Pitch Black Read online

“So how would you suggest the authorities handle it?” Special Agent Lambert asked, sounding more interested than sarcastic.

  “Education,” she replied. “And I am not all about lots of government intrusion, but subjecting the online auction and classified sites to some kind of vetting and oversight would be a good thing, rather than leaving them completely unregulated, free to be filled with thieves and, obviously, murderers.”

  She sounded bitter because she was. Even three years after her grandmother’s death, her anger toward the con artists who’d contributed to it still sometimes threatened to choke her.

  Agent Stokes frowned. “I’ve been working in the Cyber Division for years. You want to talk about education? I can’t tell you how often we get the word out. And there are big warning notices on these sites you mentioned. Only a fool would overlook them.”

  Wrong thing to say. Sam’s spine went pole straight. “Or a lonely, trusting old person who has never dealt with the kind of high-tech deceit these bastards practice.” Realizing her personal feelings were coloring her comments, she quickly got back to the topic at hand, the reason they were here. Not her own history. “Or a bright teenager who thinks he’s too smart to ever be taken and has in his hand what looks like an incredibly real check with a lot of zeroes.”

  The other woman nodded once, acknowledging the point.

  Before Sam could say another word, the phone on her desk rang. She didn’t answer, not only not in the mood to talk to anyone, but unwilling to delay or inconvenience the agents who were trying to do their job. The sooner they left, the better. She wanted to be alone—needed to be alone to wrap her mind around the sad news Agent Lambert had brought her.

  They both watched her expectantly, and when they realized she was ignoring the call, nodded in appreciation. Unfortunately, though, her answering machine wasn’t muted. So all three of them were able to hear Tricia Scott, her best friend since middle school, whose volume control had two settings: loud and earsplitting. “Girl, pick up! I know you’re there; don’t be all cyber silent on me.”

  Oh, hell.

  “I’ve got to talk to you. I met a guy last night, and he has a friend who is so hot he’ll make you want to—”

  She lunged for the phone, yanking it to her ear. “I’m here, but I can’t talk.”

  “You don’t need to talk; just listen. We’re goin’ out Friday night, and I won’t take no for an answer. ’Cause if you don’t get out and start getting a little, your girl parts are gonna dry up and fall off from lack of use.”

  Across from her, Agent Stokes snorted, then bent over her coffee cup, her shoulders shaking. Her partner had lifted one brow, a small smile playing on those sexy lips.

  Which was when she realized her answering machine was still recording, amplifying every word her friend had said.

  “Oh, my God. Tricia, the answering machine is broadcasting everything you say, and I am not alone.” She hung up without another word, jerking her chin in the air, silently daring either of the two agents to so much as let their eyes twinkle. She had to hand it to them: They both managed to pretend they hadn’t heard a thing. Which gave her the strength to open her mouth to proceed as if nothing had happened.

  Then her answering machine beeped loudly, indicating she had a message. And the female agent chuckled.

  Sam closed her eyes, not knowing whether to laugh, cry, or get up and leave the room. Her emotions were a wreck; she felt like a Ping-Pong ball, bouncing from sadness to embarrassment, mourning to humiliation. She didn’t know how much more she could take before either bursting into tears or punching something.

  Agent Lambert seemed to realize it. He somehow managed to go right back to what they had been talking about, not giving the phone call another moment’s attention. “You mentioned online classified sites,” he said, fixing those green eyes firmly on her face. “How often do you hear about crimes that don’t involve a certified check or money wiring, but physical assaults?”

  Sam took a deep, even breath, following his lead and forgetting the call. Sitting at her desk, she replied, “All the time. People show up to look at a couch advertised online and find themselves the victim of strong-armed robbery. Or they’re trying to sell their gas-guzzling SUV and are carjacked. I hear from victims every single day.” She clicked her keyboard, quickly bringing up her own Web site. “I did a feature post on that issue six weeks ago, with tips on how to avoid being victimized. Starting with never going alone to see someone you’ve only met online. Whether it’s for a sale, a job interview, a dating service . . .”

