Deep Dark (22 page)

Locked.

Her heart lurched as she read the sign posted at eye level:
THIS DOOR LOCKED AFTER 9 P.M.

She darted a look upstairs as the door burst open. She glanced around, then dashed down a dim brick hallway. She reached another stairwell and tried the door. Locked.

More squawking noises, followed by low talking as
the security guard said something into his radio.

Laney ran down the hallway, following the exit signs in search of another way out. She rounded a corner. Another exit. Relief flooded her. She reached the door and noticed the sign:
FIRE EXIT ONLY
.

Footsteps in the hallway.

Laney shoved through the door, setting off an ear-piercing shriek. She was in an alley behind the building. She glanced around frantically and realized it wasn't an alley but a narrow parking lot surrounded by a tall metal fence.

She took off for the gate. The parking lot was empty except for a pair of rusty Dumpsters. Adrenaline flooded her system as the fire alarm screamed in her ears. She sprinted for the gate, spying the heavy chain securing it as she got closer.

“Crap!”

She hazarded a glance over her shoulder as the door opened and the guard burst out. His face was flushed as he barked into his radio, then took off after her.

Laney yanked on the wire mesh, creating a gap between the gate and the fence but not wide enough to squeeze through. She glanced at the top of the fence. No razor wire, at least.

“Hey! Freeze!”

Yeah, right. What was he going to do, throw his walkie-talkie at her? She kicked off her flip-flops, then grabbed hold of the wire mesh and clawed her way up the fence as the guard's footsteps slapped on the pavement behind her.

She reached the top and threw her leg over, managing to snag her T-shirt. Her heart was pounding. Her
cap fell off. But she was almost there. Just a few more seconds, and she'd be running for her car. She wouldn't look at the guard as she jerked her shirt free and threw her other leg over.

Almost there, almost there, almost there.

A loud
whoo
p
. A screech of tires.

Laney dropped to the pavement right in front of a police car.

•   •   •

Reed bumped into Jordan on his way out.

“Hey, we were just looking for you,” she said. “Come see what we got.”

Reed followed her into the computer lab where Veronica was seated in front of a screen. He leaned over her shoulder and studied the grainy video image.

“This is surveillance footage from Power Fitness,” Jordan said. “Based on the emails between April Abrams and Ian Phelps, we were able to identify the day of their last lunchtime rendezvous before Phelps supposedly broke things off.”

“He indicated it was back in June,” Reed said.

“That's right.”

He glanced at his watch. Two hours, and still he hadn't heard anything from Laney.

“Hey, we holding you up?” Veronica asked.

“No.”

“Working backward from that date,” Jordan continued, “we went back a week and checked the footage from all three nights when the victim visited her gym. This would be right before she allegedly told Phelps someone was stalking her or watching her at
her gym.”

Reed leaned closer. It was a view of a parking lot, and he recognized April's powder-blue BMW parked at the end of the row. Veronica pointed to a woman with a ponytail walking toward the car while talking on her phone.

“Here she is Monday night, leaving the gym.” She pointed to a dark green car. “And see this Volkswagen Beetle back here? This car pulled in right after she did, but no one got out. It's been sitting there more than an hour. Now watch what it does.”

Reed watched as April got into her car, talked on the phone for a few more moments, then backed out of her space and drove away.

The VW's lights went on. It slowly backed out of its space and left the parking lot in the same direction as the Beemer.

“What about the other nights?” Reed looked at Jordan.

“Same thing happens again two nights later, only this time she pauses before she reaches her car, like maybe she noticed the guy.”

“Zoom in on that car,” Reed said, getting excited now. A vehicle was a critical lead because it could be traced to a person.

“We already did,” Veronica said. “What you're seeing is as close as it gets without losing resolution. And we don't have an angle on the license plate or even a glimpse of the driver.”

“About all we can get from this shadow in the driver's seat is his height,” Jordan said, “which looks to me to be about average.”

Veronica replayed the footage. Reed straightened
up and crossed his arms over his chest as he stared down at the screen.

“That looks like an old-model Beetle,” he said. “Maybe a seventy-eight?”

“Good eye.” Veronica nodded. “It's a seventy-nine Volkswagen Beetle, forest green.”

“So assuming it
is
the killer who's following her here,” Jordan said, “that means we at least have his car now.”

“And you really think it's him, not just some guy who noticed her at the gym?” Veronica looked at Reed.

“The timing fits,” Reed said. “This is just a few weeks before the murder. And we know he likes to watch them. He got into her computer and installed spyware. I wouldn't be surprised if he was monitoring her text messages and emails, basically tracking her every move. He's probably jerking off in his car while he watches her.”

Veronica cringed. “What a sicko.”

“I'm no profiler,” Jordan said, “but the car seems to fit the pattern, too.”

Reed looked at her. “How's that?”

