Predator (2 page)

T
he limousine was cold. Krista stared at the careening raindrops on the window. Her father sat next to her, wiping the tears from the folds of his mouth. She’d only seen him cry once before Ella disappeared. That was the day they buried her mother, fourteen years ago. Three days after Ella’s birth.

How would he survive this? How would she?

Her gaze strayed through the windshield, to the hearse just ahead of them, holding her sister in a shiny black coffin with pink roses blanketed across it. Ella had always loved pink. Her room had been painted that color since she was ten, and the comforter on her bed had the same flowers.

Anger bludgeoned Krista’s chest, coiled up like smoke, burned her heart, her throat, her eyes. She needed to say something to her father. The right thing.

“Dad, I’m going to find him,” she whispered. “Somehow,
I’ll track him down. He was following her GrapeVyne page. He’s there, somewhere, in that long list of her friends.”

“Hush, Krista.” Her father’s tone was devoid of spirit, but stern and final. The silence that had permeated their home for over two weeks fell heavier over them, stifling out her breath. She closed her eyes, free-falling through that silence, unable to catch herself.

When they reached the gravesite, Krista slid out and stood stiffly next to her father, as the pallbearers—boys from their church’s youth group—carried Ella to the tent. For all she knew, one of them could be the killer, masquerading as a trusted friend.

Every tear was suspect, every pained face questionable. She shivered in the cold, thankful that her father had decided to inter Ella in an above-ground tomb. Neither of them could stand to watch them lower her back into the ground—and bury her again. It rained all around them, wind blowing mist under the tent. Still, at least three hundred people had turned out.

Even some of the girls from the center where Krista worked had come. Though many of them had lived through murders of family members, as well as rapes and terrors of their own, they had piled into Carla’s van to give their condolences.

The pallbearers walked up one at a time, putting their roses on the coffin. The mourners stood shuddering in the rain, wiping their noses and hugging. She hoped they never forgot.

From the depths of her pain, a purpose emerged. She would make it her business to remind them.

T
he house filled up quickly with friends, relatives, and strangers armed with casseroles and offering hugs and tears. At twenty-five, Krista had had little experience with funerals, except for her mother’s. She supposed they’d done the same the day they’d buried her, when Krista was eleven, but she hadn’t been expected to host them then. When she’d locked herself and the newborn Ella in her bedroom to insulate them from shattering condolences, no one had forced her to come out.

Today she felt an obligation to welcome people in and help them when they didn’t know what to say. Their struggles to make sense of such a senseless death drained her, and she longed for them all to go home and leave her and her father to their grief. But relatives had traveled long distances and were determined to stay, and the teen girls from
the Eagle’s Wings ministry needed some reward for coming. Most of these teens were middle-school dropouts, their parents in prison or on the streets with needles in their arms. Those who were privileged to have at least one parent who loved and cared for them were alone most of the time, as their parents worked two and three jobs just to provide a moldy apartment for them to live in. Some were pregnant, some tattooed, some were on drugs themselves. They didn’t fit in with Krista’s relatives, but she was moved by the fact that they would come. That meant that all the seeds she and Carla had planted in their lives were beginning to flower. It moved her to tears that they would risk their own discomfort in order to comfort her.

She didn’t want to break down in front of them. They needed to see her strong, courageous. They needed to see a peace that passed all understanding.

But inside, a silent rage boiled, threatening to ruin her ministry and her image. Worse yet, it threatened to ruin
God’s
image.

When the girls finally left, she breathed relief, no longer feeling she had to be the mature, settled one. While her relatives talked quietly among themselves, she slipped into her bedroom and turned on her computer. As soon as it was fired up, she navigated to GrapeVyne.net, the online community that had occupied so much of her sister’s time. Signing in with her sister’s name and password, she brought up her page.

Friends had posted hundreds of notes to her dead sister, so many that they’d pushed Ella’s final Thought Bubbles far down the page. Krista scrolled down and found her sister’s last public thoughts.

Thinking about becoming a brunette.

Krista smiled. Ella was never satisfied with herself. A
real blonde dyeing her hair brown? Her friends responded by telling her she was crazy.

The Thought Bubble before that made her smile fade. It was the statement that might have cost Ella her life.

Riding my bike to Sinbad’s. Dying for a soda, and Dad won’t keep them in the house.

Ella had never come home from Sinbad’s. Her bike had been found overturned in the street near the convenience store, her cell phone and purse lying on the ground. Some of the contents of her purse had scattered out, and her hand mirror was shattered into dozens of pieces.

Any predator with a computer would have been tempted by that Thought Bubble. Why had Ella felt compelled to tell everyone where she was going and when?

