Her Dark Web Defender. Dana Nussio
only her own purple, hand-me-down bike didn’t have to be in the next spot she looked. On the grass farther down the sidewalk. The exact same place where she’d dropped it when she’d unfrozen enough to scream. Once she’d started, she couldn’t stop.
“Your parents will be here in a couple of minutes. Do you think you can give a description… I mean tell us what the man who took your friend looked like?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
As if she could ever forget anything about him. The closed-lipped smile. That raspy voice and his tight jaw while Emily had kicked and scratched to escape, her black ponytail whipping from side to side. A movie villain come to life, with wild eyes and hairy arms. And the only person who could have helped her friend had been too scared to do anything but watch.
That strange lightness she’d had inside her belly a few times in the past half hour floated up again. Was that relief? What kind of friend was she to take comfort in the fact that the bad man had grabbed Emily instead of her? Was that why her eyes were dry when she should have been sobbing by now? Why the officer kept patting her arm and sneaking peeks at her face? No one could ever know the truth. That she was a bad person. That she cared only about herself.
“Don’t worry, sweetie. We’re going to find her.”
Kelly jerked her head to look back at her. She was nine. They couldn’t fool her. Police officers were supposed to tell the truth, and the lady was lying. How did she know, anyway? She hadn’t seen the meanness on the guy’s face. Or the fear in Emily’s enormous chocolate-colored eyes.
Stay quiet, or I’ll be back for you.
Kelly had skipped telling the police that part. If she had, it would have made what the man said real. She’d already disobeyed his instructions by calling for help. Telling the police about it, too, might make him keep his promise.
She turned to the window again, just as another police car, an ambulance and a truck that looked like her mom’s pulled up along the curb. They could ask all the questions they wanted to. They could search for clues and turn on their sirens and pretend that they could make everything better. But Kelly already knew the truth.
Emily was gone forever.
Special Agent Anthony Lazzaro shoved open the door to the plain brick building and tromped to an office with the vague name, Arch Computer Consultants, Inc. He stabbed in the four numbers of the lock code that changed so frequently he sometimes forgot it and had to call one of the other team members to get inside.
Soon he wouldn’t have to remember it at all. The thought should have brightened the drab office walls, just as his formal request should have dulled the stark realities that the two rows of cubicles and the boards of photographs represented. He was finished with agonizing over his decision to transfer from the Innocent Images Task Force of the FBI Cyber Division. No more staring every day at this slimy underbelly of society. No more pretending it hadn’t changed him over the past six years and made him feel older than thirty-eight. No more lying.
Too bad he was stuck in purgatory a little longer.
“Hey, Tony. Ready for another day in the salt mine?”
Tony snarled at Eric Westerfield, but the younger man only grinned as he hurried toward him. The local deputy, who’d joined the task force a year earlier, had so much spring in his step that his coffee swilled over the brim of his paper cup. Wasn’t the guy ever in a bad mood? But the rush of cool air hitting Tony’s face told him Eric had already cranked the air-conditioning, which, by afternoon, would barely challenge the mid-July heat. At least he was good for something.
“Got my pickax and headlamp ready, so sure.” He patted his briefcase, where he’d concealed his .40 caliber Glock 22 in its padded holster with a thumb break for the trip from his rental car to the office. Out of habit, he immediately withdrew the weapon from the bag and locked it and the separate hip holster in his bottom desk drawer.
“Special Agent Dawson told me we’re getting a new task force member today.”
“I heard.”
He’d been livid, too. It was bad enough that Will Dawson, the administrative special agent on the task force, had refused to sign off on his transfer until they’d closed the current case. It centered on the murder of two eighteen-year-old girls and possibly involved cybercrimes. Now the team would be saddled with breaking in a new member during the most high-profile investigation they’d conducted in three years. And his last case on the task force.
“It’s a trooper from the Michigan State Police Brighton Post, since both victims were from Brighton. They referred the case to us in the first place.”
“Heard that, too.”
Tony strode toward the galley kitchen, where the office coffeepot served up hot sludge in daily doses. Though he hoped Eric wouldn’t follow, he did.
“I won’t be low man on the totem pole anymore.”
“Don’t worry.” He didn’t bother looking back as he poured. “You’ll still have your spot near the bottom.”
He didn’t miss the deputy’s emphasis on the word “man,” since they both were aware the new officer was female. Men and women were different on the job. Not better or worse, just different. He wasn’t looking forward to a changing team dynamic during his last few weeks in that office.
“Are we really going to use her voice for this case?”
“Guess so.” Another argument Tony had lost. The regular chats would have sufficed, but the others wouldn’t listen to his reasoning.
With a wave to Eric, he carried his stained Detroit Lions coffee mug past four cubicles, each equipped with laptops and external monitors and hard drives. Near the far window with blinds always kept closed, he sat at his own cramped square, where he could slip on his headset, enter the parallel universe of the Internet referred to as the Dark Web and pretend to be alone. He could do this. Just one more case, and he would be free.
But would he really be? The answer was as clear as all those faces painted on his memory. Some even smiled back at him from photos pinned to the bulletin board on his cubicle wall. A few of his failures, despite all his fancy computer equipment, education and supposed know-how. It was cruel punishment that he would work his final weeks alongside a task-force rookie probably still starry-eyed with convictions that justice could prevail and good could overcome evil. Things he used to believe.
“Do you think she’ll be ready for this?” Eric called from his own desk.
Tony had just fired up his computer and launched the Dark Web browser called Tor, but at his colleague’s question, he pushed in his chair.
“Are any of us?”
The click of the door saved either of them from having to answer that question. He stood and stepped outside his cubicle to get a better look. And there she was, entering the office with Deidre Elliot, the administrative assistant. She couldn’t have stuck out more in that navy-blue uniform shirt, lighter blue pants with a dark stripe, gray tie and the badge.
She probably tied her light-brown hair back so tight to look older, but nothing could mask that youthful blush that contrasted her ivory complexion. She didn’t appear much older than the girls whose deaths they were investigating. Legally, they were women, he guessed. Old enough to know better but too young to realize that their search for adventure could get them killed.
Deidre led the other woman toward them. “Hey, guys. I’d like to you meet our newest team member.”
“You must be Officer Kelly Roberts.”
Wide dark brown eyes stared back at him. She cleared her throat, her tongue slipping out to moisten her deep pink, full lips. Was she surprised that