LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Bedroom,” Boone said, nodding down the hallway.

      Seth shifted his duffel to his other hand and headed away.

      “Do you want some coffee?” Christie asked, as he passed.

      “No, thanks.”

      “What about me?”

      It was the woman. Kate. Christie faced her, and saw that she was attractive, in a hard kind of way. Stark lines, great cheekbones, but cold, too. Even her voice was hard. Although she had amazing hair. Dark, long, straight and so shiny it looked as if she could have been in a shampoo commercial.

      “I’m going to work with Seth,” Boone said. “You two have some coffee. Talk.”

      With that cryptic assignment, Boone went right to the bedroom, leaving Christie with this rather dour, strange woman.

      When Christie faced her, Kate didn’t seem at all disconcerted. “You have real cream?”

      Christie nodded. “This way.”

      BOONE WAS CROUCHED DOWN beside Seth’s duffel, checking out the neat toys. “How do you get this stuff?” he asked.

      “I have my ways.”

      Boone knew he’d never get more information than that. He glanced at the bed beside them. The fake blood had turned a deep, viscous brown, and smelled sickly sweet. But he wasn’t thinking about the bed. “This asshole’s about six feet tall, slim, he wore goggles. He didn’t turn on the lights. The blood was in a big container—plastic, I think—and he was in and out in seven minutes. It was highly polished for a passion stalker.”

      “Who says it’s passion?”

      “What else?”

      “Lots of things. Revenge. Money. Sex.”

      Boone sighed as he stood. “I thought about all of that, but blood on the bed? That’s spells passion to me. I don’t know. Maybe Kate can figure it out.”

      “Don’t count on it. Hey, what’s this?” Seth moved to the bedside table, and slid the whole unit out from the wall. He looked under the lip, ran his hand down the wood, then stopped. It took him a second, but he pulled out a strip of dark tape.

      “What’s that?”

      Seth held up his other hand, then took a magnet from his bag and ran it over the tape four or five times. “It’s a new kind of bug. It records audio data, but it’s very sensitive. I just scrambled it but good.”

      “Shit, where’s he getting this stuff?”

      “He obviously has deep pockets.”

      “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.”

      “CIA, maybe?”

      “More likely than FBI.”

      Seth sat back on his haunches and looked at Boone. “We shouldn’t be messing with this. Maybe this isn’t just about Christie. You know that, right?”

      “Nate’s dead, Seth. Everything he knew went with him.”

      “We know that.”

      Boone dragged a hand through his hair. “So do they. I can’t think of one reason they’d go after Christie. She’s completely on the outside.”

      “I hope you’re right. It’s our lives, bro.”

      Boone stared at his friend for a long time. “There’s only one way to know for sure. We catch him.”

      “Let’s hope he’s the only one who gets caught.”

      CHRISTIE SAT ACROSS THE TABLE from Kate, who sipped her coffee and looked at Christie as if she were going to have to draw her face from memory. “So, uh, how do you know Boone?”

      “We hang out at the same places. Know some of the same people.”

      “Were you in the service?”

      Kate shook her head. “I worked for the UN.”

      Christie waited, but it was clear Kate wasn’t going to elaborate “What do you do now?”

      “I work for an R & D firm in Canoga Park.”

      “I see,” Christie said, even though she didn’t. Was everyone in Boone’s life so secretive? Jeez, it was like living in a spy novel. “What is it you’re supposed to talk to me about?”

      Kate smiled. It was a nicer smile than Christie expected, and there was some real warmth behind it. “Men.”

      “In general?”

      “No. Men you know. Or have known. We need to find this creep, and the odds are, you’ve either met him, or had some kind of relationship with him.”

      “You don’t think I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure this out?”

      “The point is, you’ve wracked your brain. Now it’s my turn.”

      “You’re not thinking of using needles, right?”

      She laughed. “No. Sodium pentathol is so Cold War. We’re just going to talk.”

      “That’s a relief.”

      “Then if we don’t find anything, I have drugs.”

      Christie looked at her for a long while before she got that it was a joke. “This is my first cup of coffee. Don’t mess with me until at least cup three.”

      “Check.” Kate reached into her big bag and pulled out a notebook and a pen. “Let’s start from the beginning. Any boyfriends in high school?”

      “You’re not serious.”

      “As a heart attack.”

      “Okay then.” Christie sipped her coffee as she went back to high school. It hadn’t been a good time for her. She’d gotten good grades, but had to work hard for them. She’d also been on the track team and tried out for cheerleader. She hadn’t made it. Then there was that whole Scott Fairchild incident. “In my senior year I went out with a guy named Jim Lynsky.”

      “Tell me about him.”

      “He transferred into my high school that final year. He’d come from Yugoslavia, of all things. His father was a doctor there.”

      “Really?” Kate jotted down notes, and she was very fast. Her writing was neat, tiny and from what Christie could see, fastidious.

      “We only went out for about four months. He was into surfing and when he figured out he could get somebody better than me, he did.”

      “Ouch.”

      “I’ve had better days.”

      “Okay, college.”

      HE SAT STARING AT THE MONITOR, even though it had no image. Big Bad Boone had done a good job of cleaning out the house. Not perfect, but good.

      He closed his eyes, remembering her scream. The sound of it had given him an incredible erection, and he was tempted to play the tape again. But there were things to do. Lots of interesting things. The anticipation was almost as good as the scream. Especially now that he knew all about lover boy.

      SETH HAD FOUND FOUR MORE strips of the bug tape, the most disturbing one under the box spring. While he worked, Boone stripped the bed and cleaned up all traces of the sticky blood. He found fresh sheets in the hall closet to remake the bed, although he doubted Christie would be sleeping there any time soon. At least it didn’t look like a set piece from Friday the 13th.

      Seth also took a look at the camera Boone had set up, and he made a few adjustments. They put a second camera in the closet, and a third focused on the window. They could see exactly how the geek had gotten access to the house; he’d cut the glass all around the outside edge, then when he was through,

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