"Pitch Black" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parrish Leslie)

3

In the five months since members of her own team had stopped the monster known as the Reaper from murdering an innocent child, IT specialist Lily Fletcher’s nightmares had grown more violent. More extreme. Much more disturbing.

The Reaper, Seth Covey, had added a new dimension to the horror taking place in her head every night as she slept, but he wasn’t entirely responsible. She had been tormented long before that case, the first she’d worked after joining Blackstone’s team.

Lily’s dreams had grown dark on the night she’d caught a fleeting glimpse of her nephew’s face through the window of a stranger’s van as it disappeared down the street.

They’d become bloody on the night his body was discovered.

And vicious when her sister, her only other living relative, had killed herself rather than live with the loss of her little boy.

There was no befriending the dead. No whispers of love and sorrow could make their bodies any less brutalized, their expressions any less terrified. No matter how many happy memories she focused on, or smiling pictures she cherished, at night, her loved ones always appeared the same. Ravaged victims who lived in her subconscious, emerging the moment she fell into a restless sleep.

Now the horrific crimes Covey had committed played out in her head too. She’d seen them firsthand, witnessed the atrocities he’d recorded and uploaded to the Internet for the viewing pleasure of his sick, deviant friends at a sick, deviant Web site.

The site was gone now. And so was Covey, dead by his own hand. Yet she still saw him night after night. Just a young punk, barely more than a kid himself, but so filled with hatred and rage he’d become a monster in human skin.

Sometimes his face replaced the one of the bastard who’d killed Zachary. Or she beheld her nephew in place of the little boy who’d been saved. Saving Zach was a common theme. She always came so close, only to be devastated all over again when she failed.

Those dreams broke her heart.

They said you could withstand anything if you prayed enough, hoped enough, loved enough. But Lily no longer believed it. Prayer, hope, and love could never bring Zach or Laura back. Nor could they give her the kind of peace she longed for during the sweat-filled nights when she twisted and writhed in her bed, running, chasing, trying to stop the insane sequence of events before it started.

She never could. She never would. The result would always be a dead child in her arms and her sister’s thin, wasted body in a bathtub full of reddish water, blood still slowly trickling from her slashed wrists.

“Stop,” she told herself. She needed to get her mind off last night’s torment and back into the here and now. There were other things to worry about. Namely, the one thing she had left to live for. Because, even though she’d realized love, prayer, and hope weren’t enough to ease the pain, with the help of a pretty good therapist, she’d found other things that were.

A thirst for justice. The need to stop any other family from going through what hers had. Stopping one monster from luring another boy like Zach into his van.

Those things helped. They were enough to live for. Enough for her to get up every morning and put on her clothes and walk through yet another lonely day.

The job was enough.

“Did you say something?”

Lily shook her head, flushing as she realized she’d lapsed into such dark musings right in the middle of a case. She and Brandon-the coworker and office mate who had also become a friend-were at the computer forensics lab. Hoping Jason Todd’s hard drive might hold a clue to the identity of his killer, they were watching while a computer forensics expert ran it through ACES, the Automated Computer Examination System.

“Sorry. Guess I was muttering to myself.”

“Okay, but make sure nobody answers. You know the bureau frowns on agents who hear voices in their heads,” he said with a grin.

She managed a weak smile. “Deal.”

Usually Brandon could tease her out of her darkest moods. There was something irresistibly charming about his big green eyes and spiky bleached-blond hair. He looked more like an underwear model than an FBI cyber nerd, and she suspected, judging by some of his hacker knowledge, that he’d had a little larceny in his soul as a teenager.

Today, though, she could find nothing to smile about. Her heart was heavy, filled with sadness for the families of Jason Todd and Ryan Smith. She was also a bit uncomfortable being here. Though she trusted Brandon, she didn’t want to have to answer his inevitable questions if they ran into any of the forensics guys she’d been working with on another case.

He said you could work on it.

