Why was he doing that? Was he busy targeting another victim, figuring out the way in and the way out, and alternate escape routes that he could use if things went bad? That was how it seemed to her, she thought darkly. She didn't like the look of this at all. It was incriminating, to her. Especially given his comments about suffering.

  She watched a few more minutes. More of the same. He was only focusing on one house. She couldn’t see where it was, and she didn’t recognize any of the road names.

  Turning away, she headed back to Connor.

  “He’s got a map open,” she hissed. “He’s looking at routes in and out from a particular house. I’ve got some of the footage on my phone. That’s all I can see, but it seems suspicious to me?”

  “To me, too. Let’s go and find out.”

  Connor headed toward the man.

  But, as Connor neared him, Boyd Langdon looked up in alarm. She saw him take in Connor’s intent, and his eye contact, and that FBI badge on his jacket.

  It was too late for Cami to wish that she’d taken off her cap and gone in first and got close to him so as not to arouse his suspicions. Because Boyd leaped frantically to his feet. With a shove, he flung the table over in Connor’s direction. It landed on the floor with a crash, blocking his way. The glass shattered on the floor and beer sluiced across it in a foamy fountain.

  And then, Boyd was gone, hot-footing it through the basement bar and disappearing through a side door that Cami hadn't even seen.

  “Quick!” But now, the panicked rush of people who were trying to move away from the upended table and the smashed glass, were causing a problem. From somewhere, a woman shrieked, and that triggered other anxious cries from the customers. People obviously thought a fight had started. Maybe it wasn’t the first time, she wondered briefly. Maybe fights did break out down here in this basement bar, and it was a rougher place than she’d first thought.

  At any rate, it took them way too long to struggle through the press of people and to get to that almost invisible doorway in the black painted wall.

  Connor was on the phone again.

  “We need a trace again. Quick!” he snapped out. But Cami wasn’t holding out much hope for that. Because if Boyd had been paranoid enough to run the moment he saw the FBI approaching him, he would also be smart enough to turn off his phone to avoid being tracked.

  She needed to outthink him. Not the easiest thing to do in a place that he knew well, his local neighborhood bar, and that she'd never been in before. But, as Connor burst through the door, heading in the direction of the exit, Cami decided that the best route for her to take would be to go the other way. Upstairs.

  Just in case, he was trying to outwit the FBI. After all, where was there for him to go if he ran out? Home? Nope, that wouldn't wash. He'd know they would track him, and he seemed to have been at the bar alone. No friends could rally round and help him, and if he called a cab, he’d need his phone.

  So, Cami was going to assume that he’d shut off his phone and that he’d fled the way that they wouldn’t expect – upstairs.

  And this time, as she ran, she peeled off her FBI cap and jacket so that all he’d see would be a woman with an edgy hairstyle, a stylish steel gray top, and a coat tied around her waist. That wouldn’t spook him, and he wouldn't run. He hadn't even seen her when they’d first approached him. All his attention had been on Connor.

  Cami pounded up the flights of stairs. She decided to go all the way to the top. Maybe he’d figured that truly was the last place they’d look for him.

  Exiting the bar, she saw that the top area was a games floor. There were all sorts of games in progress. A few pool tables were set up along the side of the room, and she immediately heard the clacking sound of pool cues. There were dart boards in the corner, and in the center of the room, card tables were set up – poker and blackjack.

  Had he sat down at one of the games? That would require icy cold nerves, Cami thought, but maybe he possessed them. In which case, knocking over the table downstairs and making a run for it would have been a calculated move.

  Cami sidled around the room, looking carefully, keeping an ear out for the soft buzzing of her phone that would mean Connor had cornered him. But there was no call, so Connor was still looking. Was that Boyd, at the poker table over there, that guy with the black baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes?

  That wasn’t him, but as she reached the table, her heart skipped a couple of beats, because Boyd Langdon was next to the man she’d noticed. He was slouched so low in his chair, with his shoulders hunched, that he looked half his height. And he’d pulled his jacket’s hood up. It effectively covered the hair, and it made him all but unrecognizable.

  With her pulse pounding, Cami sat down at the table. She now needed to urgently alert Connor to his whereabouts. But that wasn’t going to be easy, because the dealer, glancing at her with a sharp but unsuspicious gaze, said, “Phones to be turned off and visible at the table, please.”

  The phones were all on the table, face down. And she was going to have to do the same. Clearly, no collusion or unfair practices were going to be allowed here.

  “I’d like some chips, please,” she said, buying time, not daring to look at Boyd.

  “How much?”

  Her heart sped up. She didn’t have much.

  “Twenty dollars,” she said. It was all she had. But, while getting out her wallet with her left hand, and putting it on the table, she was sending the quickest message ever to Connor, on her cellphone, with her right.

  “Upstairs. Poker table.”

  Then, hoping it had gone through, she took her chips and turned her phone off and placed it on the table. Time to play the game for all she was worth. Her job, now, was to keep Boyd’s attention on the game for long enough that Connor could get here.

