Darknet (24 page)

Maybe.

She doubted that. She might be free of him for now, but his ego was damaged after she threw him out. He wouldn’t live with that for long. It was only a matter of time before he came back to teach her a lesson.

There were no lights on, but it was barely after noon, so that wasn’t unusual. There was an older model Ford in the driveway but no sign of Tony’s car.

“Looks like she might be home alone,” Cindy said. There was no sign of movement in the house at all.

“Gives us a chance to talk to her, find out what the hell she’s doing with him.”

Cindy shrugged. She didn’t really care why she’d gotten hooked up with Tony.

The two women walked slowly to the side of the house and then checked to be sure nobody was watching them as they continued around the back.

The backyard was small. She didn’t know who lived in the top of the house, but it seemed just as empty as Deb’s apartment.

Good.

Cindy leaned against a window, cupping her hands to block out the sunlight so she could get a better view. She was looking into a bedroom. The bed was neatly made and the furnishings were sparse.

They moved to another window on the other side. A small kitchen, also empty and quiet.

“Let’s see if she’s home,” said Cindy.

Maria agreed and they went back to the front of the house. There were two door bells, both with little tags of paper with printed names. Cindy pressed the one labelled, “D. Stewart.”

After a moment of no response, she pressed it again, longer this time.

Nothing.

“Do we leave?” asked Maria.

Cindy stared at the door bell and shook her head. “We came all this way to find out what’s going on. Let’s go find out.”

They walked to the backyard again and Cindy picked up a section of two by four that had been tossed against the side fence. She hurried back to the bedroom window and used it like a slow battering ram, hitting the glass over and over, harder each time. After a few hits, the glass shattered. She used the wood to knock out the remaining pieces and then leaned through the window. Nothing.

She looked at Maria. “I’ll try to be fast.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t have to do anything, but I’m not letting you go in there alone.”

Cindy smiled and then carefully climbed in the window. She jumped on to the bed and then stepped to the floor. Maria followed her.

The bedroom smelled like lavender. It was small but neat. There was a dresser with three drawers, a closet with the door shut, a folding chair, and a desk that held a few papers. They glanced around the room, and then Cindy nodded her head in the direction of the living room. Neither seemed to want to say a word, still not absolutely sure they were alone in the apartment.

Soon, though, they did agree that neither Deb Stewart nor Tony were there.

They both looked around the place, and Cindy couldn’t help wondering what kind of a girl Deb was. Was she a horrible creature like Tony himself, maybe part of his plan all along? Or was she an innocent, caught up somehow with things beyond her ability to see?

Tony could be happy with either, Cindy knew. She herself was the second flavor, but he’d probably had other affairs that she was unaware of, and who knew what kind of woman really turned his crank?

“Hey, look here,” said Maria.

Cindy turned and looked at her. She was holding a book called
Living with Selective Mutism
written by Janice Malloy.

“What’s that?”

“I had a cousin who had this. If she has it, it means she might be terrified of new people and situations. Makes me wonder even more how she met him.”

Cindy shrugged.

There was a framed photograph sitting on the counter in the kitchen. It was Deb with a man and woman. Cindy picked it up and figured it was her parents. All three were smiling, and she realized Deb could be very pretty when she smiled. She quickly put the photo back, not wanting to get to know the girl any more than she already did.

“Let’s go. Something feels wrong. I don’t think we’ll find anything here that will help us.”

“Okay.”

As they were about to leave, Cindy noticed a glass of milk on the table. It stank. She picked it up and found that the milk had soured. It was a gooey mess.

“Oh, no,” she said.

Maria looked at the glass. “She wouldn’t have left that. Everything else here is neat as a pin.”

“He took her.”

They looked at each other, and Cindy couldn’t help feeling sorry for Deb. She wondered if she was still alive or if she was being held captive somewhere like Avril had been.

She put the milk glass back, wondering if it would matter that she’d left her fingerprints there.

* * *

The two friends spent a couple of more hours trying to find Tony. They drove by Seattle’s First Music, but the store was closed and there were no lights on.

“Be just like him to just abandon his job,” said Cindy.

“Any other ideas?”

Cindy tried to think but nothing formed. She knew that there was a bar somewhere that Tony frequented, but he’d never told her which one. Anytime she’d tried to ask where he’d been, an angry look would cross his face. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that questioning him only led to bruises, so she stopped asking.

She wondered if Deb and Tony had decided to lay low in a hotel somewhere. Deb had a million dollars, so money wasn’t an issue.

“For all we know, they’re off in Europe somewhere.”

A rush of frustration caused her to reach out and hit the steering wheel hard with her hand. She didn’t care about the pain. Pain was an old friend.

They drove the rest of the way in silence. Cindy just wanted to go to bed, but Maria wasn’t having any of that.

“There’s got to be a way to find him,” she said.

Cindy just shrugged and then said, “I just don’t know any place to look.”

When they entered the house, Cindy checked that the alarm was still set and hadn’t been tripped, so she knew there was no way Tony could have broken into the house. That didn’t completely satisfy her, so she walked from room to room, not seeing anything out of place.

By the time she found herself back in the kitchen, Maria had found a bottle of Pinot Blanc and poured two glasses.

“Here,” she said. “White wine always fixes things.”