Months ago, Wyatt Blackstone had told her she could offer assistance in the investigation into Satan’s Playground, the now defunct Internet world where the Reaper had aired his videos. There he had hooked up with a perverted client with the handle Lovesprettyboys who had paid to have a young boy raped and murdered for his viewing pleasure. That was the boy they’d saved. The boy who sometimes wore Zach’s face.

But while he hadn’t forbidden her to assist, Blackstone hadn’t been enthusiastic about it, either. He’d insisted that it not interfere with her current job. So she’d done it quietly. She’d offered after-hours assistance to the child-protection CAT trying to track down Lovesprettyboys and others like him.

She had no choice. Because since the moment she’d first seen the pedophile’s vicious avatar having his fun in the cyber world, she had known he had to be stopped before he could move his crimes to the real one. If he hadn’t already.

“You know this is probably a waste of time,” she said to Brandon as she glanced at her watch, wondering how much longer they would have to be here.

“I know. Unless this guy is some kind of idiot, he didn’t write from an IP address that might actually lead back to him.”

Judging from what she’d learned about their unsub in the past thirty-six hours, he most definitely wasn’t an idiot. He’d never be careless enough to use an easily traceable computer.

“Okay, I’ve isolated all the individual e-mails between Jason and this Dr. Waffi,” said the specialist, Parker, who sat before a state-of-the-art terminal. “They came from three areas: Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Trenton. I’ve been able to determine via some hidden software coding that they all came from the same computer. But the IP addresses come from a half dozen different servers, one of which, I can already tell you, is from a fast-food restaurant chain offering free wifi.”

“Playing terrorize-the-teen while scarfing a burger,” Brandon said. “Nice.”

Lily sighed. “So he packed up his laptop, cruised around to find hot spots in a tristate area, jumped online, and then moved on before writing again.”

“Looks like it,” Parker said. “As for the original message opening contact with Jason Todd, it looks like he used a ’bot net. Probably generated thousands of these ‘former finance minister’ letters, spammed them all over the place, and Jason was gullible enough to respond.”

Gullible enough. Or just a kid dreaming big.

The specialist continued going over his findings. As they’d supposed, the Professor hadn’t been stupid. He certainly wouldn’t have written from his home or work computer, and he would never have paid for Internet service at a café or a hotel, where there would be some record of his presence. Not when it was so easy to cruise around and steal access from any unsecured system. Sure, if they ever found a suspect, they would be able to link his computer to all the messages. But first they needed to find him.

Smothering her disappointment, Lily listened to the report, even while wishing Parker would hurry. When she spied a familiar face, she knew the wishes hadn’t helped. Damn.

“Hey, Fletcher, back so soon?”

Cursing her luck, she offered a brisk nod to the agent-Anspaugh-who was heading up the very investigation she’d been helping on.

“Caught another case,” she explained, hoping Brandon was paying careful attention to their own tech, and not her conversation.

“Is it a big one?”

She wasn’t sure how much Blackstone had shared beyond the walls of the Black CATs’ den. The BAU had to know they’d gotten a lead on the Professor, but that might be as far as it had gone. “Possibly.”

Anspaugh smirked, reminding her of how little she liked the man. He had a big bully’s personality and a big bully’s body, and, unfortunately, a big bully’s tiny brain to go with the package.

She liked him even less when he added, “So, did Blackstone manage to find another Reaper to justify his team’s existence?”

It wasn’t the first time Lily had heard snide comments from others in the bureau. Wyatt had burned bridges and made enemies by blowing the whistle on some of his colleagues. The evidence tampering and manipulation had run deep, from the forensics lab all the way up to the deputy director’s office, and a whole lot of heads had rolled. The friends of those heads placed the blame squarely on Blackstone, who’d done nothing more than the right thing.

“Why do you ask? Hoping to nose in the way you did the last time, with Satan’s Playground?” The retort didn’t come from Lily, but from Brandon, who had obviously been listening. Double damn.

“Cole,” Anspaugh said with a brief nod.

