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  George had heard all the insults many times before. “We’ve been over this. Seven years ago I had an affair. I admitted that in the marriage counseling. Since then I’ve moved on, but I guess you haven’t been able to.”

  She made a spitting noise. “As if that were the only one, George. You can’t think I’m so stupid.”

  “Get ready to go, will you? The luncheon starts at noon, and I’m speaking.”

  “Oh, you’re speaking, isn’t that wonderful? How lucky I am to get to hear you speak! Why don’t you speak to me about who this woman is you’ve been screwing? Is she from one of your shows?”

  Mr. Reed crossed the plush carpeting to their walk-in closet. He slid aside hanger after hanger, pretending to concentrate on selecting an outfit.

  “Is she?”

  “There’s no one else, dear,” George said in his best I-couldn’t-be-more-bored tone. He removed one of his many designer sport coats from the rack with a flourish.

  His wife shifted tack. “Will Anastasia be there?”

  George knew that their daughter was the only hope of getting his wife to attend. And he did want his wife to go. Were he to show up alone, tongues would wag. “She said she has an important meeting at the university with the contracting agency for her whale project. That’s at two o’clock, but she said she would try to be there.”

  “So she’s not going.”

  “She didn’t say that. She said she would try to make it. Can’t you listen? She said millions of dollars in grant money are at stake, but she would try to squeeze in the event before her meeting.”

  “Did you talk to her yourself?”

  George sighed and plucked a silk tie from a motorized rack. “Why do you ask me questions you already know the answers to? Anthony talked to her.”

  “Anthony? The guy who had to drive us home from the premiere that night because you were too drunk?”

  “He wouldn’t have had to if you would have driven.”

  “You know damn well I don’t know how to drive a stick. I told you not to buy that car for that very reason. And we’re not changing the subject.”

  George decided the tie clashed with his outfit and selected another. “You changed the subject, dear, not me. And yes, that’s him.”

  “I’ll go if Anastasia goes. But if it’s just you, you can go to hell.”

  George exhaled heavily. He had always had the feeling that this statement summed up their entire marital union. For a few years, while Anastasia was excelling in college and graduate school, he and his wife had been distracted by the fruits of his Hollywood success. If not for Anastasia, his marriage never would have lasted this long. Even so, George had seen OLF protesting his show and had decided that it was not a coincidence his daughter’s estranged college boyfriend was now targeting her successful enterprise.

  “Did you hear me, George?” his wife demanded.

  “Yeah, you’re only going if Anastasia goes.”

  “Guess what, George. Remember that money I said I was using to dabble in the stock market?”

  “Yes, you thought it would do you some good to have a hobby, and I agreed.”

  “As it turns out I made quite an investment, only it had nothing to do with Wall Street. I used the money to hire a private investigator to follow you around for a while.”

  Mr. Reed finished adjusting his tie and turned to face her. He shrugged. “Good. You should feel much better now that you know I’m not cheating on you.”

  “Don’t think you’re calling my bluff with that innocent act. This time I really did hire a P.I.”

  “Great! And what, pray tell, did your Sherlock Holmes uncover?”

  Mrs. Reed walked to a night table and opened a drawer. She took out a manila envelope. George watched as she took her time removing its contents. She stared at a piece of paper, her face changing shape with her rising anger. Then she threw the martini she was holding—her third since breakfast—against the wall.

  George asked to see what she was looking at. She looked at him as though she had forgotten he was there, and then she sidearmed the paper at him like a Frisbee. He held up a hand to shield his face and the paper sliced his palm. He ignored the paper cut and picked up what he could now see was a photograph. He stared at a close-up of himself lying on a beach, arms and legs entwined with those of a younger woman. It wasn’t possible to tell by looking at the picture, but George knew that the beach was Pirate’s Cove, an out-of-the-way stretch of Malibu sand forty-five minutes north of L.A. Forty-five glorious minutes of driving with the top down along the Pacific Coast Highway in his reconditioned Ford Mustang, a beautiful young woman in the passenger seat . . .

  “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” his wife was screaming.

  George didn’t know which was worse—that his wife had caught him cheating and had hard evidence of it or that seeing the image triggered such pleasant memories that he was able to ignore his wife’s tirade for just a few moments of remembered bliss. His temporary reprieve from reality would not last long.

  “I want a divorce, George. I don’t care who she is, what your story is. I want out.”