Krista scrolled down as she’d done so many times since her sister’s disappearance and saw Ella’s habits and schedule posted in various Thought Bubbles throughout the day. She’d posted dozens of pictures of herself, some with her school jersey on. Some of her posts mentioned her school, her teachers, her after-school activities, her friends. She posted often during the day, using her cell phone.

The killer had access to this information, and he was somewhere here, hidden among her GrapeVyne friends. Krista clicked on Ella’s Friends and saw a list with pictures of over eleven hundred people. What had her sister been thinking, to post private thoughts to over a thousand strangers? Why hadn’t Krista realized it and stopped her? She’d tried to give her sister her space, but she should have been spying on her, demanding to be added to her Friends List so she could monitor what was going on.

She scrolled down through the faces, searching for someone
who looked evil. Someone who could stalk and rape and bury alive a young girl in a shallow grave out in the woods.

The friends all looked benign and young, but it was subterfuge, she knew. He was there, somewhere. He was watching, enjoying the fallout. He may have even added his condolences to the others on Ella’s Vyne.

Then it hit her. She could talk to him. If she posted a note to him, he would read it.

An inner fire hit her face, burned her eyes, tightened her lips. Her heart kicked against her chest. She put the cursor in Ella’s Thought Bubble, and typed,

You think you got away with this, but I’ll find you. I’ll hunt you down like the animal you are.

She hit send. There was a 140-character limit, but she had more to say. She waited for the box to empty and her note to flash up on the screen. Then she added,

You’ll wish you’d never heard the name Ella Carmichael, and you’ll suffer the way she suffered.

Then she signed it,
Krista Carmichael.
She hoped he was reading it already.

R
yan Adkins tapped his pencil on the sole of his tennis shoe, wishing he could bring this meeting to a close and get back to the other work piling up on his desk. There weren’t enough hours in the day.

His director of legal counsel droned on about the newest lawsuits filed against GrapeVyne. There was one after another, blaming his company for everything from kidnapping cases to Nigerian money schemes.

“This latest came from the attorney general of Connecticut, charging that we’re not protecting children from typo-squatting.”

One of the attorneys looked up with a frown. “Typo-squatting? What is that?”

“It’s when porn sites buy up domain names that are one letter off from the name of a popular site. They rely on typos to get their hits.”

Ryan’s temples were beginning to throb. “So let’s buy up the typo sites they have for GrapeVyne. Let’s offer them enough to make them sell. What else have we got?”

“The Internet Safety Task Force has issued a paper called ‘Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies.’ You should probably take a look at it. They want us to appoint a director to sit on the task force. Apparently, Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook have done that already.”

“All right,” Ryan said. “I appoint you.”

“With all due respect, I have a little too much on my plate as it is.”

Andrew was right. Ryan turned to the security director, a fortyish man whose hair had turned gray since he came to work at GrapeVyne. “How about you, Jim? Can you do it?”

“Guess I’d better.”

“Good.” Ryan slid his chair back and stretched out his jean-clad legs. “Guys, you carry on here. I’ve got a million things to take care of.”

“Just one more thing,” Jim said. “Have you seen the news about the note that was posted on Ella Carmichael’s GrapeVyne page yesterday?”

“Yesterday? She died over two weeks ago, didn’t she?”

“Yes. They’re saying her sister posted this note to her killer.”

Now he was interested. He swept the hair out of his eyes and leaned forward on the mahogany table. “What did it say?”

Jim tossed a printout of the message to him.

You think you got away with this, but I’ll find you. I’ll hunt you down like the animal you are.

You’ll wish you’d never heard the name Ella Carmichael, and you’ll suffer the way she suffered.

Krista Carmichael

Ryan sighed. “Oh, man.”

“It’s been on the twenty-four-hour news cycle since she posted it after the funeral yesterday. The FBI is working with us to find the killer. We’ve taken a snapshot of her account so none of her Friends can delete.”

Yes, that could be a problem, Ryan thought. If the killer deleted his account, all of his past posts would disappear. “If the guy does delete, that would be a major clue.”

“Frankly, he’s probably too smart for that,” Jim said. “He’s no doubt feeding on the drama on her site.”

Ryan had never believed it was possible, but sometimes he hated his job. “Give the FBI whatever they want. We don’t need them breathing down our necks.” He stacked his papers and shoved them into the soft briefcase on the floor. He picked it up and slung the strap over his shoulder. “Have we sent condolences to the family?”

“Bad idea,” Jim said. “If we start that, we’ll play into the idea that GrapeVyne is to blame. We’re not responsible for this.”