“I’m not sure you guys have thanked us enough for handing that case to you on a platter.”

Anspaugh’s body stiffened; he hadn’t liked taking somebody else’s leftovers, especially since the cyber playground had been belly-up before he’d gotten hold of the case. “Good thing you didn’t keep it yourselves. You mighta cost another teenager her head.”

Direct hit. Brandon ’s eyes narrowed behind his wire-framed glasses. Lily instinctively put a hand on his arm, though she felt the sting of the accusation, too. Because it was true. They hadn’t found the Reaper in time to save the last young woman who’d crossed his path. Her body had been found in the Pennsylvania woods a few days after her kidnapping.

“We were just leaving,” she said.

“Yeah, right. Let’s hit it, Tiger Lily,” Brandon muttered, snapping his gum as if he were trying to save his own tongue from being bitten off.

Anspaugh, pleased with himself for inspiring a reaction, turned his attention back to her. “You should stick around. We’re getting somewhere. It’s been a long trail, but we’re close to isolating Lovesprettyboys. We know his general vicinity; now we’re zoning in on his real identity.”

Lily had longed for that day for months. But now, she had another case to work. Her team needed her, and she wouldn’t have the time to help anyone else until the Professor was captured. “Keep me posted, okay? I’d like to hear how it pans out.”

His Cro-Magnon brow furrowed in confusion. Lily didn’t wait for him to ask why she was acting as if she had only an impartial interest. Her hand still gripping Brandon ’s arm, she tugged him toward the exit, not releasing him until they’d left the room.

“Asshole,” Brandon snapped.

“Yes.”

“Acting like Wyatt should hide and pretend he’s not even around anymore.”

“That’s exactly what some people want.”

Wyatt Blackstone had gone from rising superstar to ostracized outcast. After he’d blown the whistle and received public commendations, he had quietly been shoved into the Cyber Division. Handed a Cyber Action Team nobody thought would succeed, he’d been expected to keep his mouth shut and put in his time for the next twenty years until his retirement, never to be heard from again.

Fortunately her new boss wasn’t wired that way. He was given a job to do, and by God, he was going to do it.

“He should have gotten recognition after the Reaper case. Not to mention support and resources for the team.” Brandon sounded as frustrated as Lily felt when the subject came up.

He was absolutely right. But it hadn’t happened. Oh, they’d gotten credit for solving it, but the investigation hadn’t been deemed entirely successful. The team had known someone was going to be killed and had known how it would happen, yet they still hadn’t been able to prevent it. Plus, once they had identified him, the perpetrator had leaped out of the hands of justice by leaping into his own noose.

“So what’s with you and Anspaugh?” Brandon asked as they walked down the corridor. “You cheating on me? Messing around with somebody else’s hard drive?”

She laughed softly. Brandon was hot, but he was also young, probably no more than twenty-five or -six. Not to mention a player. Their relationship was strictly platonic, meaning she could appreciate his hotness without actually being burned and enjoy his playfulness without being played.

“Seriously. What’s up?”

“I’ve been lending a hand now and then on the Lovesprettyboys investigation.”

His trendy glasses couldn’t conceal the sympathetic look in his eyes. Brandon knew Lily’s story; everyone on the team did, except the new guy, Lambert. “I see.”

Immediately defensive, she explained, “I asked Wyatt if I could work it on my own time before we caught the Reaper.”

She should have known Brandon wouldn’t leave it alone. One brow arched in frank disbelief. “And he said yes?”

Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she hesitated before replying, “Yes. He did.”

He pressed harder. “Recently? Even after the site went dark and the investigation turned to the users of it, not the owners?”

She didn’t answer. Here was where it got particularly sticky.

“I get it. And begging forgiveness is easier than asking permission?”

“Something like that.” She didn’t ask Brandon to cover for her. She wasn’t totally sure she’d done anything wrong, but just in case, she wasn’t about to drag him into it with her.

“Okay. I guess you know what you’re doing. Please, though, don’t let it get to you.” His handsome face growing more serious, he added, “If it starts to get in your head, promise me you’ll walk away.”

