He slouched along the sidewalk, trying to look like he belonged in the neighborhood. When he passed the front door, he made a mental note of the number of the house. Unfortunately there were several cars parked on the street. No way to know which vehicle belonged to the target.
He took out his phone and surreptitiously began snapping pics of license plates.
When he reached the end of the block, he paused, thinking. To really nail the case, he needed to get a photo of whoever was inside the house.
He could knock on the door and—assuming someone answered—pretend to be lost. But that sounded weak. He needed a better plan.
A straight-up lost-my-phone-and-the-tracking-app-says-it’s-here story sounded like the only sure approach. Whoever answered the door would deny that the missing device was in the house, which would be the truth. But there would be a couple of minutes of confusion and irritation while the resident of the house denied having the piece of tech.
Xavier figured he could put his phone on silent mode and maybe get a short video, all while pretending to realize that his app had led him to the wrong house.
He walked back along the sidewalk, went up the front steps and started the video. He could feel his pulse racing. He didn’t think he had ever been so scared or so excited in his life.
He pressed the doorbell and held his breath. Part of him was already regretting the plan. But he could not back out now. He gripped his phone very tightly.
Maybe whoever was inside would not answer.
The door opened. A guy in his midtwenties looked at him. He had an energy drink in one hand. He was clearly irritated.
“What do you want?”
Xavier had to try twice before he got the words out. “I’m l-looking for my phone. Got a tracking app that says it’s here.”
“Yeah? What’s that in your hand?”
“A friend’s phone. He let me use it to find mine.”
“You think I stole your phone?”
“I was using it at a Starbucks. Left it on the table while I went to get another latte. When I turned around it was gone. Probably just a mistake.”
“I sure as hell don’t have it. Come on inside and take a look.”
Xavier hesitated and then took one step over the threshold. He pretended to study the screen of his phone.
“I think I made a mistake,” he said.
“Funny you should say that.” The man closed the door. “I came to the same conclusion.”
Panicked now, Xavier half turned. But something hard and metallic was pressed against the back of his head. He froze, so frightened he couldn’t catch his breath. Just like in a video game, except the gun is real. He’s going to kill me.
“Don’t move,” the subject said quietly. “The house on one side is empty. Neighbors on the other side are gone for the day. If I pull this trigger, no one will call nine-one-one.”
CHAPTER 52
Virginia knew from the hard look in Anson’s eyes that something was very wrong.
“Xavier is gone,” he announced.
“Back to California?” Cabot closed the office door. “I knew he would eventually get tired of hanging around, but I thought it might take a few more days before boredom set in.”
“Pretty sure he didn’t go home,” Anson said. “His pack is still at my house. Far as I can tell, the only thing he took with him is his phone.”
Virginia was still trying to get past the shock of the discovery that she and Cabot had made in Sandra Porter’s apartment. Reluctant to trust their phones, they had headed directly to the offices of Cutler, Sutter & Salinas with the intention of telling Anson the news about Tucker Fleming. It was Saturday, but no one was taking any time off. The situation was too fluid and dangerous.
When they had walked into the room a few seconds ago, Anson was not ensconced behind his desk. Instead, he had been pacing the room, which struck Virginia as very un-Anson-like behavior. The deep concern in his eyes was more than enough to make it clear that he was very worried.
She stood quietly near the desk and listened to the conversation with increasing alarm. Cabot’s entire attention was suddenly focused on Anson.
“What do you have?” Cabot asked.
Anson ceased his restless pacing.
“I don’t have much,” he said. “That’s the problem. He took off a couple hours ago. Said he was bored. He told me that he wanted to see the Space Needle and maybe Pike Place Market. They’re all within walking distance. I asked him if he needed directions. He held up his phone and said he could find his way around town.”
“Did you try calling his phone?” Virginia asked.
“Twice,” Anson said. “Got dumped into voice mail both times. Under other circumstances I wouldn’t be too concerned, but this just doesn’t feel right. He was having a blast digging into Virginia’s phone, trying to see if someone had planted a tracking app. At least I thought he was really involved with that project.”
“Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Cabot said. “This is Xavier we’re talking about. He’s got a history of taking off and not letting anyone know where he is until after he’s at his destination.”
Virginia stirred a little. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think Xavier would just up and disappear. He has to know that would annoy both of you. He wouldn’t want to do that, not at this stage.”
Both men looked at her.
“What do you mean?” Anson asked.
“He’s been working hard, trying to prove himself to you and Cabot,” Virginia said. “He wants to be part of your pack.”
Cabot’s brows rose. “Pack?”
“Sorry, slip of the tongue,” Virginia said quickly. “I meant that Xavier wants to be a member of your crew, your team. I think it’s more likely that he’s trying to impress both of you. He wouldn’t go out of his way to piss you off now.”
Anson looked at Cabot. “She’s right.”