  Dating service. Her mother’s latest brilliant idea. God, if she went through with it, Sam was going to tie up the fifty-going-on-fifteen-year-old woman and lock her in the basement. The idea had upset her so much, Sam had done a rant about the dangers two weeks ago. Uncle Nate had even tried talking to Mom. He’d been a cop many years ago, and now as a judge he saw some awful stuff on a daily basis. But he’d had no more luck than Sam. Her mother simply had no yellow warning light in her brain; she was all green, all the time.

  Kind of like Tricia.

  “Job interview?” Agent Lambert said, exchanging a meaningful look with his partner.

  Sam nodded. “Sure. There was a case about a month and a half ago of a woman killed when she responded to an online help-wanted listing.”

  As if thinking in tandem, knowing they had gotten as much as they could out of her, the two agents rose. “We know,” Lambert said.

  She sensed they knew a lot. A whole lot. But she wasn’t exactly in a position to ask them to share. And honestly, she didn’t want them to. Realizing she’d had a brush with one murder victim, however slightly, was going to keep her up tonight. She didn’t want to picture all the other ugly things these agents had to deal with.

  “Here’s my card,” Agent Lambert said. Before he passed it to her, he grabbed an expensive-looking pen from his inside jacket pocket and scratched through the phone number, scrawling another. “This is my cell number. If you think of anything else regarding your interactions with Ryan Smith, please let us know.”

  Agent Stokes blew out a huffy breath and tugged her own business card out of her pocket. “Here. The office number. Call either of us if you come up with anything else.”

  Realizing Lambert had given her his personal number, Sam swallowed quickly. What was she supposed to make of that?

  “I was recently reassigned and haven’t had time to get new business cards printed up,” he said, as if reading her thoughts and sending a gentle message of clarification.

  His partner was less gentle. “Yeah, and he hasn’t even had time to memorize his new work number yet.”

  Okay, clarified. Sam mentally kicked herself for the moment of wondering. Why should it matter, anyway? Even if the good-looking agent had wanted her to get in touch with him for private reasons, Sam wouldn’t necessarily do it.

  Not interested. Nice touch or not.

  Especially not since he’d just heard her best friend talking about her drying-up girl parts.

  Agent Stokes tugged on her coat, nodded at Sam, and said, “Thanks for the coffee,” before heading out the front door.

  Lambert began to follow, then paused to extend his hand. As Sam took it, she noted the sympathy still evident in his eyes. “I know you’re blaming yourself, and it won’t do any good to tell you not to. Logically, you’re smart enough to know there’s nothing you could have done. Emotionally, though, you’re not ready to believe it.”

  Sam nodded once, wondering if she was usually so easy to read or if it was just this particular FBI agent’s forte.

  “Remember, the man who did this is good at what he does, and his victims usually want to believe the line he’s selling them. I think you could have stood in the driveway and tried to physically block the other boy’s car, and he would have driven around you, his buddy Ryan Smith riding shotgun the way he had throughout their lives.”

  Then, with a final encouraging nod, he walked out the door, letting Sam return
to her solitary night. And her work.

  The work, however, didn’t come easily. Sitting at her desk, she kept going over everything she’d been told, picturing those poor boys. Wondering yet again why people put themselves in such dangerous situations.

  “Mom,” she whispered. Would her crazy, irresponsible mother really go through with her Internet dating idea? Hard to believe, but yes, Sam knew damn well she would.

  Knowing she’d never be able to focus until she tried to do something, she grabbed her iPhone, wanting to talk to Uncle Nate about it. Since she never knew what his court schedule was like, she didn’t try just voice dialing. Besides, the middle-aged man liked to try out every new high-tech toy he could find, and texting had become his new “thing.”

  Her thumbs clicking on the keypad, she typed, U there?

  His response came less than sixty seconds later: Sure, kiddo. Whasup?

