Mitch’s face grew hard and cold. “This is my decision to make. I’m going to do it.”
“But Mitch,” Ed tried to argue.
She silenced him with a steely gaze he’d seen before, one that meant arguing with her would prove futile.
He sighed in resignation. “I’m going with you.”
She shook her head. “No. You can’t. He’s such a neat nut, if the slightest thing is out of place, he’ll know immediately. Besides, I need you at my house to run my computer.”
Both men looked at her.
“If there’s anything to find, it’s going to be in John’s computer. He’s compulsive about stuff like that. I just know that he would have the information there, somewhere. It might take a little looking to find it, but it’ll be there.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ed sat on Mitch’s couch and watched her pack two portable hard drives, a small spiral notebook, and writeable CDs into a duffel bag. Her mouth was set in a hard, grim line, determined to finish what she’d started. She disappeared into her office and returned with her 9mm and a shoulder holster. He noticed when she removed the magazine containing the regular lead slugs and replaced it with the one loaded with silver-tipped hollow-points. The spare clip she dropped into the duffel bag. Extra insurance.
God help whoever she uses that on.
“I’ll go and sit in the truck and wait for you.”
She shook her head and slipped the holster on. A loose, long-sleeved shirt covered the telltale bulge and allowed her easy access to the weapon. She had a concealed weapons permit, so at least it was legal. “I need to do this my way, Ed.” She walked over and sat down next to him on the couch.
“Your way is stupid and stubborn.”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “Is this where you start saying I’m acting like a stupid woman on TV?”
“Exactly.”
“I can handle myself.”
“I didn’t say you can’t, but Jesus H. Christ, you nearly died!”
“And that’s why I want to be the one fucking him over. I have every right to do this after what he tried to do to me.”
“That’s not going to help if he kills you!”
Her gaze turned stony. “He shows up at the house while I’m there, I’ll put a bullet through the fucker’s head.”
Impasse.
They sat there staring at each other for a long moment. Finally, he leaned over and kissed her, reaching around behind her and pulling her against him. When he sat back he brushed her bangs out of her eyes.
“I love you, Mitch.”
She smiled, her eyes bright. “I love you, too, Ed.”
He carried her duffel bag down to his truck and opened the door for her.
“Be careful, hon, okay?” He leaned forward and kissed her once more. “You checked to make sure your cell phone’s charged up?”
She nodded. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“How are you going to get in? I thought you gave him back his keys?”
She smiled and held up the garage door opener. “I’m sure he hasn’t changed the codes.”
She drove off, watching Ed in the rearview mirror until she turned the corner. Her stomach felt like one big knot as she quickly made the drive to Tampa. In her mind, she played out several scenarios, the worst being John returning while she was in the middle of the download. If that happened and he tried to do anything, she’d have to defend herself. She had no doubts he could physically overcome her if he tried. He was bigger and stronger than her. As a final recourse, she would shoot him.
She loosened up a little when she drove by the house the first time and found the driveway empty and the lights off. A block away she turned around and drove by again, slowing as she approached. Pointing the door opener at the garage, she pressed the button. The door smoothly slid up on its tracks. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she let it out after seeing the empty garage.
Mitch drove Ed’s F150 into the garage and closed the garage door behind her. Just inside the kitchen door she stopped until her eyes adjusted to the shadows. John always kept the curtains drawn, turning what could have been a bright, cheery home into a virtual tomb. It had been a point of contention between them during their marriage.
She made her way to John’s den and turned on the small desk lamp next to the computer. Everything was off except for the printer. She turned the computer on and booted the system.
From what she could see, he still ran the same software and all his passwords appeared to be the same. She pulled up his File Manager and scanned the directories before pulling her cell phone out of the duffel bag and calling Ed. He picked up on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.” She heard his sigh of relief.
“You okay?”
She propped the phone in the crook of her neck as she typed commands into the computer. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m going through his system now. I…hold on.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Hold on a second, Ed.” Mitch spotted a directory labeled “journ” and smiled. If John really was still doing things the same old way, that might just be all she needed to find. “I just found his journal, I think.” She opened the directory and looked at the individual files. They all ended with “.doc,” indicating they were files from his word processor.
“Bingo,” she whispered more to herself than Ed.
“What? What did you find?”
“I just found some files I think are his journals.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Depends on what I find in them.” She hooked up the external hard drive and started copying everything. She started scrolling through his network files when she found something interesting. “Ed, go fire up my computer.”
“Why?”
“I found something interesting here. I want to see if I can access it from my computer.”
“Just a minute. Okay, it’s online.”
Mitch pulled up the files on her end, then rifled John’s file cabinet and found hard copies of all the procedures and passwords. “Go to this URL—” She recited the address and Ed typed it in.
“It’s asking me for a user name and password.”
Mitch read what was in the file and heard Ed type them in.
“Holy shit!”
“What is it Ed?”