“Well, it's a seventy-nine VW Bug.”

He nodded. “Ted Bundy drove a Beetle.”

“Whoa, really?” She made a face. “I didn't know that. That's not what I meant. I'm saying it's an old car, practically a classic. And we know the murder weapon is a body hammer, so . . . you see what I'm getting at?”

“You think he's a car buff,” Reed said.

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Could be he fixes cars and whatever else. We know that he's technically inclined, right? Maybe that includes cars.”

“Yeah, maybe he's one of those tinkerer guys,” Ve
ronica said. “He was probably in the computer club when he was a kid. And the Lego club.”

“Hey, now. I was in the Lego club.”

They turned around to see Jay leaning against the doorway. He looked at Reed just as Reed's phone buzzed. He was hoping for Laney, but it was Erika's number.

Reed stepped out of the room and answered it.

“It wasn't me,” she said.

“What wasn't you?”

“You haven't seen the news?”

Reed checked his watch. “What channel?”

“All of them.”

He walked into a conference room and switched on a television. It was already tuned to a local news station. A blond anchorwoman sat at a desk giving a stern-faced report. The graphic over her shoulder proclaimed,
DATE NIGHT KILLER STRIKES AGAIN
.

“God damn it.”

“They're quoting a source close to the investigation,” Erika said, “and I'll tell you right now, I had nothing to do with it.”

“What's this ‘Date Night' shit?”

“I don't know. Apparently, the victims were all on some dating website.” She paused. “Is that true?”

Reed didn't answer, and he could feel Erika's irritation as if she were standing right there.

“Reed?”

He ignored her. The anchorwoman cut away from the reporter standing outside the police station to another eager young reporter standing at a different backdrop. Reed recognized the steps of the Clarke County Sheriff's Office, the very place he'd spent most
of last Saturday sifting through evidence.

They'd made the Olivia Hollis connection, damn it.

“They're reporting as many as four victims,” he said, reading the headlines crawling along the bottom of the screen. “Where'd they get that?”

“No idea. It must have come from you guys.”

“It didn't.”

“Don't be so sure. Could have been a beat cop or a lab technician. Who's this fourth victim you haven't told me about?”

“I don't know.”

“They don't mention a name,” Erika said.

“Maybe it's a stab in the dark. They figure it's a serial killer, so there's a good chance there are more. Makes them look like they're out in front on the story.”

“Or maybe they know something you don't?”

“Listen, I can't talk right now, Erika. I've got to go deal with this.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Right.”

“I mean it. This leak wasn't me, I swear. But I need to be kept in the loop. The mayor's under a lot of pressure here.”

“Yeah? And what's that like?”

“Skip the sarcasm, Reed. You're not the only one sweating over this. The mayor is, too. He's extremely concerned. It's a matter of public safety.”

“I think you mean voter safety.”

“I need to be kept informed, Reed. Are you listening to me? I can't do my job if I'm hearing everything for the first time on the evening news. Don't keep me in the dark.”

Reed hung up with her right as another call came
in. Hall. Jay walked over to Reed as he answered it.

“Novak.”

“You want to tell me what the hell's going on?” Hall demanded. “I just got off the phone with the chief, and
he
just got off the phone with Greg Sloan over at Mix.com. I thought I told you to leave that company alone, Novak.”

Reed didn't answer. He wasn't calling about the news report? He must not have seen it yet.

“We don't have one shred of confirmed evidence that that company's part of this thing. And then you guys go behind my back and go over there. Did you not listen to a word I said?”

Jay stepped closer. “Hall?” he asked in a low voice.

Reed muted the call. “He's ranting about Mix. What's he talking about? Did you go over there?”

“You didn't hear about Laney?” Jay asked.

Reed's stomach filled with dread. “What about her?”

CHAPTER 26

“Knox. Delaney.”

Laney jerked her head up. She was on the concrete floor of a room that smelled like vomit, her knees pulled tight against her chest. A heavyset woman on the other side of the bars was staring at her.

“You Delaney Knox?”

She nodded.

“Come with me.”

Laney got to her feet and picked her way through the crowd, trying not to step on any limbs. The door slid open with a
clink
, and she felt dozens of sullen gazes on her as she walked out of the cell.

The guard didn't say anything, just led her down a long corridor. Laney's jail-issued plastic shoes made squishing sounds against the concrete as she weighed the possibilities. She'd been printed and photographed, so now what? Would she go before a judge? Or maybe in the time-honored tradition of TV cop shows, she was about to get her one phone call.

A loud buzz made Laney's nerves jump. Another door slid open, and she was led into a narrow room beside a windowed chamber that looked like a tollbooth.

“Remove your shoes,” the guard droned. “Stand behind the line.”

Laney did as instructed, and the guard disappeared
back through the door, leaving her alone and barefoot behind a blue strip of masking tape. She glanced through the plexiglass window of the booth.