Cindy took her glass and had a small sip, then followed Maria to sit in the living room.

“Are you okay?”

Cindy tried to smile but knew it probably looked forced.

“I’m trying.”

“It must be hard staying in this house, with all her memories.”

“Sometimes. But then I can’t imagine moving somewhere else and leaving so much of my life behind.”

She knew she was editing her thoughts as she spoke. It wasn’t just the memories. It was Avril’s scent, which she could still smell in her room. It was her stuffed rabbit, Juicy. It was the single-serving boxes of Fruit Punch in the refrigerator and the jar of peanut butter waiting to be called for a sandwich.

It was Avril’s favorite television station, Disney Junior, which was the channel that would play if the TV in the living room was turned on. It was just . . . this was Avril’s home, and she didn’t know how to explain that to Maria. She couldn’t leave her baby’s ghost.

Suddenly, Maria put her glass of wine on the little oak table beside her.

“Oh, my God.”

Cindy broke from her reverie to look up.

“What is it?”

“Remember when you first told me about DarkNet, and how you were exploring and found all these places that would do anything for a price? All the stuff about organs for transplants, stolen credit card numbers, all that?”

“How could I ever forget it? I wish I’d never heard of DarkNet.”

“One of the things you told me was that they could trace a cell phone if you lost it.”

Cindy squinted, trying to remember that.

“Oh, right. Yes, that was there. One of a thousand things . . .”

“Tony always carries his phone with him. Why not use DarkNet to track
his
phone? Then you’d know where he is.”

Cindy stared at her friend, as if trying to believe it was possible. Then she put her wine down, spilling it, and rushed to her study.

She clicked on the Tor software (an action she’d swore she’d never do again).

“How do you find stuff? You can’t use Google, right?”

“There’s lot of search engines for the dark side of the Internet. TOR Search, Torch, Evil Wiki . . . there’s no problem finding things.”

She launched one of the Google-like programs and typed in “Track Cell Phone.”

The first hit back was exactly what she wanted. She checked out the website and nodded.

* * *

We will track almost any cell phone in the United States. How? All cell phones constantly communicate with the closest cell phone towers, even when they’re not in use. They need to do that in order to receive calls. The various carriers have the easy ability to use that as well as the phone’s built-in GPS to pinpoint its location very precisely.

They can only legally do this for law enforcement reasons. For a price, we’ll do the same thing.

* * *

Cindy clicked to continue. The next screen asked for the state, carrier, and phone number. She entered the information for Tony’s phone and immediately got a message,
This will cost you ten bitcoins. Continue?

“How much is that?” asked Maria.

“Almost two thousand dollars.”

Maria whistled but Cindy didn’t hesitate, completing the transaction.

We will have your result in less than an hour. Please do not shut this window.

They both stared at the message. Cindy felt like she was being duped, that this was just another DarkNet scam, but she had no other option. This
had
to work.

Maria went to get their glasses of wine and they sat in silence, just waiting for whatever was going to happen.

Then, after only fifteen minutes, the window blinked and a map started to fade in. Cindy recognized that it was the outskirts of the city, old farmland. She zoomed in and the exact address showed.

An option flipped to a satellite view and she could see an old farmhouse. There was a barn behind it.

A translucent red letter X showed on top of the barn.

Bingo
, thought Cindy.
We got you
.

When Tony’s whereabouts displayed on Cindy’s computer monitor, the translucent letter X blinked slowly, fading from a bright crimson and then reappearing over the course of a few seconds. She could use the scroll buttons to zoom in and the satellite was good enough that she could see the area was a farm. There was a barn in the rear and she could see (or thought she could, at least) fields of hay.

They had stared at the monitor for twenty minutes when the X migrated from the barn to the road and then back to the barn. Cindy couldn’t help wondering why. Was he going to his car? She shrugged.

The screen showed the address: 3000 Rockway Court. That address would be imprinted on her mind for the rest of her life. She realized there was a very good chance that was where he had kept Avril.

“My little girl died there . . .”

Maria was sitting beside her. She turned and gave Cindy a hug.

“I need to go.”

At first Maria didn’t seem to hear and Cindy wondered if she’d only imagined saying it. Then, she heard, “I know. But not tonight. It’s late and you need to have your energy up if you’re going to confront him.”

“If I wait, he might go somewhere else.”

“It looks like this thing will keep working as long as you keep the window open. And what if it doesn’t? Just do the same thing and track him in the morning. It’s dark, you’re tired, and . . .”

“And what?”

“You really should call the police. Let them deal with this.”

“No!
He tortured my little girl
!”

“They’ll bring him to justice.”

“Like hell.”

“At least think about it. Don’t do anything until the morning.”

“I need your help, Maria.”

Cindy stared at her friend, feeling the emotion pierce the air between them.

Maria’s eyes were wide, sad and suddenly very old. “I can’t help you kill him. I just can’t.”

Cindy stared a moment longer and then dropped her gaze, nodding.

“It’s best I do this myself anyway.”

“Please wait until the morning. Nothing will change.”

Cindy glanced at the twilight through the office window and nodded. She felt the weight of months of stress ripping through her body and knew Maria was right about one thing: she’d have more strength in the morning, and maybe daytime would make it easier for her.