“I don’t know.” She heard keys tapping, “I’m not sure. It’s some sort of tracking program. Almost looks like it might be tied in through GPS or something. Reminds me of my friend Ken, the trucker? He had a computer on board his rig. The company he drove for could track him through it. It looks something like that.”
“What’s it tracking?”
“Boats, I’m assuming. Most of the targets are in the Gulf or the Caribbean.”
“Bookmark that main page Ed.”
“Done.”
Mitch jotted down the information in her notebook. Then she found another notation in his files and gave Ed that URL, too. “Does it identify the server or anything?”
“No. Just asks for user and password information.”
Mitch searched through the files. John was infamous for documenting everything, including passwords. At least, he was when she was with him. “Try this—” and read him the information.
He typed it in. “I’m in.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure yet.” She heard more tapping. “I can’t make heads or tails of this. It’s…I don’t know. We need Ron over here to look at this. It’s account info or something.”
“What kind of account?”
“Bank accounts, I think. Hold on a second.” He put the phone down and a minute later picked back up. “It looks like it’s a site in the Caymans, if that tells you anything.”
“That tells me more than I need to know, I think.” She told Ed she’d call him back when she was finished and hung up to finish the rest of the work on John’s computer.
It took her about an
hour. She made two backups of the hard drive and went through his CDs and made copies of data on those, too. During the wait, she rifled his filing cabinet and found the hard copies of all his passwords and user names. While looking through his directories she found another mainframe access program and quickly copied all his login information and passwords. When she finished, she quickly packed her duffel and carefully rearranged the desk so everything was where he’d left it.
Her nerves felt so jangled she almost screamed when his fax machine rang. A nervous laugh escaped her and she leaned over to see what it was. At first, it didn’t make any sense. But as she read further, while a total of three sheets popped out one by one, she smiled. Coming from a sender in Texas, they’d sent a list of dates, numbers and codes that looked familiar.
Someone had just made a boo-boo.
A big boo-boo.
And the plain paper fax was equipped with a “copy” function.
Her luck had just changed.
She tucked the papers in her bag with the other items. Then she looked over the desk with the feeling she’d forgotten something. Finally attributing it to nerves, she turned off the lamp and made her way back to the kitchen in the deepening gloom.
Before she stepped out into the garage, she took one last look behind her at the house with the feeling it was the last time she would ever set foot in it. A small part of her was saddened by that proposition. Conflicting memories waged war within her, and she thought back to the first Christmas she’d spent there with John. It had been a good time for her, a happy time, so much different than a few months later when she walked in and found him screwing the blonde.
Mitch tossed her duffel bag onto the seat and climbed into the truck, slamming down the locks before opening the garage door. She practically held her breath as the door slid up on its tracks and relief didn’t wash over her until it closed behind her and she was safely on her way home. She put the garage door opener in her purse.
Then she smacked her forehead. She should have taken a picture of the Emmerand photo with her cell phone, but she forgot.
I’m not going back for that. Too risky.
She called Ed.
“What the hell have you been doing?” he yelled in her ear. “I’ve been worried sick!”
“Well, hello to you, too!”
She heard him sigh. “I’m sorry, hon, but it’s just that I’ve been sitting here waiting to hear from you.” His tone changed as his worry abated. “Well, did you get everything?”
“I think so. We’ll have to wait until I get back to see though. I made two complete backups, plus copied some stuff off some CDs he had. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find something to concretely tie him to the Emmerand. And guess what?”
“What?”
“You need to take a look at an interesting fax that arrived while I was there. I made a copy.”
“Good girl!”
“And I have a hunch if John’s still as anal-retentive about keeping records as he always was, we’ll find something. If he is involved. Then I’ll turn it all over to the police.”
There was a long pause from Ed. Mitch was about to ask if he was okay when he spoke. “I really worried about you, sweetie.”
She felt a warm, fuzzy tingle inside her, and realized how good it felt to finally be able to admit it was love. “I love you, Ed.”
“I love you, too, Mitch. Hurry home.” She thumbed the end button and dropped the phone on the seat, a big smile on her face.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The television was nothing more than background noise to Kenny Schoenborn as he sat on his sofa, Romeo’s case file spread out around him, covering the coffee table, the sofa, and his lap. Interviews in Ybor City brought forth two witnesses who’d seen Denise Stanley in a bar on Seventh, but no one had seen when she left or who she might have left with. Apparently, once she stepped out that door, she seemed to have stepped into Romeo’s arms and off the face of the planet.
Kenny knew he was taking this case far too personally, at least too much so for his early involvement in it. Friday afternoon, he finally took George’s advice and scheduled an appointment to talk to the staff psychologist Monday morning. The dreams of Jenny were coming hard and strong every night now, and it’d been over a week since his last good night of sleep.
