Brian Freeman - Stalked

Dan stared at her hard, and Stride wondered if it was the first time in his life that he had told her the truth. "Yeah, she was."

Lauren stalked across the room and slapped him so hard it sounded like a rifle firing. It was an end-of-life slap. End of everything. Lauren and Dan were over the cliff. She turned and marched out of the room, and five seconds later the front door slammed so hard that the old house quivered.

"We need to find this guy," Stride repeated. "I need to know who he is."

"I have no idea."

"Then we're going to sit here and figure out how he tore apart your life, and how he tore apart Mitchell Brandt's life, and how he knew about Sonia and the goddamn sex club. And don't tell me you didn't know about the club."

"I knew about it," Dan admitted. "Look, Stride, I didn't want to tell you this, but there's something else. I don't think it will help us find him, but you should probably know about it."

"Go on."

"This guy's obsessed with Serena," Dan said. "He was obsessed with her from the very beginning."

"What do you mean?" Stride asked. He could barely breathe.

"I mean, it wasn't an accident that I hired Serena to be the go-between. That was part of the deal. Part of the price. He didn't just want money when he first approached me. He wanted Serena."

Stride let the silence drag out between them and grow violent. Hostility filled the room like smoke flooding from the air vents. They stared at each other. The computer on Dan's desk whirred as its fan blew. Somewhere outside, the engine of an expensive sedan raced as Lauren fled from the garage and away from the estate.

"I had no idea anything like this would happen," Dan said.

"You should have had alarm bells going off in your head, but you just didn't care. You were trying to save your ass."

Dan shrugged. "All right, maybe I was."

"If something happens to Serena, I will destroy you."

"You'll have to take a number."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"Look, I did not think it would go down like this. You know as well I do that most blackmailers aren't violent. They're cowards at heart. I thought maybe this guy had a crush on Serena, or hell, I thought they might be in it together. She was new in town. I had no idea who the hell she was."

Stride didn't believe him, but it didn't matter. He shoved his anger aside. "Do you have any clue who this guy is?"

"I told you, no."

"Did Serena?"

"If she did, she never told me."

"How did he contact you?"

"The first time was by phone," Dan said. "He called me at home."

"When?"

"Last Tuesday."

"What did he say?" Stride asked.

"He knew about my affair with Tanjy."

"What did he want?"

"He wanted ten thousand dollars, or he was going to tell the press and Lauren about my affair."

"Did he say why he wanted Serena involved?"

"No, he just said he knew I wasn't going to want to handle the dirty work personally, so there was someone who could be our go-between. I don't know how he knew her, or why he wanted her."

"How did he know about you and Tanjy?"

"I have no idea."

"What happened next?"

"I paid him, end of story. Serena handled the drop. A few days later, he gave Serena a very explicit photograph of me and Tanjy in Grassy Point Park. This time the price went way up."

"How did he get the photo?"

"Like I told Serena, I don't know. Tanjy took them, but I deleted them from her computer. No way this guy should have been able to find them."

"Were the photos stored anywhere else? Were they on your computer?"

"No, Tanjy took them on a digital camera, and I uploaded them to her PC for her. As far as I know, that was it. She sure as hell wouldn't have shared them with anyone else. I got rid of them back in November, after the rape charge blew up and Tanjy and I split."

"So she could have retrieved them."

"Tanjy? That girl needed a manual to turn her computer on."

"Well, someone retrieved them. Unless this guy found them before you deleted them."

"Then why wait to blackmail me?"

Stride nodded. He didn't understand the logic, but he also realized he was getting close to something important. The blackmailer had to have access to Tanjy's computer.

"What if this guy is a hacker?" Stride asked. "He could be intercepting e-mails, or breaking in via an Internet connection, or piggybacking on a wireless network."

Stride thought about everything else the blackmailer knew and felt his adrenaline surging. Mitchell Brandt and his insider trading scheme. Dates, trades, dollars , Brandt had said. The sex club and Sonia, who kept detailed records about the club on her desktop. Photos of Tanjy and Dan. Stored on Tanjy's computer.

"No way this guy got into Tanjy's machine from outside," Dan said. "It must be someone who was inside her apartment."

Stride thought about his first visit to Tanjy's apartment and then remembered the kid from across the street who spent his days spying on Tanjy from his bedroom window. What the hell was his name? Doug? Duke? If Stride got into her place simply by unlocking a window, how many times had this kid done the same thing? What if he booted up Tanjy's computer and found a gold mine?

Stride was excited, but then he discarded the thought. Even if the kid had a connection to Tanjy, it didn't explain how he could have known what Mitchell Brandt or Sonia Bezac were hiding.

He thought about what Dan had just said. "Why are you so sure this guy didn't hack in from outside?"

"I made sure she installed a state-of-the-art firewall," Dan replied. "I knew the kind of stuff she was keeping on her system, and I didn't want anyone swiping it."

"You said she was hopeless with computers."

"Sure, she called Byte Patrol. They configured the firewall for her."

Stride stopped. Everything stopped. "Byte Patrol? Those are the guys in the purple vans, right? And the purple shirts?"

"Yeah, you see them all over town."

One by one, Stride remembered. The details broke away from the mass of facts in his head and dropped like coins plinking into the metal tray of a slot machine. The cherries lined up, and he cashed out.

He was in Tanjy's bedroom, and he saw the neon purple folder next to her computer.

He was in Sonia's living room, and she was telling him about the hacker-proof security system on her computer. Installed by Byte Patrol.

He was talking to Mitchell Brandt and hearing about the research software he used. Designed by Byte Patrol.

He was inside Silk, and Sonia was chewing out a tech in a purple shirt. The guy was like a bear, his giant paws over the keyboard. Stride tried to picture exactly what the man looked like, but all he could remember was the instant where the tech caught Stride's eye and winked.

The man from Byte Patrol knew exactly who Stride was. He was laughing at his own joke. This was the man who knew everything hidden inside the computers. This was the man who was pulling strings and selling secrets all over the city. This was the man who had raped Maggie.

Stride thought about Eric talking to Tony Wells. How can you tell if someone ordinary could be a sexual predator?

This was the man , Stride thought, that Eric went to see that night .

This was the man who had Serena.

Serena knew she was awake because of the pain. Her skull felt as if someone had punched it in like an eggshell. When she turned her neck, a jolt of agony shivered up her spine and made her whole body jerk. When she opened her eyes, she saw only black but felt the world spin. She tried to move her hands, but they were bound. So were her feet. She was pinned down, a butterfly captured by a collector. The mattress below her felt like burlap and scratched her skin. It smelled of mold and blood. The air carried a waft of gutted fish spilling out roe, bones, and organs. She tried to talk, shout, cry, and scream, but she was gagged, and the taste of wet cotton soured her mouth. Her throat squealed out a sound so pitiful that the wind laughed at it.