Fear No Evil

Patrick sat down almost before she finished the invitation.

“I’ve been pinging constantly, trying to get a lock on the coordinates of the originating feed,” Kate said.

“Pinging?” Dillon asked.

Patrick translated. “It’s where one computer can see if another on a network is online. A ping is sort of like calling a phone number and hanging up when you get an answer. You know someone is there, but you don’t want to talk to them.”

Kate smiled at the analogy. “Trask is good-very good,” she said. “He has the feed going through numerous routers, using legitimate servers to mask his signal. I’m also working on the delay-there’s a full minute-thirty- second delay, I think. But again, it’s almost impossible to tell. The delay could be caused by one of the servers he’s moving data through. He’s sending the transmissions through a variety of hubs and nodes-virtually everything is a dead end.”

“Wow,” Patrick muttered. “Where’d you get this trace program? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I wrote it.”

“You?” Patrick was impressed.

“More or less. I improved it, I should say. The less you know the better. Quinn already told you I’m wanted by the government. Since they already want me for high crimes, a little hacking isn’t going to increase my jail time.”

Her words were light, almost self-deprecating, but there was a wistful quality that Dillon caught.

Connor spoke up. “But you think you might have found Lucy. Why are we standing here doing nothing? Let’s get off this damn mountain and find her.”

“Because I think it’s a trap,” she said.

“Why?”

Kate didn’t answer.

“You have coordinates, but you don’t want to do anything about it?”

“Do anything? What do you think I’ve been doing for the last five years? Trask killed my partner. He’s been killing women for sport for years. He’s a genius and he’s not going to let me find him until he wants me to, unless I can somehow outmaneuver him. He wants me to walk into a trap so he can kill me. He’s gone underground because we have his prints-because of me. We have a physical description, and I think he’s too vain to change his appearance. He’s vindictive and powerful. He’s not going to simply let me find Lucy, or any of his prey.”

Patrick said, “But here you have your program-unbiased-tracing the feed through dead ends and nodes and landing at a live spot. The trace looks exactly the way it should look.”

“I know the program seems to have found the live feed, but Trask plays a game of cat and mouse. The coordinates are the cheese.”

“We have to do something!” Connor stared at the screen, watched Lucy helpless and fearful.

Dillon spoke. “Kate, she’s our little sister. We have to follow every lead.”

“By the time you get to that island, it’ll be too late to get back here and retrace the steps. If it’s a trap, or a phony lead, we’ve lost all the time we have. You can do what you want. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You don’t have to. She’s not your sister. But we’re going.” Connor looked from Dillon to Patrick. “Right?”

Dillon was torn. He wanted to go to the island the coordinates pointed to. Lucy had said she was on an island.

But Kate was the one with experience tracking this killer. She’d seen his face, been inside his head. Could Dillon trust Lucy’s life to Kate’s instincts?

Kate spoke up. “I sent the information to Quinn. He’s looking into the data now.”

“We can’t wait for the FBI to act,” Connor said. “Not when we’re this close. What if he rushes it? What if this Trask knocks time off Lucy’s clock, doesn’t give us the full forty-eight hours to find her?”

Dillon glanced at the countdown.

33:50:02. 33:50:01. 33:50:00. 33:49:59.

His heart raced twice as fast as the countdown. He didn’t want to wait, but he trusted Kate’s instincts-on this, on understanding this killer.

“He won’t jump the clock,” Dillon said. “The countdown is part of the thrill.”

“And you’d bet Lucy’s life on your psychoanalysis? You haven’t even met him!” Connor shouted.

Dillon took the jab, understanding his brother’s frustration. “It’s the anticipation. He’s working himself up toward the final act.” He turned to Kate. “Has he ever changed the countdown?”

“Only Paige,” she said quietly. “She had twenty-four hours, not forty-eight. But that was a completely different situation. He…he had another girl, killed her when he captured Paige. We were close and he knew it. So the countdown was the same, he just killed two women.”

“How did you track him then?”

“He wasn’t as cautious then as he is now. We tracked him through his corporation, Trask Enterprises, which has several online pornography sites.”

“What happened to the corporation?”

“The board of directors testified that they didn’t know anyone named Trask, that Roger Morton was the owner/operator as far as they knew, and that someone from the outside had hacked into the company’s equipment. We didn’t catch anyone lying, but that’s not to say someone didn’t. Soon after, several people disappeared from the company. The corporation lost all its assets, but ultimately it owned the domain names and rights to all the big online porn sites and was able to refill its coffers. Quickly. Trask operates solely outside of Trask Enterprises, at least for now. The FBI is still tracking the company. Spending too much time doing it, in my opinion.”

“He’s bringing in money from all over the world. He’s promised these people something,” Dillon said. “He’s not going to renege on his deal with them. He’ll lose face, and they won’t trust him down the road.”

“But if Lucy is on that island, we can get her out before anything more happens to her.” Connor’s voice cracked. “You can stay, Dillon, but I’m going.”

“Go,” Kate said. “I never asked any of you to come here. I didn’t want anyone to find me. You’ve already screwed me. As soon as this is over, I’m going to have to find another place.”

“You’re already giving up,” Dillon said.

“I am not giving up.”

“You’re talking about when this is over. When Lucy is dead,” said Dillon. “But if we do stop him this time, you won’t have to hide anymore.”

“You don’t understand. Quinn didn’t tell you everything.”

“You might be surprised. He’s been protecting you. You have friends you might not even know about.”

Kate shook her head, not wanting to hear what Dillon had to say. And he couldn’t push. He didn’t have time to sweet-talk her, to coddle her and tell her everything was going to be just peachy. He didn’t know if he believed it himself. But if they didn’t do something, he’d never forgive himself.

Patrick spoke up. “I think these coordinates are valid. If we jam, we might make it to Hidalgo in four hours, maybe less, charter a plane and get to Baja in another four hours. That puts the countdown at twenty-five hours, giving us time to set up a rescue effort. It’ll take the feds nearly that long to get permission for an op on foreign soil. We can meet them there.”

“Do what you feel you must.” Kate rubbed her eyes as if she had a fierce headache. “A few things you need to know. First, Trask will wire any facility to explode. He did it with Paige and others. Second, he kills on sight. He will give you no time to negotiate or plead. He shot Evan at point-blank range without hesitation.”

“Who’s Evan?” Dillon asked.

Kate didn’t answer. “Third, he has four to six men surrounding him at all times. Trask doesn’t like to lose his men, but they are casualties of war as far as he’s concerned. He’ll leave the wounded behind, possibly even shooting them so they can’t talk. I doubt he trusts any of them, even Roger Morton, who’s been with him since the beginning.”

“We should wait until Quinn Peterson returns his assessment.” Dillon remembered what Peterson had said about the last false lead and the lives that had almost been lost. Lucy was already in danger. Dillon couldn’t send his brothers on a deadly mission without additional support.