The Price of Time Read online

  As she looked across the white sand toward the late-morning sun, she felt the first glimmer of hope that happiness might yet find her this side of that door. “Lay it on me.”

  “I’ve given more thought to what you and Lars have in common.”

  “Beyond age, IQ, and skin color,” Skylar prodded, recalling exactly where they’d left off. She had a mind for dialogue. Images didn’t stick. Neither did reading. But she retained spoken words like a voice recorder. Didn’t matter if it was a conversation, a television script, or the lyrics of a song. If she was giving something her attention, she could recall it. Verbatim. She never spoke of her ability, but did use it on occasion to win a bar bet or entertain friends at a cocktail party.

  Chase raised an eyebrow. “Right. Except I don’t think we need to go beyond them. I’ve come to realize that those seemingly worthless similarities may actually be significant.”

  “How so? There must be more than ten million college-educated white people in their early thirties living in the U.S.”

  “Actually, it’s closer to five. There are about twenty million people in any five-year band from birth to sixty. Three-quarters of Americans are white, and thirty percent of us are college educated.”

  “Well, aren’t you an encyclopedia.”

  “I’ve sat in on my share of profiling discussions. Shall I continue?”

  “Please.”

  “If it’s graduate school and not just college that counts, we’re below two million. On the other hand, if any of those three criteria are irrelevant coincidences, then the number gets significantly larger. But in any case, the pool is at least a couple of million people. Not very helpful on its own.”

  “But?”

  Chase shifted his chair to make it easier to see her face. “When you approach it from the other side, it gets interesting.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Motive. What reason could there be for hiring a professional to make certain members of a population subset disappear without a trace?”

  Skylar had been so focused on finding the guy who could tell them why, that she neglected to ask herself the obvious question. She suddenly felt inadequate, sitting there next to Mr. CIA. It was a feeling she’d avoided for many years, but found increasingly common since the fire.

  She met Chase’s eyes and repeated a line she’d heard John Travolta use in a movie. “Well, possible motives for murder are profit, revenge, jealousy, to conceal a crime, to avoid humiliation and disgrace, or plain old homicidal mania. The first five don’t apply to me, and the sixth seems unlikely given the use of a professional killer.”

  Chase’s eyes lit up. Given the lighting and the ocean behind him, they now looked totally blue. “The General’s Daughter, right? I loved that movie. But I didn’t say murder, I said disappear without a trace. Makes no difference to the victim, I realize, but I think it’s crucial to our investigation.”

  “How so?”

  “If Tom just wanted you dead, he could have stabbed you on Clearwater Beach. One quick thrust and you’d have gone down, while he ran away. Instead, he lured you across the country and then went through an elaborate ruse to leave no clues to your demise.”

  “I’m with you.” Why hadn’t she thought of that? Probably because she was scared, exhausted, and new to the whole P.I. thing.

  “But again, that’s something he could have accomplished in Clearwater. Why not lure you onto a boat and feed you to the fishes?”

  The clouds parted in her mind, and Skylar suddenly saw the answer as clearly as the sand beyond the boardwalk. “Information. He spent a full day pumping me for biographical information.”

  “Exactly. I’m sure he did the same thing with Lars. If you think about it, dangling a dream job requiring a background check is the perfect way to get someone to willingly disclose their whole life story.”

  “I agree. But why would anyone care about my story? I’d understand if I was rich, but stealing my identity isn’t going to get anyone very far. And in any case, there are easier ways to get a birthdate and social security number.”

  Chase raised a finger. “You have to couple it with my initial question.”

  Skylar repeated it from memory. “What reason could there be for hiring a professional to make certain members of a population subset disappear without a trace?”

  Chase nodded.

  “So it’s identity theft plus disappear without a trace.” She processed that for a second, and again felt the joyful jolt of an epiphany. “Someone’s not just looking to replace me on paper. She’s looking to replace me in person.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But why?”

  “I suspect we could come up with a dozen reasons if we put our minds to it. Let’s save that for later. The operative question is Who?”

  “Why Who?” Skylar asked. “Don’t tell me third base.”

  The Abbott and Costello reference brought a smile to Chase’s lips. He had a nice smile, she noted. “Because we can find the who.”

  “How’s that?”

  Chase just raised his eyebrows.

  “Of course,” Skylar said, experiencing yet another lightning strike as she recalled what he’d told her about the man masquerading as Lars. “She has to look like me.”

  41

  Face the Truth

  THE RESILIENCE of Skylar’s mind astonished me. Less than a day out of the oven and her hard drive was spinning without wobbles or skips. Professional agents often cracked in the wake of their first close call, but she was powering through. Apparently Ironman training transformed nerves from flesh into steel.

  After our early-morning breakthrough, I went in search of a razor while Skylar went for a run. A run. I’d offered her the bathtub, certain that she’d want to indulge in a long hot soak as she had after her interview with Tom. I certainly would have felt the urge, both for a bath and a bottle of Bordeaux. But despite the humidity, she’d opted for exercise.

  Skylar wasn’t even stymied by her lack of workout clothes. She just bought a bathing suit from the drugstore that supplied my shaving tackle and headed out to run barefoot on the sand.

