Allison Brennan - Stalked

Peter stared at it. He shook his head.

Suzanne then slid a picture of Kip Todd from Peter’s yearbook ten years ago. Kip had changed a lot-his hair was darker and he was heavier in high school.

“What about him?”

Peter stared and frowned. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

He shrugged. “I remember a short, pudgy kid when I was a freshman. We didn’t have any classes together, but his locker was near mine. He talked to me a few times, but I didn’t have friends and didn’t want to make any friends.” He looked at them. “My grandmother had just died. My mother was a slut. You’d think after everything that happened, how humiliated they were when their sex parties were exposed, that she’d clean up her act. Instead, my mom goes to one extreme and sleeps with every breathing male, and my dad goes to the other extreme and becomes a fire-and-brimstone-preaching dictator who says sex is evil. I missed my sister, but I missed her even more after Grams died.” He paused, looked at his clasped hands. “Which seems weird after five years.”

Lucy said, “It’s not weird.” She hesitated, then said, “When I was seven, my best friend-my nephew-was killed. He was practically my brother; we saw each other every day. Like Rachel, he was kidnapped from his bedroom. Senseless. I still miss him, and every once in a while, even now, I feel almost overwhelmed with loss. It comes and goes quickly. On the one hand, I want to hold on to that feeling because I want to remember him; on the other, it feels so real, so painful, I never want to feel it again.”

Peter seemed to find peace in her understanding.

Suzanne showed him a recent picture of Alexis. “Do you recognize this woman?”

“It’s Cami. But different.”

“But you think it’s the same woman.”

“I know it is. I loved her. She had lighter hair back then-I knew she’d dyed it, but I never saw her with brown hair. And her features are a little different-maybe fuller? Rounder? But it’s her.”

“Her name is Alexis Todd Sanchez.”

He frowned. “She’s married?”

“Divorced.”

Lucy considered something. She opened the file and looked at the birth records of Missy Sanchez. Alexis said she’d just turned four. That meant she could have been conceived in October, right before Alexis left Syracuse after allegedly putting the dead pig in Peter’s bed-Lucy needed Alexis’s medical records to know for certain.

Or they could call her ex-husband.

“Excuse me,” Lucy said.

Suzanne looked at her oddly, but Lucy slipped out.

Noah and Joe were watching through the one-way mirror in a room next door.

“What are you thinking?” Noah asked Lucy.

“The time frame-what if Alexis wasn’t the one who put the pig in Peter’s bed?”

Noah was skeptical. “She scrubbed down the apartment, lied about where she lived, was never a student. She lied about everything.”

“They were having sex. I think he’s Missy’s father.”

“That’s a big leap.”

“The timing is right.”

“She’s involved, Lucy. Even if Tony was poisoned in New York, or if his death was truly a coincidence, she attacked Hans.”

“I think she did both, no doubt in my mind. I think she’s as much involved in all of it as her brother. Except for Peter. I think she truly wanted to warn him, to protect him.”

“I trust your hunches,” Noah said, “but that doesn’t help us find her, or her brother.”

“I have an idea to draw Alexis out,” Lucy said. “But I need to confirm my theory.”

“All right,” he said. “What do you need?”

“To talk to her ex-husband.”

Peter had quietly agreed to the plan when they debriefed him, but Lucy wasn’t at all sure that he was psychologically ready to confront Alexis. She’d been the first person he’d trusted after what happened with his sister, and Alexis had done more than destroy his trust-she’d killed his hope. He’d become a hermit, outside of teaching young kids. He had no friends, no social life, no future.

Because Alexis and possibly Kip had seen Sean, Sean would be Peter’s visible bodyguard. Alexis also could have seen Sean at Quantico and know that he was involved with Lucy, but they would have to take that chance. Lucy was banking on her psychological analysis that Alexis would come to warn Peter or try to justify what she’d done.

Lucy had enough experience with psychopaths and sociopaths, plus a master’s in criminal psychology, to make this call, but she’d always had backup. She’d always had Dillon or Hans to help talk things out. Now she had no choice but to go it alone.

Sean and Peter went up to Peter’s apartment. Joe was coordinating NYPD on the street. Sean set up a camera so that Noah and Lucy, who were in a vacant apartment down the hall, could watch and listen. Suzanne would remain hidden in Peter’s apartment.

Lucy’s theory was that Alexis would act quickly, possibly tonight and no more than twenty-four hours from now.

Noah shook his head at the screen as he watched the living room of Peter’s apartment through a phone that Sean had programmed to transmit to his laptop. “Sean has all the toys,” Noah told Lucy.

“Private sector,” Lucy said. “It pays better.”

Sean was trying to get Peter to loosen up a bit, but Peter was wooden and worried. Finally, Sean turned on a baseball game that had been played earlier in the day, keeping the volume on low. It was late, after one in the morning, and Peter drifted off to sleep in his chair.

Lucy asked Noah, “Have you heard about Hans?”

“Same condition, but the swelling has gone down. If it continues, they’ll perform surgery tomorrow morning.”

“That’s just as dangerous as the accident.”

“It’s the only thing that will save him.”

“That’s what they told us about Patrick, and he ended up in a coma for nearly two years.”

“You never told me what happened.”

“I assumed everyone knew. It’s in my file.” She didn’t know where the bitterness came from. She was used to this.

Noah said quietly, “I only read what I had to know when I was investigating the vigilante murders. I knew about the coma, but not why.”

Lucy stared at the screen.

“You don’t need to talk about it, Lucy.”

She shook her head. “Adam Scott had me on an island outside of Seattle. He falsified coordinates and sent them to Kate. Kate didn’t believe the information, she thought there was something wrong, but the FBI verified them and the agent in charge of the investigation took a team down to Baja, California. It was a trap. Scott had used the cabin in the past; he rigged it to explode. He was watching through a video feed. My brothers Patrick and Connor went down with Jack’s mercenary team, along with four agents. Scott watched through a video feed-I know, because he showed me-and when they breached the cabin, he blew it up.” Lucy would never forget watching Patrick half-running, half-thrown from the cabin. It still haunted her.

“Patrick had a severe head injury that required surgery, but he was conscious and joking on the way to the hospital. He didn’t regain consciousness after the surgery. The doctors didn’t know for certain, but suspected it was a rare reaction to the anesthesia. When he was younger, he’d had his appendix out and slipped into a coma for several days.”

“Did they operate again?”

“No. He just woke up one day. Out of the blue.” She smiled. “The last couple years hasn’t been easy for him. Not just the physical deterioration. San Diego PD replaced him in the cybercrimes unit. Patrick had taken it from next to nothing to state of the art. But as you know, cybercrime is constantly changing. Patrick could have had his job back, but working for someone else. He was a lot like Sean-had an intuitive understanding of computer security. He lost his edge.