up.”
“My name? Why would my name enter into it?”
“I can’t reveal my sources.” It sounded like something a journalist would say.
Andrea gave her a sharp look. “Your sources. Oh, for God’s sake. You act so ethical, and yet you gained admittance to my home under false pretenses. To spy on me. To write one of your damn stories!”
“I was going to tell you-”
“When?”
“When we’d established a rapport.”
The woman snorted, a sudden sharp noise like a gunshot. Abby managed not to jump at the sound.
“Rapport. When you’d gained my trust, you mean. Fooled me into trusting you.”
“I guess so.”
“You people-you disgust me.”
“Could you put down the gun now, please?”
“I ought to shoot you dead, you little bitch.”
“I’m just doing my job.”
“Your job. Your job is to ruin lives. People like you have been after me for twenty years. For twenty years-do you know what that’s like, never to be left alone, never to have any peace?”
“I’m sorry,” Abby said.
“Ought to shoot you in your lying heart,” Andrea hissed, but there was no more passion in her voice, and the gun was lowering. “Your car is fine, of course.”
“Yes.”
“And when you used my phone to call Triple A-”
“I didn’t really make the call. I faked it.”
“You’re quite the actress, aren’t you?”
Abby didn’t answer.
“Get out. Get out of my house.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You think I’m a sideshow for your readers’ amusement? You think I’m a freak?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You do. You all do. Well, go and write about me. Go tell them I’m as crazy as they thought. Tell them I’m a psychopath. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Get out,” Andrea said again.
Abby got out. She didn’t look back until she was pulling away from the curb. She expected to see Andrea Lowry in the doorway or window, watching her go, but the door was closed, and the curtains remained shut.
Abby released a slow breath. “That went well,” she mumbled.
She’d managed to alienate the woman she was trying to befriend. Not that alienating Andrea Lowry was hard to do. She was afraid of people-reporters in particular. Had they really been after her at some point in her life, or was that just part of some megalomanic drama she was acting out?
Near the freeway entrance Abby pulled into a convenience store parking lot and dictated notes into the microcassette recorder she always carried in her purse.
“Hostile… paranoid… fixated on reporters. Claims they’ve been harassing her for twenty years. Has a gun-Colt thirty-eight. Keeps it in a kitchen drawer near the sink. She looked like she knew how to use it. And she was wearing a wig at the town hall meeting, so whoever she is, she’s afraid of being recognized. Afraid of a lot of things. And not likely to talk to me again.”
That was the bottom line. Her job was to get close to this woman, gain her trust. She’d failed.
Abby didn’t like failure. And she knew Jack Reynolds didn’t, either.
Still, she had more facts than she’d had before. She knew the woman’s name and address. Soon she would know much more.
Or maybe she wouldn’t. Information on Andrea Lowry turned out to be perplexingly difficult to find.
Nestled in the workstation in her bedroom, Abby had spent two hours on her computer, hopping from one Internet database to another. A reverse directory listed Andrea as the sole resident at the Keystone Drive address. More exotic research tools supplied the woman’s Social Security number, date of birth, and credit history.
She’d been at her current address for a little more than a year. Before that, she’d lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, for seven years. She’d bought the Chevy Malibu in Florida eight years ago. Her credit card accounts had been opened eight years ago also. Her driver’s license had been issued in Florida at the same time.
Before that-nothing. There was a prior address on file with some credit agencies, but when Abby ran a search, it didn’t check out. The address was real, but no Andrea Lowry, or Andrea anybody, had ever resided there.
Phony background information, and an identity that had appeared out of nowhere, fully formed. It looked as if somebody had reinvented herself.
Had she been Rose Moran before she was Andrea Lowry? And if so, why make the switch?
There were many imaginable reasons for a change of ID. Andrea could be on the run from someone. Ex- boyfriend, abusive husband, even a stalker of her own. Or she might be hiding from the law.
There was another possibility. Witness protection. Andrea could have testified against somebody, then gone into hiding with the government’s help. Maybe her identity had been created by the feds, who had moved her to Florida. Then for reasons of her own she had come west.
Hard theory to test, though. If Andrea had been an L.A. resident, Abby could have used one of her contacts in the LAPD to check her out. But the town of San Fernando had its own police department, and Abby had no contacts there.
Anyway, if Andrea was in witness protection, it wouldn’t be in the bailiwick of local law enforcement. It was a federal program.
Well, she knew a fed. Hadn’t kept in touch over the past year and a half, but now seemed like a good time to catch up.
Abby found the number in her address book, then called the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Denver office.
The time was eleven p.m. in L.A., midnight in Denver. A little late for a phone call, but what the hell. Tess would be glad to hear from her.
Sure she would.
5
It was like riding a wave, a swell of motion that expanded into a long curling comber arching upward, fighting free of gravity until it hit the shore and broke apart in a crash of spangled fragments, slivers of light.
“Oh, my God,” Tess said. “My God.”
On top of her, Joshua Green smiled in the darkness. “Sounds like”-his speech was punctuated by hard breathing-“a religious experience.”
“Definitely.” Her voice was faint and hoarse.
He straddled her a moment longer, making the moment last, then rolled clear and lay at her side. “Too bad we have to keep this a secret,” he said between gasps. “The women in the office might look at me differently if they heard your reports.”
“And why would you care how they look at you?”
“Hey, I’ve got to keep my options open, in case our relationship goes south.”
Tess punched him on the arm.
He grunted. “Ow. Watch it, boss.”
She liked it when he called her “boss.” The old-fashioned term, still in use in the FBI, was accurate, if not