  And that was not going to be easy. Slumped down he might be, but she saw that he was tense, braced on his feet, and clearly ready to run again. If Connor came in from the basement stairway entrance, which was on his right, then he could get up and bolt out of the other door before Connor had crossed the room.

  Unless she could distract him.

  Hmmm, Cami thought. Best way of doing that?

  There was only one way to get the table's attention, and that was to play recklessly and aggressively. That made people mad, but it also captured their focus. She'd had much more experience of online poker than of live, but she guessed that the basic logic was the same.

  She could see herself losing twenty dollars very fast.

  The dealer dealt. Cami glanced at her hand. A jack and a nine, unsuited. Not a great hand, in fact, a very average one. At an online table of eight, she’d have folded it, but now, she had to play. In fact, she had to do more than that. She had to bet.

  “Four dollars,” The laconic words came from the guy on her right.

  “I’ll call that,” the baseball wearer said. Boyd hesitated.

  “Call,” he said, and pushed the chips in.

  Cami took a deep breath. “Raise you!” she said, and pushed in eight dollars’ worth of chips.

  Now, she had the table's attention. And in particular, Boyd’s.

  “Reraise you!” one of the other guys said, taking it to twelve.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Cami saw Connor appear in the doorway. And she could see that Boyd was just about to glance around again. Only one way to delay this. She needed to make the most aggressive move she could.

  “All in,” she said, and shoved all her chips into the table’s center.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Wow.”

  “What a move.”

  “You got pocket aces there baby, or you just looking to lose twenty dollars, fast?”

  Comments – some admiring, some scornful, resounded from around the table.

  Everyone’s attention was on the cards as the dealer prepared to deal. Even Boyd was too distracted to look around as he’d been intending to do.

  And then, Connor was there. At the table, grasping his shoulder in a tight grip. Boyd shouted out a cry of alarm. He tried to scramble up from the table, but Connor's grasp was tight. And this poker table, unlike the drinks table, was way too solid to be tipped over.

  “A word, please, Mr. Langdon?” Connor’s voice was polite.

  His grasp was inexorable. Boyd was practically hauled to his feet and then Connor, grasping his arm, marched him outside.

  Cami got up to leave, but to her surprise, the guy sitting next to her grabbed her elbow.

  “Hey, wait!” he said urgently. “Don’t walk away! You got two calls on your all-in, and look there. Three Jacks on the flop. You got four jacks, it’s unbeatable, you can’t abandon your hand.”

  “I can,” Cami said, pulling her FBI cap onto her head again. “If I win, take the money on my behalf. Donate it to – to an animal charity, or a refuge for battered women, or something like that. I’ve got to go and help my partner.”

  Turning her back on the undoubtedly winning hand, with all her focus on the interview ahead, Cami got up and left.

  Behind her, the only gasps were of admiration now, but she barely heard them. She hurried through the door where Connor had gone. He was waiting for her outside.

  "We're going to bring him in," he said, still holding Boyd's arm firmly, except now, Cami saw, he had handcuffs on. "He's tried to run for it twice. I'm not letting go of his arm until the cops get here."

  ***

  The look of the suspect, sitting across the table from them half an hour later in the interview room, was familiar to Cami. Boyd was hostile and defensive looking. He was glowering at them in a way that told Cami they were not going to get the information they needed quickly or easily.

  Connor didn’t seem to be worried by that, and calmly regarded Boyd for a few minutes, letting the silence build. Gradually, Boyd began to fidget. Swiftly, he started looking less defiant and more uneasy.

  It was astonishing, the effect that silence had. Cami had seen it before, and she couldn't help but be impressed by it all over again. It wore even the angriest person down. It was a very powerful weapon. She remembered her own experience on the wrong side of the desk at the FBI offices and how uncomfortable it had made her. It was a chance for your imagination to start running away with you.

  Eventually, Connor spoke.

  “You seemed very eager not to chat to us when we approached you in that downstairs basement bar, Mr. Langdon. You went to serious effort to get away, and then hide from us. I’m wondering why you ended up doing all of this?”

  Boyd looked down.

  “I don’t have to tell you a thing,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “You don’t,” Connor agreed conversationally. “We can sit here all night. I’m happy with doing so. I’ve done far more before. I’m a patient person, as you’ll find.”

  Now, Boyd was starting to look alarmed.

  “However, it might be quicker and easier for us to get to the point. That being: why did you act so guiltily when you saw us arrive?” He paused. “We’re investigating a very serious crime. So if it happens that you are not, in fact, guilty of a very serious crime, then I'd recommend you tell us. It'll save time. Minor offenses, right now, we're not interested in pursuing."

  That was like a lifeline. Cami saw, to her astonishment, that Boyd was looking as if he'd just been given a chance he'd never expected to have. For the first time, his face looked less dislikeable, less closed in, and defensive.

  Could it be that he was only guilty of a minor offense?

  Surely not, Cami thought, feeling a flash of panic because they had no other suspects. He was the only employee who was in the area, worked with the smart homes, and would have had the opportunity to commit the crimes.

