Lucy turned and couldn’t stop herself from gasping.
The other wall had photos of Danielle’s previous victims and their families. A stalker’s paradise. Photos of people having sex, but it was clear they were taken either through a Web camera or a zoom lens. Lucy grew increasingly uncomfortable, and then she recognized a much younger Andrew. Andrew with Nelia. Andrew with Justin. Andrew naked in bed with another woman.
Lucy couldn’t process any more when her gaze rested on a photo of her and Justin nearly twenty years ago. Playing at the park where Justin had been buried.
She heard Tim and Ken talking, but didn’t hear any words.
She remembered that day vividly. She didn’t realize how vividly until now—it had been the last time she’d seen Justin alive. The day he died.
*
Lucy sat in the sand and pushed the grains back and forth with her shovel. She didn’t feel good, her stomach hurt and her head hurt and she just wanted to go home.
Justin plopped down next to her. “Wanna play tag?”
“No.”
“Climb trees?”
“No.”
“Ask Santa for Christmas presents?”
She looked up at him and wrinkled her nose. “It’s June, months before Christmas.”
“I’m gonna ask Santa for a Nintendo. Or a Game Boy. I don’t know which one’s better. But if I got a Nintendo we could play together.”
“You should ask Patrick. He plays video games all the time. He knows about those things. He’s really smart.”
“Uncle Patrick said he’d help coach my baseball team. Isn’t that great? He said he’d come to at least one practice a week and help with batting. He had a three-sixty batting average last year. Daddy said he’ll probably get a major league contract when he graduates if he keeps it up. Wouldn’t that be cool? If he plays for the Padres? And we can get free season tickets? They do that, right? Give the players free tickets for their family?”
“I’d think they would,” Lucy said. She sighed.
“Hey, are you okay, LuLu?”
“I feel sick. But don’t tell my mom, because she’ll tell your mom and you’ll have to go home.”
“Grandma calls my mom nervous Nellie.” Justin giggled. “Nellie, because her name is Nelia.”
“I think it’s an expression,” Lucy said. “I’ve heard it before.”
“I think it’s funny.”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“I really want to go home, but I don’t want my mom to know I don’t feel good because then she won’t let me go swimming tomorrow. I don’t want to be stuck inside all day. But if you tell her you’re hungry or something, she’ll take us home.”
“You look green.”
“Do not.”
On the way home from the park, Lucy threw up in the bushes and started crying, and when they got home her mom took her temperature and it was 102. When Nelia called to say she was going to be late, Lucy’s mom mentioned in passing that Lucy was sick and in bed. Nelia asked Carina to pick up Justin and watch him.
And that was the last time Lucy had seen her nephew—her best friend—alive.
*
“Lucy, you okay?”
Ken was right behind her.
“Do you see something important?”
Lucy cleared her throat and squeezed her eyes shut. “I—dammit.”
She stepped out of the garage. She had to, her emotions were so overwhelming she almost didn’t know how to process them. It was dark; at some point the sun had set and only a faint blue was evident in the west.
She sat down on the ground and put her head between her legs. She didn’t even know how she felt. Rage? She had it. Sorrow? Yes, in spades. And helpless. Absolutely helpless, and she didn’t know why.
She felt seven again.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, but Ken came for her. “We can’t get into her computer. Nelson is calling in the cybersquad. There may be something that tells us where she went.”
“Did you find a gun?”
“No.”
“She’s going after the Fieldstones.”
“I just got off the phone with the two agents sitting on them. They took them home—they have an alarm system. All’s clear. They’re sitting out front keeping an eye on the place.”
“She has a plan. Something tipped her off—her ex-husband talking to her, seeing the agents pick up Kevin this morning. She’s circling around. You saw her den, and this … this obsession. How long until we get into her computer?”
“Hour, maybe two. I don’t have an estimated time when the ERT unit will be here.”
“I’d like to call an expert.”
“Your husband.”
“He’s worked with the FBI before, and we have a warrant to get into her computer.”
“He’s in San Diego, right?”
“He can do it remotely—I’m almost positive.”
“Call him.”
*
Lucy had Sean on speaker. He walked her through which cable to use to connect her phone to Danielle’s computer so he could hack into the hard drive. In less than five minutes, he’d opened her computer up to the FBI.
“That’s pretty damn amazing,” Ken said to Sean.
“Thank you,” Sean said. “What are you looking for specifically?”
“Any clue as to where she is now,” Ken said.
“Search histories? Purchases?”
“We have the airports alerted, but it would help if we knew if she bought a ticket. Does she have a cloud account and if so when was the last time she uploaded anything?”
“Not bad, Swan,” Sean said.
As they watched, the computer screen flipped through a bunch of programs and suddenly photos scrolled across the page. Lucy saw one of the two agents with Kevin.
“Stop, Sean.”
Ken said, “Well, shit, she was outside the grandmother’s house.”
“She saw the agents. They may have been discreet, but she knew.”
“Good news, bad news,” Sean said. “I can tell you that her phone is not operational—it’s set to sync with her cloud account every hour, and the last time it pinged was at four.”
“She called her husband at about four forty,” Lucy said.
“That’s an hour after these photos were taken. She called her husband? Okay, hold on a sec.”
The screen shifted and Sean was working within the operating system. A minute later a map popped up. “She made the call to her husband within a thousand feet of this point.”
“You didn’t hack—” Ken began.
“No, because she syncs her entire phone to her cloud account, which is cloned on her hard drive. All the data gets copied over. You just have to know where to look, then convert the code.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s why I get paid the big bucks,” Sean said.
Lucy zoomed in on the map. “Ken, that’s the Fieldstones’ neighborhood, and their house is in the middle of that circle. We have to get over there, she’s watching them.”
“Thanks, Rogan, appreciate the help,” Ken said. “You can write this all up for my report, right?”
“I know what you need. Lucy? You can disconnect your phone—I removed all security protocols on Sharpe’s computer so that your people can dig deeper.”
Lucy picked up her phone and took Sean off speaker. “I have to go.”
“Be careful. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”