“If you don’t mind, I think we have more pressing things to address right now.”

“Can’t you tell? We’re multitasking. If you’d prefer, we can talk about the weather until your hard drive is finished. Or maybe how I’ve ruined you for all other men.”

“Well, that might be the truth, but it wouldn’t be in the way you’re thinking.”

“All right, the weather it is.” He glanced back at the laptop screen. “Ah. Okay. Here we go. I can see that your system has been infected by some kind of remote desktop software. As long as you had an Internet connection, he was able to see everything you were doing. And that’s how he was able to type his replies.”

“Is this software anything you can trace?”

“Don’t know. A lot of these things are traded freely on Web sites in the hacker community. But I was right about him not trying to cover his tracks. It’s almost like…”

“What?”

Sam shook his head. “It’s almost like he wants us to see what he was doing. Every line of programming code is on display here. As a matter of fact…”

He grabbed a napkin from the table dispenser and pulled a pen from his pocket. He quickly started jotting down letters, transcribing them from the screen. “Damn,” he whispered.

“What is it?”

He turned the napkin around to show her. “This isn’t programming code. It’s a message.”

“To whom?”

He tapped the napkin. “You.”

She looked down.

It read: YOU ARE WASTING TIME, KENDRA. THE ANSWER IS NOT IN LOS ANGELES.

She shivered. “What in the hell…”

“There’s more.” Sam was already writing on another napkin. He turned it around to show her.

WHAT’S A NICE GIRL LIKE YOU DOING AT THIS SEEDY DINER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?

Kendra quickly turned toward the row of windows facing the street. “Could he be watching us?”

“I doubt it.”

“But how do you know?”

“I don’t know. But it’s far more likely that he could have been listening to your side of our phone conversation. He may have been watching you using your built-in webcam. And even though this thing doesn’t have GPS, he could have used the Wi-Fi radio to get a pretty accurate fix on your location when you brought it here. Remember, your laptop was on and under his control until I yanked the battery.”

She felt sick. “The thought of him watching me…”

“I know.” Sam grabbed another napkin and started writing on it. “There’s one more here. I’m not sure what this one means.” He turned the napkin around.

It read: I TOLD YOU WHERE TO LOOK. THE HOUSEBOAT, KENDRA. YOU’RE WASTING TIME.

She pushed the napkin away.

“This guy knows you, Kendra. He knew you’d have the computer analyzed, so he planned ahead of time to leave these messages for you in the code.”

“Obviously.” She took a moment to stifle the tension that gripped every inch of her body. “Colby is no computer genius. I don’t believe he’s ever even owned one. He had help.”

Sam nodded. “Well, it was definitely someone who knows what he’s doing. That’s where I’d start. Known contacts with fairly sophisticated computer expertise.”

“It could have been someone he corresponded with from prison. He’s had fan letters from all over the world.”

Sam grimaced. “Fan letters?”

“Disgusting, isn’t it? He was a psychopath on death row. Yet he even had marriage proposals.”

“Well, it’s one thing to contemplate marrying a psychopath when he’s about to be put to death. I wonder if any of those women would marry him now?”

“I wouldn’t put it past them. The first order of business is to find out if he was pen pals with any computer experts. His stint on death row put him in contact with a huge network of disturbed loners.”

Sam nodded toward the screen. “It also seems pretty important to him that you visit this houseboat.”

“It was the scene of the crime. He killed a woman there last night.” She looked down at the words on the napkin she had pushed away. “A woman who did her best to make a national joke of me. The police thought it best if I stayed on the sidelines for this one.”

“Well, he really wants you to go there.”

“Which makes me want to run the other way as fast as I can.”

“The hell it does. You’re just dying to get in there.”

She started to deny it, but she stopped herself. Sam was right. Colby had known what he was doing when he dangled that carrot in front of her.

Sam pointed to her hard drive. “I hope there isn’t anything on this you want to keep.”

“Aside from every project I’ve been working on for the past year. Of course not. I back everything up and save it in the cloud.”

“Good girl.” He handed her his pen and slid a napkin over. “Now jot down your cloud storage account info and password.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. I’m going to scan every single file you own and make sure there aren’t any nasty viruses lurking there. And you can kiss this hard drive good-bye. I’ll give it a good look, sector by sector. And I’ll see what I can do about tracing any malware I find.”

She wrote down the information and handed it to him.

“Now give me your phone.”

She handed him her phone. “You think he might have done the same thing to my phone as my computer?”

“I’ve no idea, but I’m going to find out.” He plugged her phone into his computer and did a check. “No, it’s clear.” He handed the phone back to her. “But I may ask you to let me check it occasionally just to be sure nothing has changed.”

“Anytime. And with extreme gratitude.” She tucked the phone back in her pocket. “Thanks, Sam. I knew you were the right man for the job.”

“The only man. In the meantime, it would be a good idea to find the computer geek who helped him with this. Check mail and call logs at the prison, visitor information, whatever.”

“Got it. I know he managed to obtain a cell phone in prison, so that may be the place to start.”

“Good. And there’s something even more important.”

“Yes?”

He was gazing at her soberly. “Watch your back. This isn’t just a hacker you’re dealing with here. For this guy, hacking is just a means to an end. He wants nothing more than to get in your head. It’s personal for him. I guess what I’m saying is … Don’t be afraid to grab every lifeline you can.”

*   *   *

IT WAS ONLY A COUPLE HOURS BEFORE dawn when Kendra pulled into her parking place at the condo.

She didn’t move for a moment. She could feel exhaustion dragging at every limb. She had first experienced a rush of adrenaline, then pure shock. It had been hard to comprehend the scope of Colby’s invasion into her space.

She’d felt violated.

Well, she had to comprehend it. She had known he was clever, even brilliant. She had to meet that dark, malignant brilliance and survive it. She glanced down at the place where she’d set her computer when she’d brought it to Sam.

Crazy. She felt as if the computer were still there, listening.

Good Lord, that was crazy. She was actually nervous, paranoid, feeling as if that machine might actually attack her.

Get a grip. That was the response Colby wanted from her.

She swung open the driver’s door and got out of her car.

Five minutes later, she was unlocking the door of her condo. Another five minutes, and she was crawling into her bed and turning off the lamp.

Pleasant dreams. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy them.

She went rigid. It was the first time she had even thought of those last words Colby had written. She had been too occupied with the shock of his main message.

And she’d been right to ignore them. It had just been another ploy to terrify her and make her remember a time when he was dominant, and she was weak.

Blood.

That knife shining in the moonlight.

That feeling of helpless terror.

He couldn’t know, he was guessing.

But he knew her well enough to guess that she would never forget that night, that any panicky event would make it storm back to her.