A laugh, small and bitter, escaped her mouth. “Oh, my friend, you don’t even want to know the kinds of things that go on in my head.”

She began walking again, telling him without words the subject was closed. Though Lily appreciated his warning, and knew it came from a good place, she was far beyond being warned. He hadn’t worn her shoes, lived what she’d lived. Few people had or ever would in their lifetime.

I’m doing okay. As long as I have the job, I’m fine.

Yeah. The job. It kept her moving forward, one foot at a time, one case at a time, one scumbag at a time.

There would be more than that someday. There had to be. They said after every nightmare came another dawn, and Lily Fletcher believed it.

She had to. Because God help her if it wasn’t true.

Sixteen and dead.

Sixteen and murdered.

Sam couldn’t speak for a moment after the FBI special agent in her kitchen broke the news. In fact, she couldn’t quite breathe. Or hear. Or think.

Rising from her chair, she walked as if in a daze to the sink. She leaned over it, turned on the faucet, and splashed cold water on her face, needing to clear her head and get a grip on her emotions. Sam kept her back to the man whose professional expression had not entirely hidden his sympathy. He knew she had barely known Ryan Smith. Yet he also knew she was devastated by his death. Which said either that the man had very good intuition, or that Sam was very bad at disguising her feelings.

“Are you all right?” he asked from behind her.

Sam nodded, saying nothing as she grabbed a paper towel and dried her face. The cold water had snapped her out of her moment of shock, though she didn’t turn around right away. She wanted a little more time, a second or two to pretend she had merely imagined a nice young kid she knew had been murdered.

Then she remembered something. “ Wilmington.” She spun around. “I saw a story blurb online about missing Delaware teens found in a frozen pond.”

He nodded once, confirming the suspicion.

She shuddered. What a horrible way to die. “How can you be so sure he didn’t fall through the ice? How do you know he was murdered?”

“Trust me.”

Two words she never wanted to hear coming out of a man’s mouth again. “I don’t even know you.”

“I mean, trust me when I say there is no way it was an accident.” His jaw flexing, he bit out a reluctant explanation. “They were bound.”

She closed her eyes briefly as her stomach churned and her throat tightened.

“They,” she mumbled, acknowledging the rest of it. “Were they random victims? Or was the other boy someone Ryan knew?”

“His best friend.”

Two teenage boys. This was more awful by the moment. “His friend-not the friend he was writing to ask me about? Not the one who was being taken in by an e-mail scheme?”

Agent Lambert nodded, his sympathy still evident. And suddenly she realized why he was here. Why he was asking these questions. Why he had come to her. It was more than the fact that they’d exchanged a few e-mails. Much more.

“My God. Were they killed by whoever was trying to scam him?”

He didn’t answer her question, countering with several of his own. “Is there anything else you can remember about your interactions with Ryan Smith? Did he mention even in passing where he might be headed that night or who he was meeting?”

“That night?” she asked, gulping as she realized the hits hadn’t stopped coming. “The night he IM’d me?”

“Yes.”

She shuffled to her chair and sank onto it. Like most people, Sam read the news; she was aware awful things happened to people every single day. She’d been touched by tragedy herself, with the accidental death of her father when she’d been only eleven.

But these were just kids. Nice, friendly kids whose only crimes had been gullibility and loyalty. Kids who’d ended up on the bottom of a frozen lake, never to go to their senior prom or set off for college or meet the right girl and get married. All that possibility-gone.

And if she hadn’t gone out for a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, and some damned ice cream, and had been home to answer Ryan Smith’s instant message, they might be alive today.

“There’s nothing you could have done,” Lambert said. He moved behind her, but she didn’t turn around, not even when he dropped a hand onto her shoulder and gently squeezed.

It was the first intimate touch she had received from a man in almost a year.

Even Uncle Nate-her late father’s partner in the force, whom her mother leaned on for everything except romance-did nothing more than shake her hand when they saw each other. As if he recognized the mental barricade she had erected between herself and any man.

