another circuit of the room. "Can you tell if he accessed the
webcam on her computer? Trace the video feed or whatever you call
it?"

"No. This guy has his own servers set
up—that's why it's so hard for us to trace him through the game, he
doesn't use a third party host."

Another dead end. But she was certain this
guy would be watching Ashley. From a distance at first—his goal was
to create a long-term relationship, he'd chose his partner
carefully.

"So we have a white guy, computer savvy,
Pittsburgh area, and he has access to Homeland Security computer
programs." She shook her head. "That could still be dozens, maybe
even a hundred or more men."

"At Quantico they told us some serial
killers try to insert themselves into the investigation. To feel
powerful, smarter than we are," Taylor said.

She stopped at the far end of the room,
holding her body still as energy surged through it, feeling as if
she leaned over the edge of a precipice with precious little to
hang on to.

"No. He doesn't care about us. He cares
about Ashley. He'll do whatever it takes to protect their
relationship. If he gets involved with us it'll be to sabotage the
case, throw us off track."

She feathered her fingers over the base of
her throat she thought through every person connected with the
case. Hated to think it could be someone on her team, right under
her nose. Someone she'd trusted.

Then she stopped short. She knew where she
was going—it had been right in front of her—but took time to take a
deep breath in, let it out again before she condemned a man. After
all, she had no proof. Just what Nick would call one of her
"niggly" feelings.

"If I gave you a name, could you see if the
scrubber program came from him?" she asked Taylor, reluctant to
voice her suspicions. But the more she thought about it, the more
certain she was.

"No, but I can check to see if he's used or
downloaded the same version of the program. He'd have to download
it from one of our computers and then transfer it." He squinted at
her. "Who do you think it is?"

Lucy blew her breath out as if preparing for
a leap off the high dive. "Fletcher."

"No way," Taylor said. "That guy's an
idiot."

"It's him. I know it." She grabbed her
phone. "You find me proof."

Chapter 25

Sunday 12:44 pm

Lucy called Walden, filled him in on her
suspicions. "Not much we can do without proof," he told her.

"I know. Check out his workstation, see if
you can find anything we can use to get a warrant. Have the H-Tech
guys check out his computer—it's government property so he has no
expectation of privacy. But for godsake, don't tip him off."

"Hang on, let me see if he's still
around."

Lucy resumed her pacing, filled with an urge
to use Taylor's phone and call Three Rivers to check on Megan. If
she saved Ashley, Megan would be fine—what had Nick called it?
Magical thinking? She didn't care. She believed it to her core. Had
to, with two girls' lives at stake.

Walden returned before she could. "Security
says he swiped out already. Want me to call him? Try to see where
he's at?"

"No. I'll do it. You start checking him out,
work on a warrant for his home."

"We don't have probable cause. Unless
something shows up here." Walden, always the voice of reason. "And
I don't think I should let anyone else in on this."

He had a point. In the federal building,
gossip traveled faster than a laser guided missile.

"No sense riling up the brass on a Sunday,"
she reluctantly agreed, even though she hated the fact that they'd
have to proceed slow and careful.

"Especially as we have no evidence. I'll
call as soon as I have anything."

If Fletcher did have Ashley, what would he
do when exposed? Kill her would be the obvious answer, and if he
were a straightforward sociopath like Ivan, it was exactly what
she'd expect him to do.

But Fletcher had spent months grooming her,
had developed an elaborate ritual around his actions, even created
an alternative universe to hunt in. He wasn't going to give up his
prize, not easily.

He'd run. Take Ashley with him. Go
underground and hide in the shadows just like in the fantasy realm
he had invented. Probably had a lair stocked and waiting.

She had to take a chance, lure him back
before he ran.