  I shaved, then hit the hotel business center. When I returned to the room after a couple of hours on the computer, I expected to find Skylar sawing logs. But there was no sign of her. Instead of searching, I updated the note explaining my whereabouts and left for the mall.

  Entering our room upon my return, I heard her singing in the shower. She’d moved the bedside clock radio into the bathroom and was belting it out along with Adele. Unbelievable what endorphins could do.

  I knocked twice, cracked the bathroom door, and slid one of my shopping bags into the steamy room as the singing stopped. “I got you some clothes and a few toiletries.”

  “Thanks. Be right out.”

  I went to the balcony with the hope that the sun would soon bring the humidity under control, and booted up my new computer.

  Skylar joined me ten minutes later. She looked radiant. Even in basic jeans and a plain cotton shirt. Very healthy. I resolved to get more exercise.

  “You’re good with sizes. You even nailed the shoes. And the bra.”

  “I checked your tags. Apologies for the privacy invasion. I weighed the options and pragmatism won.”

  “No worries.” She gestured toward the iPhone on the end table. “Did you get Tom’s picture from the cloud.”

  “I did. I sent it off to Lesley.”

  “Lesley?”

  “Lesley Franna is the friend at the agency I referred to earlier. A crack analyst.”

  “How long before you hear back?”

  “Depends on how busy she is. I gave her the parameters she’ll need for an efficient query, so building it won’t take long. But she has to get to it first and I won’t be a top priority. Then the computer will take a few hours to do its thing. It will give her matches, beginning with the one the program considers the best match, then the second, and so on. Could be a very long list, and she won’t be abl
e to share it with me. She’ll have to review it, so again that will be a time sink.”

  Skylar grabbed the empty chair. “What do we do while we’re waiting?”

  I answered her question with one of my own. “What do you think?”

  “I think we look for me.”

  I pulled a second MacBook Air from the bag at my side. I had been amazed when the charge went through. Perhaps the credit card company knew they had me hooked and was just feeding me more line. “You’re exactly right.”

  She hesitated to take it. “I could use the computer downstairs.”

  “We can’t skimp on equipment or settle for inefficiency if we’re going to beat Tom. And Apple has a 30-day return policy,” I added.

  Her eyes brightened with understanding. “Thank you.”

  She accepted the laptop and lifted the lid. “Where do we look? I don’t suppose you have some special CIA database at your disposal?”

  I did, but I wasn’t about to mention it, as that particular resource wouldn’t help here. “The FBI has the best database, the Facial Analysis, Comparison, and Evaluation Services Unit, or FACE. But it’s not at my disposal. Not directly.”

  “What does that mean, not directly?” Skylar asked, working through the setup screens.

  “I can’t access it from my computer, and I certainly can’t hack the FBI. But my FBI friend Owen has it on his laptop.”

  “So you want to send him my picture?”

  “No. I can’t ask him to commit a crime.”

  Skylar crinkled her blonde brow. “But with Lesley?”

  “With Lesley, I had a legitimate, reportable reason. Tom was impersonating a CIA officer. I made her aware of that, as it’s well within her purview to run a related search. Reporting the results back to me is where things get a bit sketchy. Kinda depends on what she finds. If Tom actually is a CIA officer who’s running something either undercover or off the books, she’ll never tell me. On the other hand, if Tom’s just some guy off the street, particularly a foreign national, sharing with a former colleague might not get her more than a wrist slapping.”

  “So how does your FBI friend help you indirectly?”

  “Owen could give me a demonstration of FACE, as a professional courtesy. He doesn’t know I’m no longer with the Agency, so by asking him I’ll be walking a thin line, implicitly impersonating a CIA employee. It’s a gray zone since I’ll never actually make the claim, gray enough that he wouldn’t be likely to cry foul even if I weren’t a friend.”

  Skylar’s laptop emitted a welcoming bong. She stopped typing and looked in my direction. “So what’s next?”

  “I take your picture from a few angles. Then you go to work using those find my twin dot-coms while I call Owen and see if he’s available to meet after work.”

  42

  Twin Peeks

  I CHECKED MY NEW WATCH as I pulled the hotel key from my back pocket. Almost 11:00 p.m. I’d been away visiting my FBI friend for nine hours, and the Do Not Disturb sign was now hanging from the knob. I worked the lock as quietly as possible, but the electronic click was unavoidable.

  It didn’t matter. Skylar was still up and I even caught the smell of coffee in the air.

  She wasn’t at the desk where she’d been when I left, but she was still glued to her computer. She was belly-down on the bed with her chest propped up by a couple of pillows and her ankles crossed in the air. Gone were the jeans I’d purchased that morning, but everything else was still on. She probably wanted to air her wounds. Looked like they’d been salved.

  She glanced over at me, then hit a few more keys before turning her head. “How was Quantico?” she asked in an upbeat tone.

  I snicked the bolt and swiveled the security guard. “Went smoothly. I showed up with a six-pack of Fierce and we worked through it while he demoed FACE.” While she watched with wide eyes, I held up the catch of the day, a flash drive. “We found fourteen Skylar Fawkes lookalikes.”