This man hadn’t seen that barricade. And Sam found herself going very still, trying to decide how she felt about it.

When she’d pictured being touched again by a male of the species, she’d had typical divorcée daydreams. Running into her ex and his skank-ho with Josh Duhamel on one arm and Johnny Depp on the other. That would be good. Not this. Not comfort from a complete stranger.

But then, never in her darkest dreams had she envisioned getting caught up in a double murder investigation, or that her heart would feel on the verge of breaking over a sweet teenager she barely knew.

“You can’t blame yourself,” the agent said, his hand still heavy and warm on her shoulder. “The scam was convincing. I think the other boy would have gone no matter what you said, and Ryan would have tagged along with him. They had that kind of friendship.”

She nodded, appreciating the words, knowing they could be true. She had Tricia, her own through-thick-or-thin friend, and they would do anything for each other. So maybe her being home and trying to talk Ryan out of going with his buddy by IM wouldn’t have changed a thing.

But maybe it would have.

“You okay?”

Sam tore her thoughts off the dark imaginings of the boys’ final moments and became more aware of the pressure of his strong hand on her shoulder. It didn’t feel threatening or inappropriate. This man was a stranger, however. Besides, she had spent the last several months telling herself she would never lean on another man again.

Still, the small bit of human connection felt nice. Very nice.

Before she could say a word, a sharp knock intruded from the front of the apartment. It was repeated a split second later, the impatience of the person audible in the hard punctuation of knuckle on wood.

Agent Lambert stepped away. Looking up, Sam saw a quick frown cross his face and knew he regretted stepping out of professional bounds, even if only for a moment. Sam couldn’t bring herself to regret it, though. The quieting touch had existed long enough for her to swallow down her emotions and stop herself from bursting into tears at the utter senselessness of Ryan Smith’s murder.

“I’m sure that’s my partner.”

“I would bet she’s going to be in a bad mood,” Sam said, glad for the distraction. “No way did she get off without a ticket.”

“We’re law enforcement on official business. He might have made her jump through a hoop or two, but there’s no way she got cited.”

Maybe. But those hoops had probably reached his not-petite partner’s chin.

Leaving the kitchen, she went to the door and opened it. The attractive female FBI agent wore a scowl and her lips were thin. “Special Agent Jackie Stokes,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Sorry for the disruption.”

Sam shook it, liking the other woman’s strong grip, not to mention the look of intelligence in her brown eyes. Sam suspected the gruff Agent Stokes was an excellent foil for her too-handsome-for-his-own-good partner. Stokes could undoubtedly intimidate a suspect with her clipped tone and hard stare. Just by virtue of his looks, Lambert could probably say please and have any woman ready to spill her guts about anything he asked.

Except her. She was immune to anything resembling charm. She’d had an inoculation the size of a two-liter bottle of Coke injected into her veins courtesy of her ex-husband. Masculine charm was no threat to her at all.

But niceness, like the comforting drop of a hand on a shoulder? Well, with too much of that she could be in trouble.

“I’ve filled Mrs. Dalton in on our investigation,” Agent Lambert said. He’d followed Sam into the living room, which seemed to shrink around the three of them.

Sam had liked the confined space after her divorce, liked having almost no cleaning to do, no monstrous, five-thousand-square-foot house to take care of anymore. That, however, was before she’d realized she’d be entertaining FBI agents in her dinky city apartment.

“Coffee?” she asked Agent Stokes, who had removed her long overcoat and shivered lightly. The woman nodded once.

Going to pour her a cup, Sam half listened from the kitchen as the male FBI agent filled his colleague in on what he’d learned since his arrival. Special Agent Stokes appeared as interested in the bogus-check angle as he had been, and even more in the instant messages.

