Strings of Fate (Mistresses of Fate) (2 page)

CHRIS STRUGGLED,
still caught in the grip of the nightmare. Her breath, raspy and quick with panic, hitched on a small sob, and it was several seconds before she calmed down enough to realize that she was not eight years old, but thirty-four, safe in her small bedroom. Collapsing backward on her bed, she eased her arms out from under the quilt, shivering as goose bumps rose on her sweaty flesh. Chris wished she’d remembered to turn on the heater before she’d stumbled into bed last night; cold invited the nightmare, which grew progressively stranger and more terrifying as the years rolled by.

She glanced over at the small digital clock on her desk: six a.m. Sighing, she rubbed two fingers over one eyebrow. The array of computers that lined her desk hummed, their screens dark but waiting. Above them, she’d secured cork tiles to the entire wall, covering them in pictures of missing persons, with maps and network diagrams connecting people together. She reserved a small space in the top right side of the wall for her successes. She could barely see it in the dim light from the streetlamps filtering in from her windows. There were six faces pinned there, five girls and one boy. These were the ones she’d found. She whispered their names in her head, trying to shake off the lingering effects of the nightmare:
Laura Wellman, Patricia Cuba, Amy Gamez, Moji Abiola, Tammy Jones, Kurt Thomas.

It helped some, but it also made her anxious, anxious to check on her current missing children. There were always more it seemed. She’d searched for hundreds . . . hundreds of children, and had only found those six alive. Tavey had directly helped find five more, with her search-and-rescue dogs, though two of them had been bodies; and Raquel had hunted down dozens of child predators, so who knew how many she’d saved?

Chris swept her ancient quilt aside and stood, stretching automatically. Even though she worked as a yoga instructor, her shoulders and back were constantly tense from sitting at her desk in front of the computers.

As if compelled, she padded across the room and wiggled the mouse that controlled the two large flat-screens in the center of her desk. They came to life with a snap of static electricity. Filaments of her hair, which was thick and slightly curly, rose toward them. She sat on the edge of her chair, thinking that she’d just check really quickly and then make some coffee. She’d started a facial recognition search yesterday afternoon looking for matches to the pornographic image of a little girl that she’d schemed out of a creeper in a chatroom. She’d noted the handle he’d used and reported him to Raquel, but her real interest was in finding the girl—who was clearly being abused.

Her other “actives” were the searches for two missing girls in the Atlanta area. She’d traced what she thought were references to them back to a man named Martin Hays, but the links were tenuous at best. She couldn’t prove he was the man who had posted messages about the “sweet things” he’d enjoyed—at least she couldn’t prove it legally. She was also looking for clues into the disappearance of a teenage girl named Lobelia Curso; the girl’s mother had sent an email through the website of Tavey’s nonprofit search-and-rescue organization, Once Was Lost.

Chris had considered going into police work like Raquel, but she didn’t have the temperament to take orders, and her interest wasn’t so much in fighting crime. She tended to skirt the law whenever it was more convenient, which was often. When she wasn’t teaching yoga or working on her online profile business crafting made-to-order personas for her clients, she was searching for the missing. She contacted hackers, FBI agents, private investigators, police officers, and other people like her and her friends, people whose passion was to help missing and exploited children. She trolled sites like Craigslist and Backpage, befriending the scum of the earth to find out more about the codes and hidden messages. She’d managed to get her hands on the facial recognition software from a friend who’d worked for a small start-up tech company, and she’d used it to scan the faces of children whose images were being exploited.

Two hours later, she glanced up from her bank of screens and realized that the sun was up and she was running late for church and the Sunday meeting with her friends—she’d done it again, gotten lost in the search, and now she had to rush to shower and dress. She stood and stretched once more, bending from side to side, her gaze on the picture of Summer that hung, front and center, in the middle of her wall of the missing. It was Summer’s second-grade school photo, complete with two crooked front teeth, a tail of long blond hair, and unseeing blue eyes.

Straightening, Chris kissed her pinkie finger and leaned over her desk to touch it to Summer’s face, a ritual that occurred every morning and every night. “Pinkie swear, Summer-girl, I’ll never stop looking.”

2

SLICING DELICATELY WITH
the knife, Joe removed the strings from the woman with the rainbow hair. She’d screamed at the first cut, but now she was quiet, her eyes glassy and dark, as he detached her from her last links to life. Her strings were smooth and glowing in soft neon colors. He ran one through his fingers, squeezing gently, before tying it in an intricate knot around his wrist.

Standing, he looked down at the body. Bereft of her strings, she seemed to him like a broken doll, a castoff from a troop of puppeteers. His knife dripped blood onto the old-fashioned black-and-white tiles, splattering onto his cheap white athletic shoes.
I’ll have to buy more,
he thought like a fussy old lady, and dropped the knife next to the body. It landed handle-first in the pool of blood, splattering long strands of crimson.

He glanced up from the body, over at the woman crouched in the corner, taking in her pale face and shaking hands. She cringed, just a little, like a dog expecting a kick. He nodded at the body—she would clean it up.

She did, scurrying from her pallet in the corner at a half crouch to drag the body to the walk-in shower, where she would wash away the blood. She didn’t have to be told what to do, not anymore.

