“Where are you?” Byrne asked.
“I’m in Atlanta. I have a book signing tomorrow.”
“Do you have e-mail access right now?”
“I do. I’m in my hotel room. They have high-speed access here. Why, do you want to—”
“What’s your e-mail address?”
David Sinclair gave it to him.
“Can you hang on one minute?” Byrne asked.
“Sure.”
Byrne raised Hell Rohmer on the handset. He gave him David Sinclair’s e-mail address. “Can you make a composite of the four buildings, and outline them in some way?”
“I’ll drag it into PhotoShop and put a red line around the edges. Will that work?”
“That’ll work,” Byrne said. “Can you save it as a file and e-mail it to this guy?”
Byrne gave him the address.
“I’m on it,” Hell said. “Shouldn’t take more than two minutes.”
Back on his cell, Byrne told David Sinclair to expect the file.
“If you don’t get the file in five minutes, I’d like you to call me back at this number,” Byrne said. “I’ll also give you a second number if, for some reason, you don’t reach me.” Byrne gave the man his and Jessica’s cell numbers.
“Got them. One question.”
“Go.”
“This is about the breaking news story out of Philly, isn’t it? It’s on CNN.”
There was no point in dancing around it. They needed this man’s help. “Yes.”
Sinclair was silent for a few moments. Byrne heard him draw a deep breath, release it. “Okay,” he said. “One more question.”
“I’m listening.”
“What exactly am I looking for?”
“A developing pattern,” Byrne said. “A problem. A tangram problem.” “Okay. Let me look at it. I’ll get back to you.”
Byrne clicked off. He turned his attention to the man behind the counter. “You have today’s paper?” he asked the wide-eyed fry cook.
No response. The man was all but catatonic.
“The paper. Today’s Inquirer?”
The man slowly shook his head. Byrne looked to the back of the diner. There was only one customer. He was reading the Daily News. Byrne stormed to the rear, grabbed it out of the man’s hands.
“Hey!” the man said. “I was reading that.”
Byrne dropped a five on the table. If everyone got out of this alive he would consider it a bargain. He handed each of the detectives a pair of sheets and a pair of shapes to create. He kept one. In a few moments they had all seven shapes.
Josh Bontrager’s cell phone rang. He stepped outside.
Byrne put the pieces on the floor. Five triangles, one square, one diamond. Jessica put the torn pages from the tangram book along the length of the counter.
Page after page of tangram problems, all categorized by country of origin and puzzle designer. There were jewelry, vessels, tools, animals, musical instruments, buildings. One page was devoted to plants. Another to mountains.
“The first four crime scenes were here.” Byrne pushed the newspaper triangles together in the relative placement to each other. All put together, the overall shape looked like a capsized boat. Or a mountain range. He moved two shapes up, two down. Now it resembled a clock or bell tower.
Bontrager stepped back inside. “I just talked to Lieutenant Hurley. He heard back from the FBI.”
“What do we have?” Byrne asked.
“They said they’re closing in on a location for the GothOde server. It looks like it’s not in Romania after all. It’s in New York.”
“When do they think they might have it?”
“They said sometime in the next two hours or so.”
Byrne looked at his partner, then at his watch, then at his cell phone.
They had less than twenty minutes.
SEVENTY-FIVE
1:50 AM
LILLY WAS IN a long, dark shaft. It was big enough for her to crawl through, but not by much. The walls were made of wood. It was not a heat duct of any sort.
Lilly was not particularly claustrophobic, but the combination of utter darkness and the thick, hot air of the passageway made her feel entombed. She did not know how far she had gone, nor did she see any end. More than once she thought it would be best to go back to the room and take her chances there, but the passageway was not large enough for her to turn around. She’d have to back up all the way. In the end, the decision was a no-brainer.
She continued forward, stopping every so often, listening. Music came from somewhere. Classical music. She heard no voices. She had no sense of time.
After what felt like minutes of edging through the passage she came to a sharp right turn, and felt a breeze. Thin light spilled down from above. Lilly looked up and saw an even narrower passage, too small to pass through. It led to an iron grate. She tried to reach it but it was just beyond her fingertips.
And that was when she heard the crying.
The grate appeared to be a floor register. The crying seemed to be coming from that room. Lilly banged on the wall of the shaft, listened. Nothing. She banged harder, and the crying stopped.
There was someone in there.
“Hello?” Lilly whispered.
Silence. Then the rustling of material, the padding of footsteps.
“Hello?” Lilly repeated, this time louder.
Suddenly, the register went dark. Lilly looked up. She came face-to-face with a girl.
“Oh my God,” the girl said. “Oh my God!”
“Not so loud,” Lilly said.
The girl calmed herself. Her crying faded to the occasional sob. “My name is Claire. Who are you?”
“I’m Lilly. Are you hurt?”
The girl didn’t answer right away. Lilly supposed “hurt” was a relative thing. If this girl had been kidnapped, like Lilly had been, it was bad enough.
“I’m…I’m okay,” Claire said. “Can you get me out of here?”
The girl looked about sixteen or seventeen. She had long strawberry-blond hair, fine features. Her eyes were puffed and red. “Have you searched the room?” Lilly asked. “Have you looked for a key?”
“I tried, but all the drawers are glued shut.”
Tell me about it, Lilly thought. She glanced ahead. The endless, ink-black shaft glared back. She looked at Claire. “Do you have any idea where we are?”
“No,” Claire said. She started sobbing again. “I just met this guy in the park. He told me there was a campsite nearby. I walked with him through the woods, and the next thing I knew I was in bed. In this room.”
My God, Lilly thought. How many girls were here? “Look,” she whispered. “I’m going to get us out of here.”
“How?”
Lilly had no frigging idea. Not at the moment. “I’ll try to find a way.”
“I’m scared. He came in before. I pretended I was still knocked out. He left a dress in the room.”
“What kind of dress?”
Claire hesitated. Her tears returned in full. “It looks like a wedding dress. An old wedding dress.”
Jesus, Lilly thought. What the hell is that about? “Okay. Hold tight.”
“You’re not leaving me, are you?”
“I’ll be back,” Lilly said.
“Don’t go!”
“I have to. I’ll be back. Don’t make any noise.”
Lilly hesitated for a few moments, not really wanting to leave, then continued forward. If her bearings were right, she was heading toward the back of the house. She hadn’t sensed an incline or a decline, so she was probably still on the second floor. The sound of the classical music had faded to silence, and all Lilly could hear now was the scrape of her knees along the floor of the shaft, and the sound of her own breathing. The air was getting hotter.
She took a break, the sweat pouring off her. She lifted her T-shirt, wiped her face. After a full minute, she started moving again. Before she got ten feet she sensed another opening above her. It wasn’t anything dramatic, just a change in the atmosphere. She ran her hand along the ceiling of the shaft, and felt—