  Any luck w/ Mom re e-dating craziness?

  Talked 2 her again. Doubt she lstnd.

  Sam gritted her teeth. Maybe we shld lock hr up & thro away key.

  Better u thn me.

  Yeah, her mother definitely had a mind of her own. Wl u keep tryng pls?

  U got it! TTYL.

  He even had the lingo down. Cute.

  But her smile quickly faded. Yes, she had backup to help deal with her mother’s situation. If only she’d been able to do something about Ryan Smith’s.

  Swiveling her chair, she faced her monitor again, pulling up the column she’d been writing before the FBI agents had arrived and blown a sad hole in her safe, normal day. Glancing it over, she realized it just wasn’t good enough. Though she hadn’t known him well, she owed Ryan something, if only a few words warning others against sharing his fate.

  Sam certainly wasn’t stupid enough to reveal any information about an ongoing criminal investigation. Still, part of her needed to vent, to release some of the anguish and rage she’d felt since learning Ryan had been murdered. So when she put her hands on her keyboard, she did not add to those six hundred words she’d written before Alec Lambert had walked through her front door. She instead opened a blank document.

  And ranted.

  Chapter 4

  Wendy Cramer had a secret. A delicious, wonderful secret.

  She was in love.

  She had never experienced that emotion before. Not really. She couldn’t call the feelings she had for the newscaster on channel nine love. After all, she knew him only from the TV; she’d never really spoken to him, even though he spoke to her every night at five and eleven.

  This was different. This was real. And not only was she in love, but she had the feeling he loved her, too.

  Most miraculous of all, he was a duke or a lord. Maybe even a prince. He hadn’t said.

  Bona fide royalty.

  Rafe hadn’t wanted to admit it at first, so she knew he wasn’t making things up. She’d been the one who’d focused on his screen name, who’d read between the lines of his comments in the chat room where they’d met. Only after they’d e-mailed several times had he told her the truth about himself, so used to being betrayed he hadn’t trusted her immediately.

  “I can be trusted,” she whispered as she lay in her narrow bed Wednesday morning. The luxury of sleeping in on a workday had come at a perfect time, since she’d had the most wonderful dreams and would have hated for them to end with the shrill shriek of an alarm. She’d taken the next three days off from her job as an answering service operator, and was free to drift in and out between those sweet dreams and sweeter reality. Thoughts of Rafe had filled her mind, swelling her imagination since their last conversation late the night before.

  She flung back the covers, not trying to hide her giggles. Her roommate, Sarah, had left two hours ago and couldn’t overhear. Good thing, since Sarah was already suspicious, asking why Wendy was online all the time and whom she was instant messaging with. Her friend found it odd that Wendy had requested the rest of the week off, using valuable vacation time so soon after the holidays.

  She trusted her friend, really. But even somebody as nice as Sarah could accidentally let something slip, exposing the prince—or duke or whatever—to danger. So it was best to do as he asked, keeping their online relationship a secret from everyone for the time being.

  But not for much longer. Soon there would be no reason for the secrecy. They would be together, a normal couple. She had to get over her shyness and her silly fears and do what her heart had been telling her to do. There was one step to take before they could move on with what she knew would be the most important relationship of her life.

  She had to meet him face-to-face.

  As she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she wondered if he would notice the few strands of gray in her dark brown hair or the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. She hadn’t lied about her age when she’d first begun to chat with InXile in a chat room a few weeks ago. She really was in her mid-thirties, as long as you considered thirty-eight to be the end of the mids.

  Besides, he clearly didn’t care about things like age or looks or the fact that she was a small-town girl at heart, still half-scared of her own shadow even after ten years of living in Baltimore.

  He was patient, kind, and warm. Everything she’d ever dreamed of. The perfect man. Hers for the taking. She just had to step out there and take him.

  “Soon,” she told her reflection. This vacation time had been about getting herself ready, mentally and physically. Starting with a visit to the beauty salon for a color job. Maybe even some highlights. Then a trip to the mall for some new clothes.