Sam’s fingers tightened on the stoneware mug when she thought of Ryan’s desperate IMs that had gone unread. But she forced the emotion away, knowing there was no time to deal with it now. Later, when she was alone, she’d let herself dwell on the regret. On the guilt. Now, though, she needed to try to gain momentary absolution from the guilt in any way she could-starting by doing anything possible to help solve the boys’ murder.

By the time Sam returned, holding the steaming cup, the two agents were seated on her sofa, poring over an open folder and flipping through pages made yellow with sticky notes and file tabs. In their excitement, they’d shoved her clean laundry out of the way. It sat on the cushion beside Alec Lambert.

Perfect. Considering there was a plain, serviceable white bra sticking out of the pile, she couldn’t say that made her day. And she didn’t even want to think about whether either agent had read the front of the pink nightshirt that read, GRADUATE OF THE SCHOOL OF ALL MEN SUCK, a divorce gift from Tricia.

So stop living like a slob. She would. Starting the minute these two left. Which, judging by their intense conversation, they didn’t seem in any hurry to do.

“If Jason deposited the check, we’ll be able to find who sent it to him,” Stokes was saying, animated and visibly energized by the idea.

Sam grunted, and both pairs of eyes shifted in her direction.

Feeling intrusive, even though they’d made themselves at home on her couch and her laundry, she murmured, “The check would be fake. Fake name, fake account, coming from nowhere, going nowhere.” When they merely stared, she added, “I guess it’s possible he left a fingerprint; you guys would know more about that than I would. But from the sound of it, this killer’s not stupid, so I can’t picture him being so careless.”

“He’s not,” Agent Lambert muttered, sounding frustrated.

Almost wishing she’d kept her mouth shut, Sam quickly said, “Look, forget it; go after the check angle. I could be wrong; maybe he’s not as good at check fraud as most of these lowlifes are.”

“It’s that common?” Lambert asked, though, as a cyber crimes expert, he should know.

Sam laughed bitterly. “You wouldn’t believe how common. I could paper my ex’s house with the fake certified checks passed via Craigslist sales alone. There are warnings everywhere on the site, but people still fall for the ‘My secretary sent you a check for a thousand dollars more than the asking price by mistake. Please cash it and wire me back the difference’ line.”

“Sure.” Stokes appeared familiar with the scheme. “Then they cash it, send back the money, the check bounces, and the bank comes after them to repay it.”

“Exactly. If there was a good way to stop the fraud and trace the criminals who perpetrate it, you FBI types would be all over it already and would have a way to catch this murderer.”

The two FBI types exchanged a quick look, obviously hearing her icy tone. Sam couldn’t help it. The FBI had never been her biggest fan, even though they were on the same side, and, frankly, the feeling was mutual. They’d been no help to her family three years ago, when everything had gone so wrong.

Maybe she should thank them, though. If not for the callousness of the agents she’d gone to for help when her grandmother had been taken in by some ruthless Internet con men, Sam might not ever have launched her new career. She might not have become an Internet vigilante, the author of a best-selling book. And might not have been able to afford to tell Samuel to shove his alimony money the same place he’d shoved his broken marriage vows.

Not that she wouldn’t happily trade it all to have her grandmother alive and well today.

“So how would you suggest the authorities handle it?” Special Agent Lambert asked, sounding more interested than sarcastic.

“Education,” she replied. “And I am not all about lots of government intrusion, but subjecting the online auction and classified sites to some kind of vetting and oversight would be a good thing, rather than leaving them completely unregulated, free to be filled with thieves and, obviously, murderers.”

She sounded bitter because she was. Even three years after her grandmother’s death, her anger toward the con artists who’d contributed to it still sometimes threatened to choke her.

Agent Stokes frowned. “I’ve been working in the Cyber Division for years. You want to talk about education? I can’t tell you how often we get the word out. And there are big warning notices on these sites you mentioned. Only a fool would overlook them.”

Wrong thing to say. Sam’s spine went pole straight. “Or a lonely, trusting old person who has never dealt with the kind of high-tech deceit these bastards practice.” Realizing her personal feelings were coloring her comments, she quickly got back to the topic at hand, the reason they were here. Not her own history. “Or a bright teenager who thinks he’s too smart to ever be taken and has in his hand what looks like an incredibly real check with a lot of zeroes.”

