“Ariel?”
“Yes, your Easter egg–colored girlfriend from New York.” Raynor tore away the duct tape that served as a gag, taking strands of pink hair stuck in the adhesive. “She was so worried about you that she showed up in Cascade Falls looking for someone who matched your description with the rather boring name of Bernie. Instead, she found one of my men. Mercenaries. You kill one, I simply hire another. I didn’t think you’d go back to the Falls, but you never know. And while I didn’t catch you, I did catch another little fish in my net, or rather one of my men did. She’s quite a loud fish too but a perfect way of keeping you in line, along with the chains.”
Her wary and suspicious blue eyes focused on the finger he wagged in her face. “Now then, scream again, little fish, and I’ll hurt you. And trust me when I say that I’ll enjoy it. Might even make a hobby of it. So let’s use our inside voices, shall we?” He closed the door, the overhead light going dark again. Back behind the wheel, he hit the childproof locks and we were on the road again. “And do keep in mind, Michael, while I can’t do much to hurt you in the more permanent sense without losing a large profit, to her I can do anything I want. My imagination in that area is vast and impressive.”
I didn’t face Ariel, not yet. I had a question first, the same question for both of them, but I asked Raynor first. “How did you find me?”
“Oh, I have a tracker too. I found the house in Laramie the same as you, but as I flew, while suctioning out my new tracheotomy—quite pleasant, thank you—I beat you. I saw the discarded chips inside the house and I knew you wouldn’t be far behind. I waited out of sight and shot your ‘borrowed’ SUV with a magnetic tracking disc. Hands-on operation, that’s what I’m about. And I don’t care for my mercenaries to know too much about what I’m doing. Then I followed you and waited for a chance at you alone, without your rather shady companions. Lucky me, I stumbled across one fairly quickly.”
Again, thanks to me. Now I looked at Ariel. Despite the dark and with the help of the occasional passing headlights, I could see that her usually smooth pink bob was a tangled mess. The faint glitter of light purple eye shadow and mascara was smeared. Her standard pink lip gloss was gone, the same pink as her short fingernails that decorated the hands that sat in her lap. The hands didn’t have much choice. Her wrists were restrained with the same plastic ties the police used. She looked lost, confused, and vulnerable . . . right up until the moment she lifted her bound wrists and smacked me hard across the jaw with them. “Liar!” Then she leaned back far enough to plant one purple sandal in my left ribs. “You are such a filthy liar, Bernie! Or is it Parker? That’s what they were calling you in that tiny little town. And this maniac is calling you Michael. So which is it?”
Strands of hair had fallen in her eyes and she blew them out of the way to gauge that perfect aim one more time. The sandal slammed me again. “When we get out of this, when I kick your brainiac ass, I want to know exactly what name to call you, and it damn sure won’t be Dr. Theoretical.”
She was petite and slender, but she could kick like a mule. With four inches’ reach thanks to the chains, there wasn’t much I could do about it either. She kicked me one more time before giving up to glare at me. I seized the moment of silence to ask her what I’d asked Raynor. “How did you find me?” Or rather, how had she found out where I had been before going on the run again?
“Oh, please. I’m every bit the genius you think you are and then some.” The tiny mermaid tattoo beside her eye seemed to flick its tail at me in displeasure. “You can bounce your Internet signal around the world a hundred times, but I can still trace it back to the source. It did take me six months. You were awfully thorough, but I have a brother who hacked the Pentagon when he was eleven.” She gave me a last disgusted glance, then used her fingers to awkwardly try to smooth out her hair. “I’ve known you didn’t live in Texas forever, but you seemed like such a good guy that I thought you might have your reasons to lie. And when you disappeared after a few weird e-mails and mentioned a family emergency, I started to worry.” She shifted shoulders under a sparkling top—I’d call it light green, but she’d probably call it sea foam. “So . . . I went for a surprise visit. Because I worried. Because I’m a good person.”