  “I – I was, maybe, guilty of a minor offense,” he mumbled. “You see, my girlfriend, she recently broke up with me, and I was planning to get back at her in a petty way. I was figuring out if I could reprogram one of the apps she had on my computer, to order her a whole stack of different pizza deliveries that she and her new boyfriend would have to pay for.” He sighed. “But I felt really guilty about it, and then the app malfunctioned and said I had made an illegal move on it. I was trying to reconfigure the setting, and then you arrived and I guess – I guess I overreacted and thought you’d come looking for me because the app had reported me for fraud.” He bowed his head.

  That? That was the revenge? That was the suffering he’d planned? Pizza?

  Cami nearly spluttered out loud in astonishment. She’d imagined it to be something so much worse. What he’d said did fit in with actions she’d seen – but she’d been viewing them in a far more suspicious light.

  “Do you know who Lisa Court is?” Connor asked.

  Cami watched him closely, but his face didn't even twitch at the name. However, she told herself not to get too excited about that because he'd been very poker-faced when they'd been sitting in that game. He clearly did know how to control his expression.

  “Why are you asking me?” he said. “Is she a – a victim or something?”

  Connor nodded. “Yes. She’s a murder victim. Do you know Debbie Maynard?”

  To her surprise, some light dawned in Boyd’s face.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Debbie, I know about. She was on my list for following up. She called me and said there were things going wrong with her smart home functionality. That was last week.”

  Now, Cami’s eyes were wide. She was the one who’d lost her poker face.

  “And did you help her?” Connor asked.

  “Yeah,” Boyd said. “I reset the system and checked it was all working correctly. She was happy, so we ended the call. I did it all remotely, but I was due to call her – not tomorrow, the day after, I think – to make sure it was working.”

  There was a silence. Cami felt sure that Connor, too, was taking in this puzzling twist of circumstances.

  “When was this?” he asked.

  “It was last week. Thursday or Friday, I think.”

  So the smart home had been giving problems for a couple of days. Then Boyd had fixed it, but it clearly had not stayed fixed. Because it had been nonfunctional when Cami had seen that screen. Her mind racing, she wondered how on earth this was possible. Assuming Boyd was not the killer – which was not yet established, but was now looking more likely – how was this murderer managing to interfere with the workings of the smart homes.

  Even after it had been fixed? He’d broken it again, and Cami was sure he’d done that so he could get into the house. That was why he was sabotaging them. It gave him an easy way in, and more than that, it would scare his victims.

  “Who knows the codes?” Connor pressured Boyd. “Who’d be able to get into the system and do such a thing? How would it happen?”

  “Well, we all have access to the master codes,” he said. “They are specific to each house. Some of the homeowners change theirs, but because it requires coming on site and doing an actual physical reset, most people leave theirs the way they are when we install them.”

  “And how easy are they to hack into?” Connor said, with a glance at Cami.

  "Not the easiest," Boyd said. Now that the topic was work, he was talking with enthusiasm. "We make the codes very hard to crack. You could hack them, but unless you had seriously top-grade software, it would take a very long time. Security is something we're really concerned about."

  There must be something she was missing, Cami thought. The codes were individually allocated and securely kept, and they required an on-site visit to change.

  Connor, meanwhile, was pressing forward.

  “Tell me,” he said, “can you account for your movements yesterday evening?”

  Boyd grimaced in an apologetic way.

  “I can’t,” he admitted. “I was with a client until about four p.m., and then I went home. To plan my pizza revenge," he added, now looking shamefaced.

  Cami felt sorry for him, an emotion she’d never expected to feel. And she also had no idea how Connor was going to handle the lack of an alibi. That was serious. People couldn’t help being alone if they were innocent, but right now, there were no other suspects.

  And then, Connor’s phone started buzzing.

  He picked up and made for the door. Cami glanced at him, suspicions surging, triggered all over again by that sound, and by him then leaving the room. It might be just a routine call that he didn’t want to take in front of the suspect. But if it was something more serious – well, this time, she wasn’t going to let it go.

  She got up too, and went outside, following him.

  He was speaking in serious tones, and as soon as the interview room door closed behind them, Cami realized with a clench of her stomach that this was something different from what she’d expected. Something worse.

  “Where is it?” Connor asked, his voice tense. He hung up and turned to Cami.

  "There's been another murder just a couple of hours ago. Same MO. It's on the other side of town. We need to get there – fast."

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Cami felt her stomach twisting as Connor sped across town to the scene. Crossing a bridge, she saw the lights of Boston spread out before her, the city twinkling and vast. It was intimidating to think that somewhere in this massive network of suburbs and streets, this killer was hiding away. Lurking, planning, and now- striking again.

  Regret filled her that they had been too slow.

  The drive had been silent. After issuing quick, sharp instructions at the police station that Boyd Langdon could be released and taken home, Connor had been quiet. He seemed more stressed than usual. Connor was normally calm. And he still was, but Cami sensed an edge to it. As if, right now, there was way more on his plate than he wanted to be there.

  Cami tried to breathe deeply and to prepare herself for what she would find at the scene, but it was difficult. She felt a sense of desperation that they were too many steps behind this killer and might never catch up. It was not helpful to feel that way, but right now, she couldn’t counteract the sense of discouragement.

 

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