“Yeah,” Cabot said. “I know. Shit. We did not need this problem. All right, let’s assume that he thinks he’s working the case. Maybe he did find a tracking app on Virginia’s phone. Maybe the kid found a way to follow the trail back to the individual who enabled the app.”
Virginia went cold. “Oh, no, surely he wouldn’t take a risk like that.”
Anson looked startled. “Is that even possible?”
“Theoretically, yes,” Cabot said. “It wouldn’t be simple. I’m sure it would take some real skills, but, obviously, Xavier is good. I think we need to assume the worst-case scenario here.”
“What, exactly, is that?” Anson asked.
Virginia cleared her throat. “I think Cabot is afraid that maybe—just maybe—Xavier found Tucker Fleming.”
“Who the hell is Tucker Fleming and why is that a problem?” Anson demanded.
“Fleming works for Night Watch,” Cabot said. “He’s not on the org chart because he’s just a regular employee in the IT department. We found a picture of him in Porter’s apartment. He looks a hell of a lot like Quinton Zane. He’s the right age to be Zane’s son or nephew.”
Anson was thunderstruck. “What?”
“I’ll let Virginia explain,” Cabot said. “I need to get moving.”
Virginia looked at him. “Shouldn’t we call the police and tell them that Xavier has disappeared?”
“No good,” Anson said. “We don’t have any evidence of a kidnapping, and as a rule, the cops don’t take a missing person case seriously until the individual has been gone for a day or more. That’s especially true with teenagers who are known runaways.”
Virginia winced. “Xavier does fit that profile, doesn’t he?”
“Hang on,” Anson said. “I’m coming with you.”
“No,” Cabot said. “Two reasons. First, I need you to keep an eye on Virginia. I can’t look after her and deal with Tucker Fleming at the s
ame time. Also, someone needs to be here in case we’re wrong about what is going on. Who knows? Xavier might actually be at the top of the Space Needle snapping pictures. Call me if he decides to wander back into the office.”
“How are you going to find Tucker Fleming?” Virginia asked.
“That’s the easy part,” Anson said. He turned back to his computer. “Fleming should be on the list of Night Watch employees that I compiled after you found Sandra Porter’s body. Yep, here he is.”
“Give it to me,” Cabot said.
Anson jotted down the address on a sticky note and handed it across the desk.
Cabot took the note, opened the door and let himself out into the hall. In a heartbeat he was gone, leaving Virginia alone with Anson.
Anson looked at her. His lawman eyes were bleak.
“The kid’s not at the top of the Space Needle,” he said.
Virginia thought about the carefully curated collection of destroyed objects that she and Cabot had discovered in Sandra Porter’s apartment.
“No,” she said, “he’s not. That poor kid is in trouble and it’s because of me.”
“Nope.” Anson shook his head. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let him take off like that. He’s a seventeen-year-old kid. They do dumb stuff, like try to play hero.”
Virginia gave him a rueful smile. “From what Cabot tells me, I gather you’ve had some experience with teenage boys.”
“Always figured it was a miracle that Max, Cabot and Jack made it to adulthood, what with having me for a dad and all. Not like I knew what the hell I was doing. My own pa took off when I was two. I just winged it with my boys.”
“I think it’s safe to say you figured it out.”
“All I did was try to give them the tools and the skills I knew they’d need to make it,” Anson said. “The rest was pure dumb luck. Gives me cold chills whenever I think of all the things that could have gone wrong.”
“There’s some luck involved in everything, but you didn’t just get three orphaned boys safely to adulthood. Judging by what I know about the situation, you created three good men. You were obviously an excellent role model.”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Anson said. “Role models or not, in the end every man has to decide for himself just what kind of man he will be.”
“I never thought about it but I suppose that goes for all of us, women as well as men.”
Anson nodded thoughtfully and gave her a long, knowing look. “It’s clear you made your choice somewhere along the line.”
“It wasn’t a conscious choice. I got lucky in my role model, too. My grandmother made it clear that you do whatever you have to do to be able to face yourself in the mirror.”
“Reckon that’s where it gets complicated,” Anson said. “Some people can live with a real murky version of themselves. Which brings us to this new, younger edition of Quinton Zane. Tell me what you found out about him.”
“If we’re right, Tucker Fleming is a chip off the old block.”
CHAPTER 53
Unlike the other aging bungalows on the street, Tucker Fleming’s house felt cold and empty.
Cabot stood in the living room and absorbed the vibe. He held Xavier’s sunglasses in one hand. There was an empty energy drink can on an end table. It was the same brand as the empties he had spotted at the Wallerton house.
Two minutes ago he had forced a bedroom window, expecting the screech of an alarm. The prospect hadn’t worried him because he was certain he could be in and, if necessary, out before the police or the neighbors bothered to investigate. Alarms went off all the time. People rarely reacted.
But there had been no blaring alarm. There was a security system installed in the house—a good one—but it had been deactivated. Evidently Fleming had left in a rush and had either forgotten to reset the device or hadn’t wanted to waste the time.
