Stride was excited, but then he discarded the thought. Even if the kid had a connection to Tanjy, it didn't explain how he could have known what Mitchell Brandt or Sonia Bezac were hiding.
He thought about what Dan had just said. "Why are you so sure this guy didn't hack in from outside?"
"I made sure she installed a state-of-the-art firewall," Dan replied. "I knew the kind of stuff she was keeping on her system, and I didn't want anyone swiping it."
"You said she was hopeless with computers."
"Sure, she called Byte Patrol. They configured the firewall for her."
Stride stopped. Everything stopped. "Byte Patrol? Those are the guys in the purple vans, right? And the purple shirts?"
"Yeah, you see them all over town."
One by one, Stride remembered. The details broke away from the mass of facts in his head and dropped like coins plinking into the metal tray of a slot machine. The cherries lined up, and he cashed out.
He was in Tanjy's bedroom, and he saw the neon purple folder next to her computer.
He was in Sonia's living room, and she was telling him about the hacker-proof security system on her computer. Installed by Byte Patrol.
He was talking to Mitchell Brandt and hearing about the research software he used. Designed by Byte Patrol.
He was inside Silk, and Sonia was chewing out a tech in a purple shirt. The guy was like a bear, his giant paws over the keyboard. Stride tried to picture exactly what the man looked like, but all he could remember was the instant where the tech caught Stride's eye and winked.
The man from Byte Patrol knew exactly who Stride was. He was laughing at his own joke. This was the man who knew everything hidden inside the computers. This was the man who was pulling strings and selling secrets all over the city. This was the man who had raped Maggie.
Stride thought about Eric talking to Tony Wells. How can you tell if someone ordinary could be a sexual predator?
This was the man, Stride thought, that Eric went to see that night.
This was the man who had Serena.
49
Serena knew she was awake because of the pain. Her skull felt as if someone had punched it in like an eggshell. When she turned her neck, a jolt of agony shivered up her spine and made her whole body jerk. When she opened her eyes, she saw only black but felt the world spin. She tried to move her hands, but they were bound. So were her feet. She was pinned down, a butterfly captured by a collector. The mattress below her felt like burlap and scratched her skin. It smelled of mold and blood. The air carried a waft of gutted fish spilling out roe, bones, and organs. She tried to talk, shout, cry, and scream, but she was gagged, and the taste of wet cotton soured her mouth. Her throat squealed out a sound so pitiful that the wind laughed at it.
The blizzard was a monster inches away, noisy and ferocious. Steel rattled and quivered as the gales assaulted metal walls. She heard hissing, like a thousand snakes, which was the whip of snow, as furious as a tornado. Wherever she was, she may as well have been outside, because there was no protection here from the wind and cold blasting through the walls. The frozen air across her skin told her she was naked. Her bare flesh puckered. Her toes curled, and she tightened her fingers into fists. A drop of water fell on her through the ceiling, tracing an icy trail down her thigh.
She cursed herself for being so stupid. Not telling Jonny. Not watching her back. She was a prisoner now, and she didn't fool herself with hopes of rescue, and she knew it was going to be bad. The kind of bad when you realized there was no God coming for you. The kind of bad she had been through before.
He was in the room with her. Every few seconds, she heard the screech of wood and nails separating as he shifted in a rickety chair. Without seeing him, she felt his eyes. She wanted him to say something. She wanted it to begin and be over with, but long minutes passed where he let her struggle in her blind, cold world, as if he knew that the waiting was worst of all. She felt like a child in line for a scary ride, her stomach balling up into fear.
She told herself it didn't matter. It was just pain. Long ago, she had taught herself how to tunnel inside her brain to hide from pain. To switch off her emotions until she felt nothing at all. No hurt. No fury. No love. She tried to remember how she had done it, how she could follow the trail there again, how she could find that place. Even now, she found herself resisting, not wanting to go back. Nothingness was a torture all its own, a soundless room that she had spent decades trying to escape.
She struggled at her bonds, feeling the bed jostle and shake as she tried to free herself, knowing she was wasting her strength. He laughed, the first real sound he had made, and then she heard him stand up. She smelled him getting closer. She tried to wriggle backward, but there was nowhere to go. He bent over her. His breath was in her face. She wrenched her face away, but his fingers grabbed her jaw like a pincer and twisted her back.
"I've waited a long time for this," he said.
She tried to drown out his voice and the odd echoes of terror it awakened in her. She focused on the storm, imagining the burying snow on the other side of the wall, wondering if the wind would pick her up and carry her away.
He dragged something cold and sharp against her skin, starting at her neck, making a line across her throat with what she realized was the point of a knife. He pushed deep enough to make her squirm but not enough to break the skin. The knife explored her like a curious animal. It made a circle around her breasts, and then her aureoles, and then punctured one nipple in the very center, a pinprick that made her shudder and drew a wet, warm drop of blood.
Unbidden, tears streamed down her face.
The knife moved lower, scraping through her navel, detouring to her thighs, pushing up under the bones of her knees, running up the balls of her feet, climbing back up and zeroing in between her legs. He turned the knife and laid the cold flat of the blade along her mound. She tensed and hunted for the faraway place, the nothingness room, but it was lost in her brain, and she didn't know where to find it.
"I should sign my work," he said. "That way, when Stride finds you, he'll know who it was."
She threw her head back and forth violently, ignoring the pain in her skull, and thrust her body up off the bed at him. Another scream died in the wet cotton in her mouth. He waited until her resistance ran out of force, and she collapsed backward, spent, dizzy.
His big hand found the flat square of her stomach and pushed down, expelling air through her nose. He stretched the skin between his fingers until it was taut, like a canvas.
"No!" she wailed, but there was no sound coming from her, just the storm outside. The protest, the begging, the pleading, were only in her mind.
The knifepoint penetrated her. Tissue separated cell by cell. Blood oozed. He began to carve.
Somewhere in the middle, she passed out. When she awoke again, her stomach was cold and hot, stinging and frozen, all at the same time. The blood had become ice, hard like sugar candy. The storm raged on behind the wall. The smells and sounds were the same, but something was different, and she realized that the rag stuffed into her mouth was gone. She could work the muscles of her jaw and breathe stale air.
Serena screamed, and she discovered she was in a small place, because the noise rattled back and forth between the walls, unbearably loud and tinny. Outside, though, it was a murmur held up against the roar of the wind. She kept screaming until her throat was hoarse and sore, and when she stopped, nothing at all happened. No one ran to find her. The blizzard paid no attention.
"Scream if you want, but no one will hear you," he said.
She didn't answer.