All he had to do was reach out and take it.

CHAPTER 14

Lynch House

8:35 A . M .

“IT’S ABOUT TIME YOU WOKE UP,” Lynch said from the foot of the staircase. “I was about to come up and get you. We have things to do and people to see.”

“It’s only been two hours,” Kendra said as she came down the stairs. “And I’m glad I slept. It’s not been happening very much lately.”

“No?” He nodded. “I noticed you were looking a little fragile. You’ve lost a few pounds. Sharing your nights with Colby?”

“More than I would like.”

His lips tightened, “More than I would like, too.” His fingers touched the dark circles beneath her eyes. “We’ll take care of that soon. I’m glad you slept. See, you should have been here from the beginning. You must have felt safer.”

“And you’re always right?” There might have been an element of truth in his words, but she wasn’t about to tell him that his fortress hadn’t been the sole reason she had been able to relax. Lynch was here, and that was security in itself. “What things to do and people to see?”

“We need to go to the field office and see Griffin. I want to get a complete report on the investigation into Stokes’s abduction and death. They must have facts and possible witness reports by now.”

Kendra nodded. “Griffin texted me that they thought Stokes was taken at his home. He was going to text me more later.”

“Then he can tell us in person. As well as anything else that’s come up.” He led her through the living room toward the kitchen. “Coffee, then we’re on our way.”

“Did you and Sam get together about how to track down Colby’s computer ace?”

“Sam has a sort of cult following in San Francisco that he’s tapping. Northrup does look promising, but no one’s seen him or heard of him since last November, when a source said he was doing a hacking job for a pharmaceutical company. He obviously likes money, so I put out feelers to a money-laundering operation with contacts all over the U.S. He’s clever, and he would need to get any fees safely out of the country.” He smiled. “Either way, we’ll find him. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Which we do not have.”

“Then we’ll find a way of hurrying it along. We’ve only just started the process of—”

“Hey, wait,” she interrupted as they were passing by the portrait in the living room. “I meant to ask you. What happened to your beautiful bikini babe?”

He paused and glanced up at Kendra’s portrait. “Maybe I’m becoming discriminating.”

“Nah.”

“Or maybe I like the way your portrait makes me think … and remember.”

She kept her gaze on the portrait. “How very sensitive. What did your gorgeous Ashley say?”

“She wasn’t pleased, but she understood that she has to be tolerant of other women who are less fortunate than she.”

“Is that what she said?”

“No, it was implied. Ashley is easy to read.”

“When did you buy the portrait?”

“Two days after we saw it together.” He grimaced. “The bastard held me up.”

“Then why did you give in?”

“Warren knew he had me. I wanted it.” He met her eyes. “So I took it.”

Heat.

She quickly looked away from him. “Or he took you.”

“No, that’s not the way it works. In the end, it belongs to me. I can look at it. I can touch it. I can care for it.”

“Or destroy it.”

He shook his head. “What a waste that would be. No, I believe you’re here for the long haul.” He took her elbow and nudged her toward the kitchen. “I really don’t think I could do without you…”

FBI Field Office

San Diego

9:50 A . M .

KENDRA AND LYNCH STEPPED off the FBI field office elevator and walked down the long corridor toward Griffin’s office. Kendra glanced around at the busy personnel and was immediately struck by the sense of urgency compared with her other recent visits.

Lynch obviously saw it, too. “There’s a psychopath on the loose, and it’s being perceived as partially their fault,” he said quietly. “They know how bad this has made them look. We can use this to get any amount of cooperation we need from them.”

“Spoken like the true Puppetmaster you are.”

“Hmm. I really need to stop sharing thoughts like that with you.”

“Don’t sweat it. I knew when Griffin visited me the day after Stokes was killed that we weren’t going to have a problem with them. If it gets us closer to nailing Colby, play whatever games with them you want. Whatever it takes.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that. Manipulation doesn’t have to be a curse word. It can be just a matter of steering conditions toward a mutually beneficial conclusion.”

“Ha. If you dare say that the next time you try to manipulate me, I’ll slap you.”

He smiled. “I think you would.”

“Bet on it. FYI, you should probably keep that little rationalization to yourself.”

“Point taken.”

Kendra spotted Griffin and several other agents in a large conference room separated from the corridor by floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Griffin waved them in.

Stacks of file folders, reports, and photos covered the long conference table. Agents were hurriedly sorting through the material and pinning especially relevant items on bulletin boards.

Kendra went still when they spotted the hundreds of printed photos stacked in the center of the table.

Photos of her. The same photos she had seen papering ever square inch of Colby’s cell that day she’d visited him in San Quentin.

They’d made her ill then, and they made her even more so now. Colby had let it be known that he wanted pictures of her, and his numerous correspondents had obliged by sending printed photos from the Web. He’d known that her trail would eventually lead to his cell, and he surmised quite correctly that the collage would creep the hell out of her.

“Sorry you had to see those again,” Griffin said. “After Colby’s execution, we—”

“You mean supposed execution,” Kendra said.

“Yes. Supposed execution.”

She wished she didn’t take satisfaction from the barely contained anger and frustration that suddenly flashed across his face.

He continued. “We subpoenaed the contents of his prison cell, along with copies of all call and visitor logs. As you know, there was some thought that he might have been responsible for other victims not yet on our radar, and we wanted to have this stuff just in case we needed it down the road. We had it all brought up from our storage facility in National City.”

Lynch looked at the stacks of opened mail on the table. “Popular guy for a mass murderer.”

Griffin shrugged. “The culture of celebrity. He obviously had help with the computer stuff, so we’re still trying to identify as many of his contacts as we can.”

“Isn’t most of this in the copies and scans you gave me?” Kendra asked.

“Most, but not all. There are notes scribbled on the backs of some of these photos, and we’ve tracked some more info from the cell phones he was using in prison. We want to make sure we haven’t missed anything.” Griffin picked up a sheaf of papers from the table. “Your friend, Beth Avery, e-mailed me this fairly detailed memo outlining several possibilities for who may be helping Colby in this area. She zeroed in on Joseph Northrup but indicated there were a few more experts who might be suspect. It’s very impressive.”

“She’s very impressive,” Kendra said.

“Well, Sims, our computer forensics specialist in Quantico certainly thinks so. I understand he and Zackoff have been in cahoots since I requested help after Stokes’s death. But the director wants him to work more closely with Zackoff, so Sims is flying in this morning. He should be arriving around noon. Sims will drop in here first. He wants to see what both our local people and Beth Avery have come up with. Then he’ll take a look at the documents and have her explain how she sourced them for her memo.”