“Delaney Knox?”

She nodded, and the woman shuffled away. She returned with some papers, which she placed in a metal tray and shoved through the window.

“Sign by the X.”

The papers said “DISCHARGE” at the top. Laney scribbled her name.

“I'm being released?” she asked.

The woman looked her up and down with a bored, vaguely disappointed expression that reminded Laney of her sixth-grade PE teacher. She pulled the tray back through and emptied a brown envelope into it.

Laney's pulse lurched at the sight of everything they'd confiscated during her arrest: cell phone, car keys, a strawberry Jolly Rancher.

She snatched up the phone. No signal.

“Sign the receipt,” the guard instructed, and Laney scribbled her name again. But now her fingers were trembling. She hadn't even been to a bail hearing yet, and she was really getting out?

“Do you know why I'm being released?”

“No.”

“So . . . are the charges dropped or—”

“No idea.”

The woman jabbed a button, and another door slid open with a loud buzz. Laney followed a large male guard to a small hallway where an elevator was waiting, doors open. He directed her inside, then tapped a button and turned his back on her as they rode down.

Laney was expelled into a hallway where restless-­
looking people filled every available chair and bench. Bypassing all of them, she pushed through a set of double doors into the muggy summer air.

Laney stood for a moment in shock. Ninety-five degrees and ninety percent humidity had never felt so refreshing.

She whipped out her phone and stared down at it. She couldn't call her mom. Calling Reed was out of the question.

She called Ben. When he didn't pick up, she sent him an urgent text message, then shoved her phone into her pocket and looked around.

The jail was located near Austin's bar district, and the streets were dotted with groups and couples in varying states of inebriation.

Her phone chimed in her pocket, and she yanked it out.

“You've got to be shitting me,” Ben said.

“Where are you?”

“O'Toole's.”

“Can you come get me?”

“Now?”

“Yes!”

“Laney, seriously? I just met someone.”

“
Ben
.”

“Okay, okay. Sit tight.”

Laney didn't want to sit tight. She didn't want to sit anywhere near the damn police building or even stand beside it. She walked down some steps to the sidewalk, careful not to step on any glass with her bare feet. Her favorite flip-flops were back in the parking lot at Mix.

A man pushing a shopping cart filled with black trash bags eyed her from across the street. Laney stepped
closer to a lamppost and looked up and down the block, trying not to appear nervous. She felt numb. Dazed.

This night was surreal. She'd been frisked and cuffed and folded into a police car. She'd been photographed and fingerprinted and
strip-searched
and then relieved of all contraband in her pockets. Her stomach growled, and she dug out the Jolly Rancher, but sucking on it did nothing to calm her. Fear and anger roiled inside her.

The fear was from being deposited in a reeking jail cell with streetwise women twice her size. The anger was from being arrested in the first place on the orders of a damn rent-a-cop.

But she was angry at herself, too. In her rush for answers, she'd been reckless. She prided herself on not leaving a trace, digital or otherwise, when she conducted intrusions. She'd never been arrested before or even discovered, with the exception of the exploit against the kiddie-porn site back when she was in college, and she'd basically gotten away with that. In fact, it had jump-started her career.

But tonight she'd damaged her reputation. And something else, too, although she couldn't say precisely what. Laney paced back and forth in front of the streetlamp, trying to ignore the looks she was getting from people in the shadows.

Finally a black Nissan Xterra turned the corner, flashed its headlights, and rolled to a stop. She climbed in.

“Shit, Laney.”

“Hi.”

She glanced around, feeling a ridiculous wave of relief at being in Ben's messy front seat. She adjusted the air vents.

“What the hell happened?”

She looked at him. “I got arrested.”

“No shit. How?”

“Can we go, please?”

He shook his head and pulled into traffic, then shot her a look. She glanced at the side mirror and watched the police building recede.

She'd been
arrested
. The churning in her stomach started up again. Would her security clearance at Delphi be affected? She needed to talk to Mark.

And Reed.

Just the thought of him made her feel a sharp pang of panic.

“Where to?” Ben asked.

“Java Stop over by the Mix building. I need to pick up my car.”

He pulled into a turn lane and stopped at the light. She felt him looking at her.

“What happened to your shoes?” he asked.

“I lost them.”

“I've got some Tevas in back, if you want.”

She reached around and rummaged through the junk in his backseat—wadded T-shirts, fast-food wrappers, Frisbees. She found his sandals and slipped them on her feet, adjusting the nylon straps. They were enormous on her, but at least they'd work for the drive home.

Ben looked at her again. “You want to tell me what happened?”

“No.”

“What's with your arm?”

She glanced at it. A shallow cut along her forearm was caked with dried blood from where she'd scraped
it on the wire fence. She'd scraped her palms, too, when she'd landed on the sidewalk.