The other woman nodded once, acknowledging the point.

Before Sam could say another word, the phone on her desk rang. She didn’t answer, not only not in the mood to talk to anyone, but unwilling to delay or inconvenience the agents who were trying to do their job. The sooner they left, the better. She wanted to be alone-needed to be alone to wrap her mind around the sad news Agent Lambert had brought her.

They both watched her expectantly, and when they realized she was ignoring the call, nodded in appreciation. Unfortunately, though, her answering machine wasn’t muted. So all three of them were able to hear Tricia Scott, her best friend since middle school, whose volume control had two settings: loud and earsplitting. “Girl, pick up! I know you’re there; don’t be all cyber silent on me.”

Oh, hell.

“I’ve got to talk to you. I met a guy last night, and he has a friend who is so hot he’ll make you want to-”

She lunged for the phone, yanking it to her ear. “I’m here, but I can’t talk.”

“You don’t need to talk; just listen. We’re goin’ out Friday night, and I won’t take no for an answer. ’Cause if you don’t get out and start getting a little, your girl parts are gonna dry up and fall off from lack of use.”

Across from her, Agent Stokes snorted, then bent over her coffee cup, her shoulders shaking. Her partner had lifted one brow, a small smile playing on those sexy lips.

Which was when she realized her answering machine was still recording, amplifying every word her friend had said.

“Oh, my God. Tricia, the answering machine is broadcasting everything you say, and I am not alone.” She hung up without another word, jerking her chin in the air, silently daring either of the two agents to so much as let their eyes twinkle. She had to hand it to them: They both managed to pretend they hadn’t heard a thing. Which gave her the strength to open her mouth to proceed as if nothing had happened.

Then her answering machine beeped loudly, indicating she had a message. And the female agent chuckled.

Sam closed her eyes, not knowing whether to laugh, cry, or get up and leave the room. Her emotions were a wreck; she felt like a Ping-Pong ball, bouncing from sadness to embarrassment, mourning to humiliation. She didn’t know how much more she could take before either bursting into tears or punching something.

Agent Lambert seemed to realize it. He somehow managed to go right back to what they had been talking about, not giving the phone call another moment’s attention. “You mentioned online classified sites,” he said, fixing those green eyes firmly on her face. “How often do you hear about crimes that don’t involve a certified check or money wiring, but physical assaults?”

Sam took a deep, even breath, following his lead and forgetting the call. Sitting at her desk, she replied, “All the time. People show up to look at a couch advertised online and find themselves the victim of strong-armed robbery. Or they’re trying to sell their gas-guzzling SUV and are carjacked. I hear from victims every single day.” She clicked her keyboard, quickly bringing up her own Web site. “I did a feature post on that issue six weeks ago, with tips on how to avoid being victimized. Starting with never going alone to see someone you’ve only met online. Whether it’s for a sale, a job interview, a dating service…”

Dating service. Her mother’s latest brilliant idea. God, if she went through with it, Sam was going to tie up the fifty-going-on-fifteen-year-old woman and lock her in the basement. The idea had upset her so much, Sam had done a rant about the dangers two weeks ago. Uncle Nate had even tried talking to Mom. He’d been a cop many years ago, and now as a judge he saw some awful stuff on a daily basis. But he’d had no more luck than Sam. Her mother simply had no yellow warning light in her brain; she was all green, all the time.

Kind of like Tricia.

“Job interview?” Agent Lambert said, exchanging a meaningful look with his partner.

Sam nodded. “Sure. There was a case about a month and a half ago of a woman killed when she responded to an online help-wanted listing.”

As if thinking in tandem, knowing they had gotten as much as they could out of her, the two agents rose. “We know,” Lambert said.

