Arch Enemy (18 page)

T
he sun projected reddish patches through the tree outside onto the wall of Simon's room. He paced around Alex as she bit her nails, wracking her brain. They had cracked open a window, letting in cool fresh air against the excessive heat of the radiator. Lower temperatures, she insisted, led to clearer minds. Other students were shuffling off to dinner, but Simon and Alex had more important things on their minds.

Plus, Alex wasn't too eager to run into Katie.

“How do we even prove something like this?” asked Simon. “How can we if Katie won't talk?”

“This can't have been his first time,” said Alex. “It never is.”

“Which means there are other victims. Other people who might be more willing to talk.”

“We have to find them,” said Alex.

“And how do we do that?”

Simon did a headstand on his bed, feet almost reaching the ceiling.

“It's tough,” he said. “How do you find victims who didn't come forward in the first place?”

“What would they have in common? They were girls. They drank. They were drugged, which means—”

“That a number of them probably ended up at the student health center,” Simon completed. “But medical records are confidential. It'd be hard to gain access to them. Plus, I think it's a felony.”

“But visitor logs might be easier to get.”

“As long as they still exist,” said Simon, still upside down, blood rushing to his face.

“I'm guessing they're at least scanned into a digital database. I don't think they bother to do it just to throw them away later.”

“Let me see what I can find,” said Simon, flopping onto his bed and reaching for his computer. “We need a login. Maybe I can program a workaround that'll give us access. It'll take a while, until I can figure out the subroutines and I might need you to—”

Alex held up a finger.

“What—”

“Shhh.” She looked something up on her computer, then picked up Simon's room phone and dialed.

“What are you—?”

“Shut it. It's ringing.”

Someone on the other line picked up. “Health Center, this is Donna.”

Alex made her voice nasal and high-pitched. “Hi, Donna, this is Regina, in IT. We're running a security check, and we seem to have a problem with your account, so Albert asked me to give you a call. Have you had trouble logging in?”

“No, I haven't had a problem at all!”

“Maybe our information here is out-of-date. Would you mind telling me your login and password?”

“Sure, no problem!” she said, chipper.

Alex wrote down the data as the woman gave it to her.

“Thank you so much,” said Alex. “You've been really helpful.”

“Be sure to give me another call if there are any problems.”

“Will do!” Alex said, and hung up.

“Here you go,” she said, laying the sheet of paper in front of him.

Simon was just staring at her, speechless. “You are really something else.”

“The weakest link is always human,” she said. “Now, shall we find our patient logs?”

L
ily spotted Scott from the corner booth, where she had been sipping on her tea for the past forty minutes. His eyes scanned the room, and as soon as he spotted her he made a beeline to her, forehead furrowed.

“Scott.” She stood and embraced him, holding on to the comfort of his warmth. He let her, sensing that she needed it. When she released him, he got his first look at her, unshod and naked under a hotel bathrobe and coat, congealed blood peeking out on her exposed skin.

“Lily, are you bleeding?” His voice was laced with urgency.

“No, it's not mine. You mind spotting me a couple of bucks for the tab?”

He fished for his wallet in his pocket and set down a ten-dollar bill. “Let me get you out of here.”

Arms around her, he led her to his Infiniti (parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant), and held the door open for her. As he shut the door, she felt relief wash over her. His car felt like the safest place in the world.

He took off down Battery back toward Market Street.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I want to tell you everything,” she blurted. “But now I just need to go somewhere else. Please. Can we just get out of here?”

“Of course. I'll take you to my place.”

 

Lily sat on Scott's bed, wrapped in a woven woolen blanket. She was wearing one of his dress shirts—he was skinny, but it was still baggy on her. She looked out the gorgeous bay windows, which overlooked the ocean, tinted by the light of the setting sun. It was a spectacular view, in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country. The perks of being a multimillionaire, she supposed.

She absently ran her fingers along where Baxter had choked her. It felt raw. She wondered how bad it looked. She didn't want to look at herself in the mirror to find out.

“The cleanup crew found no sign of Baxter or the attacker.”

That's what Bloch had told her when she called. Someone else had gotten there first. No sign of the murder. Nothing in the security cameras. Everything, physical and digital, had been scrubbed clean.

Scott returned from his kitchen holding two cups of hot cocoa.

“I hope Swiss Miss is okay,” he said with a bashful chuckle. “I don't really keep any full-time staff. I was never very comfortable with that sort of thing.”

She smiled, taking the warm mug in her hand. It grounded her and made her feel secure. And it smelled like home. “It's wonderful.”

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Better. It feels good to be here. It feels safe.”

“You don't even know me that well.”

“And yet.” She just smiled as she looked into his baby blue eyes, half-hidden behind his blond curls.

“I ordered some clothes for you,” he said, fumbling the moment. “Should be here in a couple hours.”

“I didn't know you could get clothes delivered like a pizza.”

“This is Silicon Valley. You can get anything delivered like a pizza. I went with comfy over sexy, considering, you know.”

“Good call.”

He sat next to her in bed. “So,” he said. “You said you had things you wanted to tell me?” He must have seen her countenance darken because he backpedaled with his next words. “It's fine, you really don't have to.”

But he had come to her rescue. She couldn't keep doing this.

“Are you sure you want to know?” she asked. “You're not getting ready to hightail it away from me as soon as you can?”

“Do you see me pushing you out the door? Come on. Try me.”

“There's a reason I never wanted to talk about work,” she said. She looked down. “Shit. You know how you put something off because you know it's going to be awful, and the longer you wait, the worse it gets?”