  She had to look perfect. Even if the world could never know her love was a prince, deep down, Wendy wanted to look good enough to be his princess.

  And once she was ready, she’d take a deep breath and set up a meeting with her destiny.

  Last night, after completing his long second day on his new job, Alec should have gone home, had a beer, thought about how much he missed the dog he no longer had, thanks to the girlfriend he no longer had—whom he did not miss—then grabbed a bite and read over his case files.

  He hadn’t. Instead, he’d had something else to focus on, something to read other than dry reports and files.

  Her book. Samantha Dalton’s.

  “Damn, she’s good,” he told himself as he flipped through its pages again in his office Wednesday morning. The first time, he had read it in one long sitting. Today, he’d gone over it again more slowly, making notes and jotting questions.

  Alec had come from the BAU, not the Cyber Division. But he had still always considered himself pretty savvy when it came to making sure no scumbag online con artist absconded with his social security number or hacked into his bank accounts.

  After reading Sam the Spaminator’s book, however, he had begun to realize he knew almost nothing about the subject she was so passionate about. Phishing, sure, he’d heard of it. But SMiShing? Pharming? Spoofing? Ponzi? Keylogging? Matrix schemes? Pump-and-dumps? The list was never-ending. And even though he didn’t see himself ever getting caught up in one, it was all too easy to see John Q. Public clicking on the wrong link and inadvertently offering some thug the keys to his entire financial life.

  She was good. The book was well written and informative. But it also had a snappy, ironic zing to it, at odds with the morose woman he’d met.

  She interested him, the puzzle of her life confusing. Her looks had been obvious, her personality not so much. Her loud friend had made it sound as though she was single, yet Sam had insisted on being called Mrs. Unless she had just moved in, he couldn’t imagine a recent breakup, because there’d been no sign of a man in her shoebox-size apartment crammed with feminine furniture and feminine laundry.

  God help him for his moment of insanity when he realized he was sitting on a pair of her skimpy cotton underwear.

  “Forget her,” he told himself as he sipped his coffee—his third cup of the morning.

  But he wouldn’t forget her writing. Her book had e
xposed the possibilities. If the Professor really was luring his victims using the latest Internet scams, there was almost no limit to what he could do. And given the statistics Samantha Dalton quoted, there was an untold number of people who fell for these things every single day.

  Would all of them drive to meet a stranger in the middle of a blizzard? Probably not. But it didn’t take all. It took only one. Or two, as poor Jason Todd and Ryan Smith could attest.

  Why did they do it?

  Not just Jason and Ryan, but all of the Professor’s victims. Though he wasn’t a doctor, his dual major in criminal justice and psychology, and his background in profiling, had him very curious. What had made them trust a stranger they’d met only on the Internet? And how did the unsub know who would respond to which lure? Both of those things could be very important to figuring out the identity of the killer.

  In her book, Sam had mentioned interviewing a number of victims of cyber crime, as well as perpetrators. Which meant she was a step up on him in understanding the motivations of these people. Which meant she could be a big help.

  Knowing it might not do any good, he still found Sam Dalton’s phone number in his notes and punched it in.

  She answered on the third ring, mumbling a distracted, “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Dalton? This is Special Agent Alec Lambert. Do you have a moment?”

  “Sure, what can I do for you?” she said, clearing her throat. Her voice sounded husky, with an I-just-woke-up note of sexiness that his whole body responded to.

  “Did I wake you?” he asked, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut rather than admit he’d been thinking about her in her bed.

  “Yeah, pathetic, I know. I’m a night owl. If you’d called at three a.m., you would have heard me chipper and perky.” She sighed. “Well, maybe not chipper. And definitely not perky. Haven’t had that word used in a description of me in a long time.”

  Perky wasn’t nearly a good enough word to describe her. Sexy. Wounded. Intriguing. Any of those would be much better, not that he was about to say so.

  “How can I help you?” she asked with an audible yawn.