That made sense. A man who had been surprised by a kid who had tracked him to his home address would not have been thinking clearly. Fleming had believed himself to be in control of the game from the start. The realization that Xavier had found him would no doubt have pushed him close to the edge of panic.
Speed was the most important factor now, Cabot thought. But he forced himself to think through the logic of the situation. There was no way that Fleming could have had time to plan for such an unforeseen kidnapping scenario, let alone figure out how to dispose of a body.
He would head for a location where he felt safe and in control, a place where he could get rid of a teenage boy who was now a witness.
Cabot took one last look around the living room. The space was crammed with electronics—a massive, state-of-the-art television and various pieces of equipment designed for computer games. But there was no desk, no pile of magazines—nothing of a personal nature that might tell him where Fleming was headed with Xavier.
He had already done a quick prowl of the two small bedrooms, but he forced himself to take the time to go back through the house a second time. There was always something, he reminded himself, and the most likely place to find it was in the most personal space in a house—the owner’s bedroom.
He stopped in the doorway. There was another large-screen TV on the wall and some more electronics on the bedside table and on top of the dresser.
Fleming was not a complete slob but he was not the neatest person in the world. A shirt and a pair of jeans hung over the back of a chair. There was a single athletic shoe on the floor. The hamper was overflowing.
The closet was long and narrow and fitted with sliding doors. Cabot opened one of the doors and took a quick look around. More jumbled clothes hung on the rod. There were several pairs of shoes tumbled on the floor.
It occurred to him that the second bedroom had been much neater. Clearly it had gone largely unused. But that seemed odd, given the general clutter in the bungalow. In his experience most people allowed stuff to accumulate to fill the space available. It took self-discipline to maintain a well-ordered household.
He went back down the hall and into the other bedroom. Why so neat and orderly in this room, Fleming? You’ve been living in this house for a while and you’ve filled up most of it with your stuff. There isn’t even a TV. You haven’t emptied the garbage in the kitchen for at least a couple of days, yet this room is so clean and tidy.
He crossed the bedroom and slid open the closet doors.
There were no clothes inside, no shoes on the floor. The interior walls were covered with scenes from his old nightmares.
Press clippings of the fire at the California compound papered one side wall. There were some pictures of the small handful of the dazed survivors who had agreed to talk to the reporters. There were no images of the children. Anson had refused to allow any of them to be interviewed by the journalists who had covered the story.
A framed picture of Quinton Zane hung in a place of prominence. It was discolored with age. In the picture Zane looked to be in his early twenties. Cabot decided that it had probably been taken around the same time as the photo of Zane and Abigail Watkins on the ferry. Zane had a warm, open smile for the camera. You had to look closely to see that his eyes were ice-cold.
Most of the images and articles dated back twenty-two years but there were some recent additions—full-color printouts of Hannah Brewster’s Visions series. It looked like the photos had been taken with a cell phone.
There was also a printout of a picture of the Lost Island B and B going up in flames.
There was a small filing cabinet on the floor of the closet. Cabot opened the drawer and saw two folders. The first contained a well-worn leather-bound journal. The handwriting was the same as that on the photocopies that Virginia had found in Rose Gilbert’s nightstand.
The second folder contained a lot of paperwork relating to a recent real estate deal. The property that had been purchased was the old h
ouse outside of Wallerton—a location where a panicked Tucker Fleming would feel safe and in control, a place where he could get rid of a witness.
Cabot ran for the door, Abigail Watkins’s journal in his hand.
Outside he got into the SUV, shoved the journal under the passenger seat and fired up the engine.
When he was rolling, he used a new disposable phone to call the office landline.
Anson answered halfway through the first ring.
“Fleming has Xavier,” Cabot said. “Can’t be positive but I think it’s a good bet that he took him to the Wallerton house.”
“I’ll call the local cops,” Anson said.
“No. If they show up at the front door of the first compound, we’ll probably be looking at a hostage situation. I think Fleming may be more than a little crazy, Anson. He’s obsessed with Zane. Constructed a shrine to the bastard. No telling what he’ll do if he’s cornered.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on my way to the first compound outside of Wallerton.”
Cabot ended the connection and concentrated on his driving.
CHAPTER 54
It was Xavier’s first experience with real, gut-level fear. He didn’t think he was handling it very well.
He was also cold. He was still wearing his sweatshirt but it provided only limited protection against the chill that gripped the old house. Tucker Fleming hadn’t bothered to build a fire in the big stone fireplace in the huge living room. Xavier figured that was not a good sign.
He was on the floor in front of the darkened hearth. Fleming had used duct tape to bind his wrists and ankles. After arriving at their destination, Fleming had cut the tape that secured his feet, and forced him to walk into the old house before once again taping his ankles together.
He had expected an interrogation of some kind. It seemed likely that Fleming would want to know if the others were on his trail. Xavier had concocted what he hoped was a believable story designed to make his kidnapper think that Anson and Cabot would descend at any moment. But so far he hadn’t had an opportunity to try out the lie.