This seemed to put him on edge. She felt him move his body away from her, maybe without even being aware of it. “I know the feeling,” he said, just a little colder than before.

“I'm afraid,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “Because you've been wonderful. I'm afraid you'll kick me out, and I'm afraid of what you'll think when you find out. That you think I'm awful and dishonest.”

He bit his lower lip. “Are you married?”

“No,” she said. “That's not it. It's about my work. And with what happened today. And that has to do with the fact that I haven't exactly been exclusive with you.” She looked at him to gauge his reaction, but there was no change.

“Are you a prostitute?” he said, then caught himself. “A sex worker?”

She bit the inside of her cheek until it bled. “What if I was? Would that be it for you?”

He rubbed his hand against his temple, mussing his hair. “I hadn't really thought about it before.”

“So it doesn't make you hate me that I haven't been faithful?”

He chuckled at this. “I live in Silicon Valley,” he said. “Half my friends are polyamorous, free love types.”

Lily looked out into the setting sun. “It really is a bold new frontier, isn't it?” She looked back at Scott. “Then you'd really be okay with that?”

He hesitated, looking out the window. “You know, when we consider questions like this in the abstract, we don't really think about the real person they might apply to.” He turned his gaze back to her. “But now that it's here, and I know you, it doesn't feel like a problem at all.”

She couldn't restrain a smile. It was something. Not everything, but something.

“Did a client do that to you?”

“That's where it gets a little complicated. I'm not a prostitute, really. I'm—I guess you could call me something like a spy.”

His eyes widened and his eyebrow visibly tensed. His expression read as something between bemusement and surprise.

“Like, MI-5?” he said. “Spying on . . .
this
country?”

“No! No, nothing like that.” She emitted a nervous laugh. “No, we're an American outfit. Sort of clandestine. Honestly, the less you know about the details, the better.”

“I see.” He sounded incredulous. She was losing him.

“It's true,” she said. “The older guy, from the night we met. He was a mark. High-ranking executive in a major corporation.”

“Is he the one that did that to you?”

Her hand went to her neck. “Yes. He's . . . dead now.”

“You killed him?” She sensed the alarm in his voice.

“No! It was never part of the mission. Someone else showed up—I don't know who. But he killed Baxter—my mark. I only just made it out alive.”

He exhaled, staring into the middle distance. “This is a lot to take in.”

“I know.”

“Is your name even Lily Harper?”

“We use real first names,” she said. “Whenever possible. It's nearly impossible to fake a different first name. The response is too automatic, too ingrained. So my name
is
Lily.”

“But not Harper?”

“It's Randall. My name is Lily Randall.”

“Nice to meet you, Lily Randall. I'm Scott Renard.”

“So do you think we can start over?” she asked.

“Why? I think we're doing just fine this time around.”

She kissed him and he pulled her close, enveloping her in his arms.

“H
ere, I found one!” Simon jumped off the bed in excitement. “Adam Groener! Oh, never mind. Another football player.”

The window was closed now against the cold. People were milling about the first floor hallway of Prather House in the usual nighttime bustle. Alex scanned what seemed like the five-hundredth patient log, looking for Groener's name—for a girl he might have intimidated like he did Katie.

It had taken a little sniffing around, but Simon had found the logs in the system. The pages were scanned individually every day. “It's so much more work,” said Simon. “All because they don't take a few hours to implement a proper electronic system.”

“Lucky us,” she said.

“Unlucky us. You'll see.”

The unlucky part being that image files were not searchable by word, so that now they were stuck with scrolling through each sign-in sheet for the past six years one by one, looking for Coach Groener's name. It appeared plenty—but mostly it was to visit his players. They hadn't found his name associated with a single female patient yet.

“Maybe this is a red herring,” said Simon. “Maybe it was just a onetime thing.”

“He's done this before,” Alex insisted.

Simon lay down against his pillow. “But maybe it's a break with his usual MO.”

“We can only go on what we know,” said Alex.

“Maybe this is the wrong approach.”

“So many maybes with you,” said Alex. “Someone who doesn't know better might think you're stalling to avoid the work.”

“Well, what if there's a way to automate this task that I haven't thought of? I mean, maybe if we scan his signature and run a Bayesian probabilistic search with fuzzy—”

“I got one!”

Simon looked almost crestfallen that his scheming was cut short. “Woman?”

Alex nodded. “The name's Hillary Chen.”

“I'm looking her up right now,” said Simon. “She's graduated already, uh . . . three years ago.”

“Can you get me a number?”

“You want to
call
her? Like, now?”

“What the hell do you think this is all about, Burczyk? Get me a damn number!”

“All right,” said Simon. “That's easy enough. Here we go, LinkedIn profile. Cell phone. I'm messaging it to you right now.”

It popped up on Alex's screen and she dialed.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Hillary? My name is Alex Morgan, I'm a student at Springhaven University.”

“Oh?”

“I'm sorry to call out of the blue like this. I write for the
Inquirer
—you know, the campus newspaper. I'm investigating something that happened at one of the fraternities on campus. Phi Epsilon. I was hoping you might talk to me about similar occurrences that might have—”

“I'm going to stop you there,” said Hillary. “I don't know what you're talking about. Please don't call again.”

She hung up.

“What happened?” Simon asked.

“She hung up when I mentioned Phi Epsilon.”

“Too bad.”

“No,” said Alex. “It's a good sign. It means that we're getting somewhere.”

“Ugh,” said Simon. “I was afraid you'd say that.”

“Back to work, Burczyk.”

“I was afraid you'd say that, too.”