She sensed they knew a lot. A whole lot. But she wasn’t exactly in a position to ask them to share. And honestly, she didn’t want them to. Realizing she’d had a brush with one murder victim, however slightly, was going to keep her up tonight. She didn’t want to picture all the other ugly things these agents had to deal with.

“Here’s my card,” Agent Lambert said. Before he passed it to her, he grabbed an expensive-looking pen from his inside jacket pocket and scratched through the phone number, scrawling another. “This is my cell number. If you think of anything else regarding your interactions with Ryan Smith, please let us know.”

Agent Stokes blew out a huffy breath and tugged her own business card out of her pocket. “Here. The office number. Call either of us if you come up with anything else.”

Realizing Lambert had given her his personal number, Sam swallowed quickly. What was she supposed to make of that?

“I was recently reassigned and haven’t had time to get new business cards printed up,” he said, as if reading her thoughts and sending a gentle message of clarification.

His partner was less gentle. “Yeah, and he hasn’t even had time to memorize his new work number yet.”

Okay, clarified. Sam mentally kicked herself for the moment of wondering. Why should it matter, anyway? Even if the good-looking agent had wanted her to get in touch with him for private reasons, Sam wouldn’t necessarily do it.

Not interested. Nice touch or not.

Especially not since he’d just heard her best friend talking about her drying-up girl parts.

Agent Stokes tugged on her coat, nodded at Sam, and said, “Thanks for the coffee,” before heading out the front door.

Lambert began to follow, then paused to extend his hand. As Sam took it, she noted the sympathy still evident in his eyes. “I know you’re blaming yourself, and it won’t do any good to tell you not to. Logically, you’re smart enough to know there’s nothing you could have done. Emotionally, though, you’re not ready to believe it.”

Sam nodded once, wondering if she was usually so easy to read or if it was just this particular FBI agent’s forte.

“Remember, the man who did this is good at what he does, and his victims usually want to believe the line he’s selling them. I think you could have stood in the driveway and tried to physically block the other boy’s car, and he would have driven around you, his buddy Ryan Smith riding shotgun the way he had throughout their lives.”

Then, with a final encouraging nod, he walked out the door, letting Sam return to her solitary night. And her work.

The work, however, didn’t come easily. Sitting at her desk, she kept going over everything she’d been told, picturing those poor boys. Wondering yet again why people put themselves in such dangerous situations.

“Mom,” she whispered. Would her crazy, irresponsible mother really go through with her Internet dating idea? Hard to believe, but yes, Sam knew damn well she would.

Knowing she’d never be able to focus until she tried to do something, she grabbed her iPhone, wanting to talk to Uncle Nate about it. Since she never knew what his court schedule was like, she didn’t try just voice dialing. Besides, the middle-aged man liked to try out every new high-tech toy he could find, and texting had become his new “thing.”

Her thumbs clicking on the keypad, she typed, U there?

His response came less than sixty seconds later: Sure, kiddo. Whasup?

Any luck w/ Mom re e-dating craziness?

Talked 2 her again. Doubt she lstnd.

Sam gritted her teeth. Maybe we shld lock hr up amp; thro away key.

Better u thn me.

Yeah, her mother definitely had a mind of her own. Wl u keep tryng pls?

U got it! TTYL.

He even had the lingo down. Cute.

But her smile quickly faded. Yes, she had backup to help deal with her mother’s situation. If only she’d been able to do something about Ryan Smith’s.

Swiveling her chair, she faced her monitor again, pulling up the column she’d been writing before the FBI agents had arrived and blown a sad hole in her safe, normal day. Glancing it over, she realized it just wasn’t good enough. Though she hadn’t known him well, she owed Ryan something, if only a few words warning others against sharing his fate.

Sam certainly wasn’t stupid enough to reveal any information about an ongoing criminal investigation. Still, part of her needed to vent, to release some of the anguish and rage she’d felt since learning Ryan had been murdered. So when she put her hands on her keyboard, she did not add to those six hundred words she’d written before Alec Lambert had walked through her front door. She instead opened a blank document.

And ranted.