Joe ignored her, walking to the computers that lined one wall of the industrial loft that he rented. He had the large square-paned windows covered in cardboard and newspaper, but now he removed the covering from one pane, just enough to see his Creator in the building across the circle.

He lifted his binoculars, scanning the grassy circle and the surrounding buildings automatically, looking for signs that he’d been discovered, that the police knew he was here. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, so he went back to his computer and pulled up the video feed he had from his Creator’s bedroom. It had taken some time to hack into her system. It helped that he still had his father’s tools, the cable and satellite equipment, but more specifically the uniform, which made him practically invisible.

Looking down at his wrists, he admired the strings that flashed and writhed and glowed. But he only felt satisfied for a brief moment. Already he felt that familiar needling urge for just one more . . .

3

WHEN THE CHURCH
service ended, Tavey always took a few minutes to chat with other members of the congregation (mostly old ladies) and the minister, while Raquel and Chris waited outside in a small gazebo.

“I wish she’d hurry it up,” Chris complained. “It’s freezing out here.”

It wasn’t really that cold, just damp and chilly, but the air seemed to sink into her bones, reminding her of the dream and making her shiver. It didn’t help that she’d left the house with her hair still wet from the shower—she hadn’t left enough time to blow-dry it. Her clothing left something to be desired as well, a wrap dress that was too thin for the weather, a vintage leather coat, and a pair of ballet flats. She’d been tempted to wear her UGGs, but last time she’d done that Tavey had threatened to rip them off Chris’s feet and give them to her dogs as chew toys.

“She has to talk to everyone, Chris. It’s part of being a Collins.” Raquel, who always looked put-together, was wearing a lovely forest-green wool dress with a wide leather belt and tall-heeled boots. Her coat was camel-colored wool, with emerald-green satin lining. The colors complemented her dark skin. When she wasn’t wearing her police uniform, Raquel dressed with the elegant flair of a 1940s starlet.

Chris was lucky if she managed to shower and find shoes that didn’t offend Tavey’s good taste. Her lips curled as she glanced over at Tavey’s lovely burnt-umber suit with a green velvet jacket and alligator heels. She often wondered how Summer would be dressed if she were here.
Would she still insist on choosing her clothing by texture?
She’d always liked the feel of velvet, leather, silk, and cotton. She hadn’t worried too much about color.

“Did you hear about the case Tyler stumbled on?”

Chris glanced warily in Tavey’s direction, checking to see if her friend was still occupied with the church ladies. “No, what’s up?”

“They found the body of a woman just outside Rome. They’ve connected the murder to several others throughout the northern part of the state.”

“A serial murderer? Working in Rome?”

“Not just Rome,” Raquel clarified, sliding her gloved hands into her coat pockets as if afflicted with a sudden chill. “They’re still checking with the sheriffs in the surrounding counties and the local police departments. The FBI has gotten involved.”

Chris frowned. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

Raquel gave her an are-you-serious? expression. “Honey, you’re a little obsessive. I doubt you’ve looked at much else now that you suspect this Martin Hays guy of the Atlanta kidnappings. If you’d looked at the news out of Rome, you’d have seen references to ‘the Boyfriend.’ That’s what the media is calling the unsub.”

Unsub stood for Unknown Subject. Raquel had schooled her on the lingo a long time ago. “The Boyfriend—ugh.” Chris made a face. “Why?”

“I’m not sure. I haven’t had a chance to see what I can find out. I don’t suppose you want to call Tyler and ask him?”

Chris glanced at Tavey again. “Why don’t you call him?”

Raquel rolled her eyes. “All right, chicken. She won’t hate you, you know, just for talking to the man.”

“Are you going to tell her you called him?” Chris challenged.

Raquel attempted to look indifferent, but after a moment she shrugged. “Probably not.”

Chris snorted righteously and changed the subject. “So, about Martin Hays—” But Tavey approached, marching up the steps to the gazebo.

“All right,” she announced, clapping her hands together, her laptop bag on one shoulder, purse on the other. “Let’s get over to the graveyard and then to the café before we freeze to death.”

Sunday meetings in the graveyard were a tradition. After church, the three of them would walk to the graveyard near the railroad tracks—the forgotten one that disappeared beneath the weeds in summertime—and renew their promise to Summer.

The irony of following church with lunchtime chatter about murderers and child predators didn’t escape Chris, but she figured she and her friends were doing God’s work, though perhaps less conventionally than the women who held food drives and bake sales for the needy.

“So, about the info I sent you on Martin Hays—”

“Chris, wait till we sit down at the restaurant,” Tavey interrupted. “I need to get my laptop out.”

Chris nodded, but kept talking as they walked. “Yeah. I’ll go over it again. Raquel, you think it’s enough for Atlanta PD to follow up?”

Raquel, who walked a careful line between her two strong-willed friends, answered patiently, “It sounds like a start.”

Chris grimaced—that meant Raquel thought it was thin and that she would have to work her ass off to get any detectives to pay attention to it. Most of the detectives who worked with Raquel thought Chris was crazy and that searching for the missing should be a job for the police, but Chris felt compelled to do it, to search, and for as long as she was able, she intended to keep doing it.

For some reason she was even more anxious today. The air seemed charged somehow, more finely drawn, as if the world were waiting for something explosive to happen. The smallest events seemed to have a startling significance.