  “Fourteen! Wow, I only found one.” She rotated her laptop in my direction.

  My bed was too far from her screen, but I didn’t want to sit on hers when she was dressed like that, so I wheeled over the desk chair and sat such that I wouldn’t be looking at her long, bare, tan legs. “Sandy Wallace in Miami. The chef. She’s on my list too.”

  “That’s an encouraging sign. Show me the others.”

  I handed her the flash drive.

  It was an awkward arrangement, with her on a bed and me on the only chair. “I’m sorry. I should have thought to buy you pajamas.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Not a top priority. Now, if you’d forgotten a toothbrush, that would have been problematic. I hate it when I can’t clean my teeth. But seriously, most guys wouldn’t have gotten anything at all, much less thought to check my sizes. Of course, you set the bar pretty high last night. On service, I mean. I’m very grateful to you, for everything. And I’m rambling. I do that too, when I have nervous energy. I’ll shut up now.”

  “No worries. But I must say that I’m surprised you didn’t burn up all your energy running. You were gone a long time this morning.”

  “I got a swim in this afternoon too, but no cycling, obviously. I might see if they have a stationary bike in the gym before turning in.” Reading my expression, she added. “I know I’m not a professional athlete any more. But the habit is ingrained and I’m addicted to the endorphins. Plus I like to eat and I don’t want to get fat. I’m rambling again.”

  “Actually, I was thinking the salt water would have been painful, given your burn marks.”

  Skylar grimaced. “Yeah, there was an initial protest, shall we say. But I powered through.”

  I decided not to dwell on that topic. “Did you get dinner? There’s a 24/7 café just down the road. A local place, not a chain. We could take our computers.”

  Skylar sat up and reached for her jeans. “That sounds fantastic.”

  The graveyard menu at Rick’s Café was heavy on fried food and breakfast items, but Skylar found a grilled, marinated chicken breast and I ordered a mushroom Swiss burger.

  We sat side by side in a coveted wraparound corner booth, so both of us could see my computer screen. I inserted the flash drive with the Facial Analysis, Comparison, and Evaluation data, then called up the first of four images deemed to be a match. “Emma Atherton is a day trader from Durango, Colorado.”

  “I see that FACE ignores hair color and cut,” Skylar said. “I’d wondered about that.”

  Whereas Skylar kept her sun-bleached hair short, presumably for the athletic benefits, Emma’s straight brown hair extended a good six inches past her shoulders. “We programmed it to ignore anything easily alterable. Hair color, hairstyle, eyewear, eye color, moles and birthmarks.”

  “Who’s next?”

  I hit the forward arrow and Sandy Wallace appeared.

  “Same woman I found on Facebook.”

  I hit the arrow again. “Amy Zabala, a marketing manager from Nashville, Tennessee.”

  Skylar squirmed. “This is kinda creepy. She could be my long-lost twin.”

  “She doesn’t appear to have your charm.”

  “It’s a driver’s license photo. Nobody looks charming in those. But thank you.”

  I clicked again. “Carmen Rohan, schoolteacher from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.”

  “She looks like a vampire. A fat vampire.”

  “The computer ignores skin tone, so long as the race fits. Tanning is easy to manipulate.”

  “What about weight?”

  “I gave it a weight range from one hundred to two hundred. A height range from five feet, four inches to six feet and an age from twenty to forty. Figured it was better to cast too wide a net than too narrow.”

  “I still don’t see the resemblance. Do you?”

  I wasn’t going to go near that one. “I’d agree that it’s the weakest match so far. But remember, Tom isn’t trying to match you. He’s trying to match someone who looks like you. That someone’s probably not a pro
fessional triathlete.”

  The food arrived. I pushed the computer to Skylar’s far side so she could click through the ten remaining lookalikes while eating. She did just that, cutting and chewing a single bite of chicken while studying each profile photo. Only one of the images merited two forkfuls.

  “So that’s it?” she asked after the final arrow click.

  I popped the last bite of burger into my mouth and wiped my face with a paper napkin while chewing. “That’s what FACE has matching the parameters I used. But FACE is far from complete. While it incorporates most of the federal data from passport, immigration, and licensing applications, less than half the states have supplied data from driver’s licenses and such.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s a privacy-versus-security issue. State legislatures get to decide whether they want to participate or not, and to what degree. Some only provide driver’s license photos, others include mugshots as well. The point is, there are a lot more potential matches out there.”

  “That’s discouraging.”

  “It’s not as bad as you think. Tom’s ability to search will be limited as well. Social media is the big variable. I’m sure you could write a program like FACE for Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, et cetera. It’s just a question of time, talent, and money.”

  Skylar polished off her chicken and immediately picked up the dessert menu. “So what’s next?”

  “Pie, I’m guessing.”

  She licked her lips. “Good guess. But you know what I mean.”

  The waitress appeared with an expectant look in her eyes. “Can I get you all anything else? The apple pie is my personal favorite.”

  “Can you warm it?” Skylar said with a smile.

  “Sure thing, sweetie. A la mode?”