He tossed the file onto the table and stood. All day long he’d felt nervous, jumpy, wanting to do something. He finally gave in and drove to Ybor City and walked to the bar Stanley had last been seen at.
It was early evening. The crowds were still light, but growing in ever-increasing numbers as night fell. Kenny sat on a bench directly outside the bar and watched the street, trying to feel what Romeo felt.
Where did he meet her? Inside or outside?
Until now, there had been no witnesses of his approach to a victim. Kenny supposed Romeo met her outside. But how did he first see her?
Kenny had to turn to watch the door to the bar. No, it wouldn’t be from there. He stood up, looked around, and spied an overhang in front of a club across the street. It was obvious in the deepening shadows that someone could lurk there in relative obscurity. Kenny crossed Seventh and looked back across. It felt right, somehow. He wasn’t sure why, but it just felt right.
He sighed and looked down at the concrete. If only…if only…if only.
Then, suddenly, he felt his heart pound. Down on the ground, wedged behind a downspout off the corner of the awning, lay two boiled peanut shells.
His car was around the corner. He ran to it and grabbed a small plastic evidence bag, returned, and scooped up the shells and bagged them. They were valuable if for nothing else than to show where their boy stood when he first spotted Stanley.
Kenny ran them down to headquarters, logged them in as evidence, and sent them to the lab for testing. Maybe they could get a DNA sample. Not likely, but Kenny was always a strong believer in long shots.
On his drive home his heart didn’t feel any lighter, but a glimmer of hope had insinuated itself there. He pored over the case file again until almost midnight, when his eyes finally started blurring. He went to bed and drifted into a tenuous sleep, haunted by images of Jenny and faces from the case file.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jenna was still asleep eight o’clock Saturday morning when John quietly padded out to the kitchen in his bare feet to make a pot of coffee. She’d been unusually quiet when she picked him up at the dealership the night before.
While waiting for the coffee to brew, he sat on the couch in the living room and turned on the TV. There wasn’t much on besides cartoons and sports, so he tuned to CNN. Nothing interested him until a Florida story came on.
“In other news, the small Gulf Coast Florida town of Aripeka was rocked yesterday by a car bomb. For the second time in a week, Mitch Jackson, a charter boat captain, was involved in an incredible movie-like drama when a car bomb exploded in her vehicle late Friday afternoon…”
John shook his head in disgust.
Leave it to Mitch to forget her purse. She always was forgetful.
He heard the toilet flushed in the master bathroom and quickly changed the channel. This wasn’t exactly the type of thing he wanted to talk to Jenna about right now. It would be bad enough when he had to talk to the police. And he wanted her to see his reaction when he “first” heard about Mitch’s tragic misfortune.
He cursed the bad luck that made her file for divorce when she did, but at least he did have the decree to use in his defense. If she’d been silly enough to ask for alimony, his ass really would have been in a sling.
A yawning Jenna drifted into the living room, an oversized T-shirt hanging almost to her knees.
“Good morning,” he greeted her. She leaned over the back of the sofa to kiss him on the top of the head.
“Morning. Is that coffee I smell?” She wandered into the kitchen.
He followed her. “Sure is. Feel like going out for a bite to eat?”
She poured two mugs of coffee
. “When do you need to get to the dealership?”
He glanced at the clock. “Oh, probably about ten or so.”
Jenna sipped her coffee. “Okay, that sounds good. Do you want to run by your condo first?”
He shook his head. “No, I’ve got everything I need.” He took his coffee with him into the master bathroom and shaved. He didn’t want to stop by the condo in case there were police waiting there for him.
When he finished he made way for Jenna to get ready and went into the den to get his laptop. Carrying it back into the kitchen, he set it up on the breakfast bar next and quickly accessed his server. It only took a few minutes to attend to his business. By the time Jenna emerged from the bedroom, he was offline and ready to go.
* * * *
They ate a leisurely breakfast at a small cafe near Jenna’s apartment, then drove to the dealership. He talked with the service manager, who promised him the car on Monday afternoon, then arranged another Porsche as a loner. John told Jenna he’d meet her back at her apartment. Once she left, he drove to his condo and was pleased to find no one waiting for him. There was a message on the answering machine at the Carrollwood house from detective Sam Caster in Pasco County. He jotted the number down and made a mental note to call it from Jenna’s.
* * * *
Jenna drove off with a small sense of relief. She remembered Mitch’s number was written on the notepad next to the phone, and prayed John hadn’t spotted it when he went into the den. She hurried home and ripped the top page off the pad, studying it for a moment.
Finally, she reached for the phone and dialed the number, her stomach knotting when the phone rang on the other end. After the second ring, a machine answered.
“Hi, this is Mitch. We can’t come to the phone right now, but please leave your name and number—”
Jenna paused, almost hung up, then decided to leave a message. She gave her cell number instead of the apartment number. She didn’t want John to overhear if Mitch returned the call. She could silence her cell phone easily without him seeing the number.