“Guess you’re right.” That was why he had attorneys and former law enforcement people on his staff. “I have a meeting. Gotta go.”

He pushed through the mahogany doors and stepped out onto the conference floor of Willow Entertainment, the company that owned GrapeVyne. He always felt out of place here, like a trespasser who’d walked in off the street. There was a strict dress code in this part of the company, whereas the GrapeVyne building housed people who wore jeans and sweats to work.

Bypassing the elevator, Ryan trotted down the stairs and out into the cool air. Crossing the soft lawn, he went into the GrapeVyne building.

By most people’s standards, GrapeVyne was still in its
infancy. What had begun as a dorm-room idea had turned into a billion-dollar company in a matter of five years. Who would have thought?

“Ryan, look alive!”

He turned, saw a basketball flying over the rail of the second floor, caught it, and looked up. Ian Lombardi, his best friend and chief nerd of GrapeVyne, had a hole in the knee of his jeans and was wearing the same green threadbare T-shirt for the third day in a row.

“What are you, sleeping here?” he called up.

Ian rubbed the bags under his eyes. “Lots to do on the upgrade before deadline. Hey, thanks for not making me go to that meeting. I’d rather be shot and thrown over a cliff, then torn to pieces by a rabid leopard.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought, haven’t you?” Ryan grinned and tossed the ball back to him and headed for the stairwell. Ian joined him on the second-floor landing and trotted with him to the eighth floor, where the real talent of the company worked.

“I was thinking of getting a pizza. Want to share it while I go over the upgrade with you?”

“Can’t. I have to meet with Geico.”

“You’re meeting with the lizard?”

“No, the advertising executive.”

“Bummer.”

“No kidding.” They got to Ian’s office area, their rubber soles squeaking on the floor.

“Hey, remember what it was like before the suits took over?”

Boy, did he ever. Those were GrapeVyne’s best days. But he couldn’t complain. Not with a hundred-million-dollar nest egg sitting in the bank and a seven-figure salary for staying on as CEO. And he was only twenty-five.

He walked through the maze of cubicles on the floor he called the Rumpus Room. His inner circle—the twelve most valuable computer engineers and designers who’d helped grow the Vyne from a college-only social community into a site used by every first-world country on the planet—created their magic here. These weren’t people who liked structure, and they weren’t impressed by corporate underpinnings. They liked open offices where they could get a question answered quickly by stepping a few feet across the room or yelling over their desks. Much of the work done here was collaborative, so the open floor fed their creative juices.

Ryan reached his office area and glanced in the waiting room to see if the Geico man was there. He saw GrapeVyne’s advertising director, but Geico hadn’t made it yet. Good. He might have the chance to return a call or two before the meeting.

As he rounded the glass wall, he saw a young woman standing at his secretary’s desk. He couldn’t see her face, but her hair was long and blonde. Her long, flowing skirt and blouse were a little too big, as if she’d recently lost some weight, and she wore flat shoes. “I won’t take but ten minutes. Five, if it’s all I can have. It’s very important.”

The urgency in her voice made him pause before going into his office.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” his secretary said, “but he’s booked solid all day today. I’ll be glad to give him a message.”

“Tell him it’s life or death.” He heard her voice wobble. “People are dying, and there’s something he can do. Please…”

He met his advertising director’s eyes across the waiting area, saw him roll his eyes. Ryan dropped his briefcase inside his office door and, sliding his hands into his jeans pockets, strode toward the girl.

“Betty, it’s okay. I have a minute.”

The girl turned to him and slammed him with her eyes. They were blue—not the fake, contact lens kind of blue—but a grayish blue that made her skin look porcelain. She was cheerleader pretty, but he saw intelligence in her eyes.

“I’m Ryan Adkins.”

She gave him an up-and-down look, as if she didn’t expect the CEO of a major corporation to be wearing jeans and sneakers. At least he had worn a button-down shirt today…though the tail hung out.

She shook his hand. “Krista Carmichael.”

The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He motioned toward his office. “Betty, call me when Mr. Xavier gets here. Larry, entertain him for a minute, will you? Give him a tour or something.”

“Will do,” Larry said.

Ryan led the girl into his glass-enclosed office, closed the door, and sat on the edge of his desk. “So,” he said, “is someone holding my mother hostage? Did my urine sample come back cancerous?”

She seemed disgusted. “What?”

“You said life or death. Sounded pretty important. Have a seat.”

She ignored him and kept standing. “Actually, I should have left out ‘life,’ since it’s only about death. My sister’s death.”

His eyebrows slowly drew together, and he stood up. “Ella Carmichael? You’re her sister?” He couldn’t believe he was so stupid. Had he really made a joke about her life or death comment? “I’m sorry; I didn’t make the connection.”

