30

Keller went to the lake and stood at the water’s edge for ten minutes, sorting out his thoughts. As he watched a western gull glide through the air looking to snatch a fish from a pelican’s mouth, he realized he was not unlike that predator: he had a job to do. And a vital part of that job was to put his personal feelings aside and carry out the task with efficiency and professionalism.

His particular fish was Melissa Ellis.

He went back to his room and opened the USB flash drive on a virtual machine he set up on his Surface tablet. While the app installed the cloned copy of Robbins’s computer, Keller spent some time doing traditional investigative work, knowing there was a low chance of success because Amy Robbins was not the typical missing person or kidnapper. She had gone through a tragedy that caused her to withdraw from just about everything. She had no friends he could find. She had no Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram accounts where he could grab a location … or even photos from which he could glean information on places she had recently, or frequently, visited.

When he had finished recreating her hard drive, he checked her email messages to see if there were any of significance. Amy Robbins was perhaps the only individual who had fewer than fifty sent entries in the past year. It seemed unfathomable in the twenty-first century. As he had figured, she had no presence on social media and almost no current photos—another perplexing finding in today’s environment, where just about everyone had a quality camera in his or her pocket at all times. There was one exception, however: she had a few pictures and a video of Melissa Ellis and several old ones of her daughter, Lindy, and her husband Dan. No documents of any significance: a few recipes and a copy of her job application for the bakery.

He did find a Word document containing notes from a conversation she had with Boston Fertility and fire marshal Gilbert. It was the same information he had learned on his calls.

Keller then turned to Private Investigation 101 and tapped the usual databases at his disposal, including TracersInfo, Accurint, and TLOxp, which processed trillions of records at sub-second speeds.

Not surprisingly, he got very few hits—and those he did get spit back material he, again, had already procured.

Finally, he called the Tait cyber technician and set things up. Having gone cold on Robbins’s trail—where she could now be anywhere within a twelve-hour-plus radius—he was going to need some help. This was not a legal case, so the data he was looking for would not be used in a court of law. That gave him tremendous latitude … including resorting to pretexting—illegally impersonating someone else to obtain protected information—as he had done with his call to Boston Fertility.

An hour later, his satellite phone rang. As he pulled it out and moved to the window, he hoped it was a lead on Robbins’s whereabouts.

“Yeah.”

“It’s Bill. Give me a SITREP.”

He was not keen on having to give his boss an update until he had something productive to report.

Keller cringed as he spoke: “Almost had her at her apartment, but she got away.”

“Got away? How the fuck does that happen?”

“Sometimes shit happens.”

“Mickey.” Tait hesitated as if shaking his head in disappointment. “I’m not sure that’s an acceptable response. Did she see you?”

“No,” he said without hesitation. He hated lying to his friend. “I’m not compromised.”

“You want to tell me what happened?”

No. Keller definitely did not want to relate the sequence of events. “Bottom line, I had her. She came back to her place but when I approached the apartment her neighbor came out and I had to wait—”

“All right, all right. Shit happens. I know. I get it. But Lira’s very concerned.”

“Yeah, I spoke with him. He worries a lot.”

Tait snorted. “Mickey, this is a two-billion-dollar deal for him, if not more. He’s got a hundred million, at least, invested in this company. I were him, I’d be a fucking basket case. All you gotta do is bring that girl home safely.”

“I get it.”

“Compared to what you’ve done these past several years, not to mention what we had to do in Iraq, it’s pretty simple shit. You can do this in your sleep.”

“I know.”

“Don’t forget we’ve got five mil riding on making sure the IPO comes off without a hitch. So concerned? Lira should be concerned. And so should you, buddy. And properly motivated.”

“I am, Bill. I am.”

“You’d better be.”

Keller opened his mouth to speak but Tait had already hung up.