“You think there are more victims?”
“I do.”
“Okay, I get it,” he said. “But I don’t know if the feds will.”
Chaz had a point. “Maybe you can set up a meet,” Kat said. “Call Mike Keiser. He’s the ADIC in New York. We may be able to do better face-to-face.”
“So you’re coming back to the city now?”
Kat looked behind her. Jeff was standing. He wore denim jeans and a fitted black T-shirt. All of this—sights, sound, emotions, whatever—was almost too much to take in at once. The rush was overwhelming to the point of threatening.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll leave now.”
• • •
They didn’t bother with good-byes or promises or hugs. They had said what they wanted to say, Kat guessed. It felt like enough and yet more incomplete than ever. She had come here hoping for answers, and as is the way of the world, she was leaving with even more questions.
Jeff walked her to the car. He made a face when he saw the fly-yellow Ferrari, and despite everything, Kat actually laughed.
“This yours?” Jeff asked.
“What if I said yes?”
“I would wonder if you grew a very small penis since we were last together.”
She couldn’t help herself. She threw her arms around him hard. He stumbled back for a second, got his footing, and hugged her back. She put her face against his chest and sobbed. His big hand cupped the back of her head and pulled her closer. He squeezed his eyes shut. They both just held on, changing their grips, pulling each other closer and with more desperation, until finally Kat pushed away all at once and, without another word, got into the car and drove away. She didn’t look back. She didn’t check the rearview mirror.
Kat drove the next thirty miles in a fog, obeying the GPS as though she were the machine, not it. When she had her bearings, she made herself concentrate on the case, only the case. She thought about all she had learned—about the catfishing and the money transfers and the e-mails and the stolen license plate and the phone calls.
Panic began to harden in her chest.
This couldn’t wait for a face-to-face.
She started making pleading phone calls, working connections, until she reached Mike Keiser, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI. “What can I do for you, Detective? We’re working an incident that took place at LaGuardia Airport this morning. I also have two drugs busts going down. It’s a busy day.”
“I appreciate that, sir, but I have a case involving at least three missing people across at least three states. One is from Massachusetts, one from Connecticut, one from Pennsylvania. I think there may be many more victims that we don’t know about yet. Have you been briefed on any of this?”
“I have. In fact, I know your partner, Detective Faircloth, has been trying to set up a meeting with us, but we’re really crazed with this LaGuardia situation. It may involve national security.”
“If these people are being held against their will—”
“Which you have no proof of. In fact, hasn’t each of your supposed victims been in touch with family or friends?”
“None is currently answering their phones. I suspect that the e-mails and calls are being coerced.”
“Based on?”
“Look at the whole picture,” Kat said.
“Make it fast, Detective.”
“Start with the two women. They both have an online relationship with the same guy—”
“Who isn’t really the guy.”
“Right.”
“Someone else was just using his pictures.”
“Right.”
“Which I gather is not uncommon.”
“It’s not. But the rest is. Both of these women go away with this same guy about a week apart.”
“You don’t know it’s the same guy.”
“Pardon?”
“Several guys could be using the same fake profile.”
Kat hadn’t thought of that. “Even if that were the case, neither woman is back from her trip.”
“Which also isn’t surprising. One had extended her trip. The other just left, what, yesterday?”
“Sir, one of the women transferred a ton of cash and is supposedly moving to Costa Rica or something, I don’t know.”
“But she called her son?”
“Yes, but—”
“You think the call was coerced.”
“I do. We also have to look at the case of Gerard Remington. He started an online relationship and now he’s gone too. He also transferred money to that Swiss account.”
“So what exactly do you think is going on here, Detective?”
“I think someone is preying on people, maybe a lot of people. We’ve stumbled across three possible victims. I think there are more. I think someone lures them away with promises of a vacation with a potential life partner. He grabs them and gets them somehow to cooperate. So far, none of them have come back. Gerard Remington has been off the grid for weeks.”
“And you think—”
“I hope he’s alive, but I’m not optimistic.”
“You really believe that these people have all been, what, kidnapped?”
“I do. Whoever is behind this has been smart and careful. He’s stolen license plates. With one exception, none of these three has used their credit cards or ATM charges or anything else we can trace. They just vanish.”
She waited.
“Look, I have to go into a meeting on this LaGuardia mess, but okay, yeah, this doesn’t pass the smell test. Right now, I don’t have a ton of manpower, but we’ll get on it. You gave us the three names. We will put a watch on their accounts, run their credit cards, check phone records. I’ll get a subpoena for this singles website and see what they can tell us about who put up the profile pages. I don’t know if that will give us anything or not. Criminals use anonymous VPNs all the time. I’ll also see if we can get that singles site to put up some kind of warning on their home page, but since it will hurt their bottom line, I doubt they will want to cooperate. We can also see if Treasury can go after the money trail. Two SARs were issued, right? That should be enough to get the ball rolling on that end too.”
Kat listened to ADIC Keiser continue to go down his checklist and came to a horrible, awful conclusion:
It wouldn’t do any good.
Whoever was behind this had been efficient. He had even gone so far as to steal a license plate from another Lincoln Town Car. So yes, the feds would work the case, even though it couldn’t yet be a priority. Maybe, if they got lucky, they’d find something.
Eventually.
But what else could she do?
When ADIC Keiser finished, he said, “Detective? I need to go now.”
“I appreciate your believing me,” Kat said.
“Sadly, I think I do believe you,” he said, “but I hope to hell you’re wrong about all this.”
“Me too.”
They hung up. Kat had one more card to play. She called Brandon.
“Where are you?” she asked him.
“I’m still in Manhattan.”
“I found the guy your mother supposedly went away with.”
“What?”
“I think you were right from the start. I think something bad has happened to your mother.”
“But I spoke to her,” Brandon said. “She would have told me if something was wrong.”
“Not if she felt it would put her—or you—in danger.”
“You think that’s what happened?”
There was no reason to sugarcoat it anymore. “Yeah, Brandon, I do.”
“Oh God.”
“The FBI is looking into it now. They will go through every legal channel they can to find out what happened.” She repeated the word that she had emphasized. “Legal.”
“Kat?”
“Yes?”
“Is that your way of asking me to break in to the website again?”
Screw the fancy talk. “Yes.”
“Okay, I’m at a coffee shop not far from your house. I’m going to need more privacy and a stronger Wi-Fi.”
“Do you want to use my apartment?”
“Yeah, that’ll work.”
“I’ll call and tell the doorman to let you in. I’m on my way too. Call me if you find anything—who put up the profiles, if they put up any other profiles, who else they’ve contacted, anything. Get your friends to help, whatever. We need to know everything.”