Private (Private 1)

Mo-bot clicked on the link and was taken to a new web page. Pilser had titled the page “Scylla Lives.” It was a trapdoor to Pilser’s personal journal—and it almost stopped Mo’s heart.

She read quickly, clicked through links, then found a bridge between the real and virtual worlds.

She pushed away from her desk, and her chair rolled back. A moment later, she was standing in the doorway to Sci’s office.

Sci stared as if he were looking through her.

What was wrong with him? Didn’t he get it? She’d unlocked the whole damned murder plan. She was the female modern-day Sherlock Holmes.

“Less than a week from now,” she said, “there’s going to be a Freek Night. You hear me, Sci? That’s what they call their killing game. Jason Pilser would’ve been part of it—if he’d lived.”

“I’m sorry. I’m distracted. I’m running the DNA—”

Mo said, “Listen to the words coming out of my mouth. There are two of them. They call themselves Street Freeks. Their screen names are Morbid and Steemcleena, and they’ve already picked their target. She lives in Silver Lake, calls herself Lady D.

“Sci. Are you getting this? In five days, they’re going to kill this girl.”

Chapter 72

JACK HAD CALLED ahead to Private’s new East Coast office. A senior operative, Diana DiCarlo, was waiting at the gate when Emilio Cruz disembarked at Miami International Airport.

CIA trained, DiCarlo was very efficient. She handed Cruz a briefcase with everything he would need: gun, surveillance equipment, car keys, and phone numbers of Private sources throughout South Florida. And she told Cruz where his subjects were staying.

Cruz checked in to the Biltmore, the room directly above the men he was tailing. He set up his microphones and listened.

Later, he followed his subjects from the hotel to clubs and restaurants, even watched them place their bets at the dog track in Hialeah.

Now, three days into the job, he was in South Beach, the flashiest, sexiest part of old Miami.

Emilio Cruz was sitting on a coral-rock wall, the beach rolling out before him to the ocean’s edge. He was dressed to blend in, wearing a wife beater under an open shirt, black wraparound shades, hair banded at his nape.

He appeared to be engrossed in the daily racing form, but it was a prop. He had a camera eye embedded in the frames of his sunglasses that was not just taping; the images were bouncing off a satellite a couple of miles overhead, sending pictures and sound back to the office in LA.

Directly ahead and maybe thirty feet away, three men sat on a bench facing away from him and toward Ocean Drive.

They were talking together, but their eyes were on the inked, half-naked girls skating by on the hot plum-colored sidewalk.

The two men Cruz had been following were Kenny Owen and Lance Richter. Both were NFL referees. Owen was bald and freckled. Richter was twenty years younger, with a lot of bushy brown hair, a fresh sunburn, and a gaudy Rolex watch that must have weighed a pound.

Five minutes ago, the refs had been joined by Victor Spano, a lieutenant in the Chicago-based Marzullo family.

Cruz had almost said it out loud.

Holy shit.

Chapter 73

SPANO LOOKED FRESHLY showered and wore a shoulder holster under his ice blue jacket. He was telling the refs about the good time he’d had last night at the Nautilus Hotel across the street. There was no sexier town in America than Miami, not even Vegas.

“The mother was a little hotter than her kid. But the kid was more enthusiastic.”

Richter shrugged and said, “Mr. Spano, wasn’t that, like, incest?”

“Nah,” Spano said. “It was her stepmother. What do you think? I’m a pervert?”

Everyone laughed. The kid with the hair said, “But seriously, Mr. Spano. Back to the assignment we have this week. Tennessee by seventeen points at Oakland? Seventeen points is no walk in the park, and we could be under a lot of pressure here.”

Spano said, “I follow your point, Lance, but you know what they say. Pressure is self-inflicted. You guys are pros. I don’t see a problem.”