Ben reached in back and grabbed a bottle of water from the floor. He handed it to her, then fished a stack of Taco Bell napkins from the console.

She cleaned herself up, feeling guilty for not talking to him right now. But she wasn't sure she could keep her voice steady, and the only thing more humiliating than calling him to pick her up from jail would be crying in front of him.

He wended his way through traffic until they reached Java Stop, which was shut down for the night.

“It's gone,” she said inanely. She looked up and down the street, and her gaze landed on the sign posted on the side of the building:
NO OVERNIGHT PARKING. ­VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED.

She muttered a curse.

Ben sighed. “Where to now? Impound lot?”

That was above and beyond, even for someone she'd rescued from bars on more than one occasion.

“I'll deal with it tomorrow. Just take me home.” She glanced at him. “Please.”

They drove in silence, and Laney gazed out the window, struggling with her emotions. Everything was caving in on her—her job, the case.

Reed.

“Does your boyfriend know?”

She looked at him. “He isn't my boyfriend.”

“Right.”

She stared out the window again, feeling another kind of tension in the car now. This was the problem with not having any close girlfriends. Maybe she should have called her mom instead of Ben. But
she really, really hadn't wanted to see the look on her mother's face as she picked her daughter up at a police station. Her mom was tough, but she was still a mom, and she'd go into a tailspin of worry and tell Laney her life was out of control.

Maybe it was. Laney watched the restaurants and storefronts whisk past. If she were normal, she'd spend her weekends bar-hopping and having pointless conversations and hooking up. But she wasn't normal, and all she ever did was work. It was all she cared about. And she loved the Delphi Center. She was a loner by nature, but her work was often collaborative, and Delphi forced her to get outside the walls of her comfort zone, forced her to interact. She couldn't imagine having her security clearance pulled or being fired because of such a stupid mistake. How had she been so careless?

The streets of Austin flew by. Tears stung in her eyes, and she didn't know why. She wasn't a crier. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so undone.

Yes, she could.

After her attack, she'd felt this way. She'd been shaken and anxious and plagued with self-doubt all the time. Nothing had felt right to her, not even writing code. It had taken her months to come out of the funk. She thought she'd left it behind her, but this case was bringing it all back—the emotion, the uncertainty, the restless nights.

The fear.

Maybe Reed was right and she should stay away. But she didn't want him to be right. She wanted to prove to him and herself that she wasn't in over her head, that she could contribute something valuable. Something necessary. Something no one else could.

At last, they reached Laney's street. The sight of the familiar porches and cars calmed her nerves a little, and she took a deep breath as Ben slowed in front of her sidewalk.

“Thank you for getting me,” she said.

“No problem.”

“Sorry for ruining your night.” She looked at him. “I owe you one.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

She rolled her eyes and shoved open the door just as a pair of headlights came up behind them.

Ben checked the rearview mirror as a pickup pulled over behind his SUV. “That him?”

She sighed. “Yes.”

“Good luck.” He flashed her a grin. “See you Monday.”

She got out and closed the door, and Ben lowered the window. “And don't forget my shoes.”

Reed got out of his truck and slammed the door, watching as Ben sped away. He walked over and glared down at her, hands on hips. His sleeves were rolled up, and his thick hair was mussed, as though he'd been combing his hand through it all night.

Laney looked him up and down. “What, no dinner?” She turned and walked up her sidewalk. He followed.

Inside she silenced her alarm and made a beeline for her kitchen. She poured some food for Baggins and crouched down to pet him as he hungrily attacked his bowl.

She stood up, and Reed was leaning back against the sink, watching her. His face was taut, and she could feel the anger emanating from him. She took down a glass from the cabinet and reached around him to fill it with water.

“Drink?” she asked.

“No.”

She guzzled the water, which helped soothe the lump in her throat.

Reed closed his eyes and tipped his head back, like he was counting to ten silently.

Then he looked at her. “What part of ‘stay the fuck away from this' did you not understand?”

“It's not a big deal.”

“No?” He looked incredulous.

“Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor.”

“That's not the point, and you fucking know it. Do you know how many favors I called in to get you released tonight? I had to argue with the goddamn chief of police. I had to
defend
you, as if you had some legitimate purpose over there.”

“I never asked you to do that.”

“Yeah? Well, when that arrest magically disappears from your record, you have me to thank.”

She set the glass on the counter. “Don't you even want to know what I found out?”

“No.”

She eased closer and watched his jaw twitch. He gazed down at her, and she could feel the frustration coming off him in waves.

“Fine.” She turned away, but he caught her arm, and she felt his long, strong fingers burning into her skin.

“What'd you find?”

She took a deep breath. “A keylogger.”

“A keylogger.”

“Yes, a hardware-based keylogger.” She arched her eyebrows. “Do you know what that means?”