“Then you know that she was kidnapped, beaten, raped, and buried alive.” Her voice broke. “We searched for her for two weeks. She’d used your site to post details of her life
and her whereabouts, and a brutal killer took advantage of it. Have you looked at her GrapeVyne site?”

He didn’t want to lie. “Actually, I haven’t. Not yet.”

“Of course not. Busy man like you.” She crossed her arms and took a step toward him. He saw a strength in her eyes, strength that impressed him. She wasn’t a weeping willow.

“My sister dumped her life out there for everyone to see. Every move she was going to make, she posted on GrapeVyne. Any online predator could have found her with the click of a mouse. And one did.”

He thought of telling her that her sister wasn’t the only one. That his security team logged reports of such events several times a day, whenever police needed their help to find missing persons. It was a hazard of online communities across the board—not just his.

Instead, he stayed quiet and let her rant.

“I wanted to come and appeal to you—as a human being—to do something to stop this madness.”

He went around his desk and sat down. “Look, Krista, I run an online community. It’s a place where people can stay in touch with their friends, make new ones, keep up, share pictures. It’s not evil. We’re not a clearinghouse for stalkers and murderers.”

“You might as well be. My sister’s killer is still one of your members, scouring Thought Bubbles for his next victim.” She leaned down, palms on his desk. “Do you care, Mr. Adkins?”

“Ryan,” he said softly. “Everybody calls me Ryan.”

“I couldn’t care less what everybody calls you.”

He sighed. Behind her, through the glass, he saw that the Geico executive had arrived. “Look, I’m really sorry about your sister, and I hope they catch the killer. We have a team that does nothing but work with law enforcement to help
them solve crimes related to our site, and they’re on this, working with the FBI.”

“There’s more you can do. Two things you could do right now, today, that would keep people safer. Remove the Thought Bubbles. People could still blog; they just wouldn’t be tempted to do it so often.”

“Is that all?” he said with a laugh. Thought Bubbles, the one-liners that people posted throughout the day, were one of the reasons the company had grown exponentially since it was created.

“No, actually. That’s not all. You could also use the advertising sidebar on your pages to tell your subscribers of all the cases of missing people connected to contacts they made on GrapeVyne. Show them the news stories about women who were stalked, women who vanished after posting things they shouldn’t have…”

“Those sidebars are for advertisers. It’s how we stay in business.”

Still bent over his desk, she locked into his eyes. “So you lose a little bit of advertising revenue to save a few lives,” she said through her teeth. “Instead of touting Jennifer Aniston’s latest wrinkle remedy, you could actually scare kids into being a little more private.”

He tried to keep his voice calm. “It’s not my job to scare anyone into doing anything. We’re providing a service. That’s all.”

“That sounds really good,” she bit out. “Except that it’s a service for predators.”

His phone buzzed. His secretary was probably trying to offer him an escape. He didn’t answer it. Getting to his feet, he came back around the desk. She was small—maybe five-four—but her cause made her seem much bigger.

“Look, I know you’re grieving,” he said. “And what
happened to your sister is horrible. But GrapeVyne didn’t cause that, any more than the phone service did, or her school, or her neighborhood. This is a community, like every other community. It’s up to individuals to protect themselves. And if the subscribers are under eighteen, then it’s up to their parents.”

“They could protect themselves better with more information. That’s all I’m asking.” She dug into her purse for a flyer with Ella’s picture on it, thrust it at him. “Get to know my sister. Go to her GrapeVyne page. See how easy she made it.” Her mouth trembled, and she compressed it. “She loved taking pictures. See how talented she was. Look at the smiles on her friends’ faces. The laughter. The silliness. And then pick up a newspaper and read about what he did to her.”

He looked down at the flier, into the face of the dead girl. She looked like Krista.

“I’m on a crusade,” she said. “You haven’t heard the last of me. I’m going to find the killer. You can help me find him faster.”

“Krista, you should let the police handle it.”

“The police don’t have as much expertise with online communities as you do. You have profile information, email addresses, personal data about every one of your fifty million users. I’ve done my research. You have all the complaints that have been filed about members who have predator-like tendencies. Some of the comments on her site seem questionable. You could track down those members and see if they’re really who they say they are.”

“We don’t do that, Krista. We’re not law enforcement. We can’t spy on people. We’re just running a business. Besides, Ella’s not the only one who’s been…” His voice trailed off as he realized that wasn’t the right thing to say.

She swooped in. “So she’s just one of many, and if you
hunt for her killer, you might have to hunt for all of them. And heaven forbid, if you find these killers, lives might be saved.”