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She had too much to do and too little time.
She’d headed back upstairs, saw that Tucker hadn’t moved, and as she’d stared at his sleeping innocence, she’d felt it again—that particular anxiety, a little sizzle through her nervous system that he was so vulnerable. She’d told herself she was going nuts, that everything was fine, that there were no hidden eyes lurking in the spreading branches of the oak tree that shaded the upper deck.
“Idiot,” she’d whispered as she double-checked the lock on the slider. She was being foolish. The malevolence she’d felt . . . no . . . imagined at her home in Montana hadn’t even existed, much less traveled to San Francisco.
Still, the hairs on the back of her arms had been at attention, and only with the passing of ten minutes of silence, with the baby sleeping peacefully and safely nearby, had Pescoli calmed and let down her guard.
Now, she noticed that the rain had stopped, the night still, only the sound of Sarina’s soft snoring from down the hallway and the quiet rumble of the furnace breaking the silence.
She slipped her cell phone off its charger, then walked to the slider. She stared out at the night where streetlights were visible through the spreading branches of the oak tree.
“Now or never,” she whispered.
Ignoring all of her interior arguments to the contrary, she called Tydeus Chilcoate and in so doing, crossed that thin, invisible line between legal and not so legal.
She’d done it before.
Always on the sly.
Because no one knew about her secret source. Could never. Not Alvarez. Not even Santana. And Pescoli planned to keep it that way.
A night owl, Chilcoate was an electronic and technical genius who happened to be a loner and hacker and lived isolated, in a cabin outside Grizzly Falls. She’d met him during a case years ago, where a serial murderer dubbed the Star-Crossed Killer had terrorized the area surrounding Grizzly Falls. Chilcoate was one of those antigovernment types who had no qualms about hacking or surveillance or wiretapping or anything technical for the right price. Pescoli had rarely used his talents, but sometimes his ambivalence about the law and his technical genius was an asset. As in this case. Pescoli needed answers and she needed them quickly.
Working with the San Francisco PD was burdensome. Tanaka was putting up roadblocks right and left, and going through the usual channels at the sheriff’s department in Montana would only send up red flags to Blackwater and create too much jurisdictional red tape that she didn’t have time to cut through. The fact that she was one of the victims’ sisters would only make working the case and getting information more difficult.
Not so with Chilcoate.
They had a deal: she tended to look the other way if his name came up in any investigation as long as it didn’t pertain to a crime of violence, and in turn he gave her a private number and access to his hidden computer system with its GPS, tracking systems, and the like along with his unique ability to hack undetected into corporate, government, and private computer systems.
Sometimes it would take several days, but usually he could get the information she needed much faster than through the usual and “legit” channels.
She listened in the dark as the phone rang once. Twice. And then he answered, his voice gravelly from years of cigarettes. “Yeah?”
“This is Pescoli.”
“I know.”
Of course he did.
“And I figure you want something that you’d rather not have anyone else know about,” he said, a smile in his voice.
Chapter 12
Ivy woke up with a start.
Her phone was bleating.
Where was she?
What was she doing . . . ?
Then she remembered: Mom and Paul were dead and . . . and someone was following her. She sat up straight in bed, the covers shifting, the half-eaten bag of Cheetos sliding to the floor.
She pushed her hair out of her eyes, but it felt weird, her long tresses missing. The horror of the past few days came back as her eyes adjusted to the half-light of the shoddy motel room with the TV turned on to a rerun of Seinfeld, giving off a surreal glow. She was in Albuquerque, heading to Montana and . . .
The phone was still making that god-awful noise, so she shut off the alarm and saw that it was 1:45.
Time to get moving.
