Eric Lustbader - First Daughter

"Not at all." Armitage thought a moment. "To begin with, he was a good-looking guy, but in an interesting way. Dark, smoldering-and charismatic, as I said. He was tall and slim. He was in good shape. He looked like he was in his late forties, but I got the feeling he was older than that, certainly in his mid-fifties."

Jack's mind was engaged on two levels. While he was using Armitage's description to build a mental picture of Kray, he was watching Alli for signs of anxiety or nervousness. After all, the man Armitage was describing had abducted her and held her captive for a week. But she seemed oddly detached, as if her mind was far away.

Armitage swallowed the last of the Coke, set the can aside. "I think he was actually popular with the women. The men felt they had to defend themselves against him."

"Did you know," Jack said, "that Ronnie Kray also goes by the name of Charles Whitman?"

"What? No. Of course not." Armitage looked and sounded genuinely shocked.

"Do you vet people-do background checks?"

"Sure. We don't want anyone with a record to be on our rolls. But frankly, it's rudimentary at best; we're all chronically overworked."

Jack nodded in sympathy. "I imagine he was counting on that. I doubt those two names are the end of Kray's deception." He turned to Alli. "What d'you think?"

"Alli," Armitage said, "you know this man?"

Panic gripped her with such force that for a moment she could scarcely catch her breath. "A friend of mine did," she squeaked. "Jack's daughter, Emma."

"I wonder," Jack said in a perfectly neutral voice, "whether you don't know him, as well."

Alli's panic escalated to an almost intolerable pitch. It was all she could do not to jump up and run out of the room. "Me?" He knows , she thought. He knows Kray took me. "I never met him."

"Haven't you recently been with someone who fits Chris's description of Ronnie Kray?"

Alli said nothing, but Jack observed a certain tension take hold of her like an invisible hand.

Jack shrugged. "Perhaps I'm mistaken." He turned his attention to Armitage, who had been following that byplay with a certain confused interest. "We'd best decide what to do with you and Peter. You two can't stay holed up here forever."

Alli was thrust back into the midst of her mental battlefield. On one side was Ronnie Kray, terrifying in his omniscience; on the other was Jack, her savior, who understood her in the same way Emma had. And thinking of Emma, she felt her friend's great strength and courage flow into her. Would Emma lie to Jack? Alli knew she wouldn't, so how could she herself do it?

"I was," she said faintly.

"Have you thought about how to get yourself out of this prison?" Jack said to Armitage.

Alli's guts were churning. "That was the man who took me from Langley Fields," she persisted.

Jack turned to her. "You don't say?"

Alli's expression was stricken. "I… I'm sorry. I know I should've told you sooner."

"I'm curious why you didn't." Jack knew it was crucial to keep any admonition out of his voice. He could see the terror shimmering in the faint sweat on her face.

Alli put her head down. "I was keeping Emma's secret. I thought if I said one thing, it would lead to the rest."

"But then you told me about Emma wanting to join E-Two. You could've told me about Ronnie Kray any time after that."

Alli wedged her hands beneath her thighs, her arms as straight as boards. "He said if I told anyone about him, he'd come after me and kill me."

"How would he know?"

Alli was crying again; she simply couldn't stop. "I don't know, but he knew everything about me, right down to what I did with a boyfriend, my doctors, what hospital I was born in."

Jack wanted to take her in his arms, but he intuited this was the wrong time, the wrong place. He'd read that victims of abduction or rape often react negatively to being touched, even when that's what they really want.

Alli panted as if she'd just finished a hundred-meter sprint. Emma , she thought wildly, please help me be strong . Then, with a start, she realized that she had Jack. In many of the important ways, Jack and Emma were alike, which was why she trusted him as much as she did, why she could talk to him on some level about her very private dread. "He's in my dreams. He's always there."

Jack felt his stomach contract. "What does he say? What does he want?"

She sobbed. "I can't remember." A tremor went through her like an earthquake. "Whatever he wanted, you got to me first-you saved me."

He could see how terrified Alli was of this man. How could she not be? He had held her entire life in his hands. Suddenly, he had a vivid mental image of the photos taken of her with a telephoto lens that had hung in the Marmoset's house, especially the one of her and Emma walking across the Langley Fields campus.

How, he asked himself, had Ronnie Kray-or whoever the hell he was-come to have all that info? Some of it, like the hospitals and doctors, was a matter of public record, but other things, like intimate details of her personal relationships, certainly weren't. If this guy was a spook, Jack could see it. But a civilian? He'd have to be psychic.

In the back of Jack's mind, his oddly aligned synapses had been playing with the 3-D puzzle he was assembling in his head. Now the puzzle turned in a different direction, and he saw the shape of a missing piece.

"Alli," he said with his heart pounding in his chest, "do you recognize the name Ian Brady?"

"Sure." She nodded. "He and his partner, Myra Hindley, were responsible for what were known as the Moors murders. They went on a two-year killing spree from, I think, sixty-three to sixty-five."

Ka-thunk! Jack could hear the missing piece fall into place. Proof that the man who abducted Alli, who killed her Secret Service detail, was the same man who, twenty-five years ago, had murdered the two unnamed men at McMillan Reservoir and, shortly thereafter, the Marmoset and Gus.

Jack had gone after the wrong man; Cyril Tolkan had been responsible for many crimes, but murdering Gus wasn't one of them. So how clever was Kray/Whitman/Brady to have used a hand-honed paletta to kill, knowing full well that it would lead investigators to the wrong man?

Come to think of it, didn't this serial killer use the same MO now, twenty-five years later? He'd left clues to lead investigators to FASR and E-2 and away from himself. Everyone had taken the bait-except Jack, whose mind was already hard at work fitting pieces of the puzzle together. At first, it simply hadn't felt right, and then, little by little, as more pieces of the puzzle appeared for him to manipulate like a Rubik's Cube, he had started to gain an inkling of his quarry.

Now he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt: This man was his personal nemesis. Kray had played him for a fool once; Jack would track him down this time, or die trying.

At that moment, his cell phone buzzed. He'd set it on vibrate before they'd left the house. He was getting a text message, just three letters: WRU. It was from Nina, but what the hell? Jack never texted, had no idea of shortcuts.

He showed the phone's screen to Alli. "What does this mean?"

" 'Where are you?' " Alli looked at him. "She needs to see you."

Jack thought a minute. Having slipped the Secret Service detail, it wouldn't do to show up at a meet with Nina with Alli in tow, and he certainly wasn't going to drop her off at the house, SS detail or no SS detail. They'd blown their coverage once; he couldn't afford to take the chance they'd do it again.

What location could he give Nina that wouldn't seem suspicious? He was about to ask Alli to text Nina back, but then reconsidered. It was odd for Nina to be texting him, rather than phoning. Given the specter of the Dark Car, Jack wasn't in any frame of mind to take a chance. He logged on to the Web, called up Google Maps. He already had several saved. Choosing the one he wanted, he sent it to Nina. It wouldn't show up as anything useful to potential eavesdroppers.