  George was back from the beach now, mind racing to think of something to say to his wife while trying to figure out who had taken the pictures, how he had been tracked. The multitasking proved too much for his shocked state. He said nothing.

  “I’m afraid you won’t be able to ignore this, George.”

  Mr. Reed only stared at the photo.

  “All I’m asking for is an even split of our net worth. I’m not going to flush our money away on lawyers trying to get ninety percent, unless you piss me off. We shared twenty-two years of our lives, and a child, together. We can go halves on what we have now and walk away without hurting each other anymore. That’s all I want.”

  He snapped out of it. “That’s all, is it? Half of roughly a hundred million dollars? That’s all?”

  “That’s what the law says I’m entitled to. And don’t think I don’t realize that your quoted figure of one hundred million doesn’t include your points from Wired Kingdom—money you earned while married to me but have not yet received. That’s mine, too.”

  Mr. Reed began to feel queasy. There was no way his wife had come up with that little financial insight on her own, debatable as it might be in the hands of a skilled litigator. She’d already consulted a lawyer. He half-listened while she blathered on.

  “Since I’ll be granted divorce on the grounds of your infidelity, slut that you are, it’s quite possible I could get a good deal more. Maybe even everything. You never know how a spin of the legal wheel will turn out.” She plucked a martini-soaked olive off the floor and examined it carefully before popping it into her mouth.

  “I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself, dear. Maybe you should take a little nap to let the booze wear off, and afterwards we’ll talk about this.”

  “Forget it, George.”

  “You really want to dissolve our fortune over this?”

  “No fortune is worth being degraded the way you’ve done to me.”

  The phone rang. George started for the receiver but hesitated. Unable to think of any persuasive comebacks, he took the call. “This is George Reed. . . . Yes. . . . What! . . . How? . . . Uh huh. . . . So, where does that leave us?”

  George’s wife followed her husband’s gaze to the error message decorating their bedroom wall.

  “He what? . . . How long will that take?”

  Mrs. Reed was becoming more interested.

  “No, no. There must be some technical people who can restore it. Find them and get it back up. Don’t worry about the fees.” George slammed the receiver down. He glared at the non-functional web site on their wall, then at his wife. “Our technical director is dead, apparently shot outside of the Van Nuys office.”

  His wife fished a cigarette from a carton on the bed.

  He continued. “Before he died, he, or somebody, smashed all of the servers and equipment that runs the we
b site. That’s why it’s down.”

  She blew a cloud of smoke at him in reply.

  “I guess you don’t care.”

  “Oh, but I do. I don’t even know why you’re standing around talking to me about it. The money you’re losing by the web site being down is about to be at least half mine. So fix it George, and fix it fast. Or I’ll sue you for deliberately dragging your feet to avoid having to pay me my fair share in the divorce.”

  “I think we should talk about that.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about, George. I’ll be staying in the beach house until the divorce is settled. All further communication with me will be through my attorney.” Mrs. Reed picked up her purse to leave. “I hope she was worth it.”

  “Hold it. You can stay here if you want. You don’t have any clothes in the beach house. There’s no food there. I’ll sleep on the yacht.” The Reeds owned a luxury sailing yacht, which George had dubbed Prime Time, berthed in Marina del Rey.

  “Oh, the yacht, huh? Was that where you liked to do your hussy? Maybe you can meet her there tonight.” She walked across the floor, stopping when she reached the picture of George and the girl. “Look at this tramp,” she said, grinding the woman’s head in the photo with her shoe. “Tattoos and everything. Does that turn you on, George? Dumb bimbos? Wannabe starlets with piercings and ‘body art’?” She shook her head and stalked out of the room, pausing to extinguish her cigarette on the door on the way out.

  “Stay on the yacht, you bastard,” she called back as she walked down the hall. “Don’t let me see your lying face, or I don’t know what I might do.”

  George was too stunned to respond. He watched her leave. Then bent down to pick up the photo. It was a close-up, obviously shot with a high-powered zoom lens from far away. A tattoo of a butterfly adorned one shoulder. George’s body blocked the view of her torso, but the woman’s toned thighs and calves dominated the picture. They contrasted painfully with George’s hairy, spindly limbs. One of the woman’s legs was bent at the knee, her foot in the air.

  A dolphin tattoo graced the ankle.

  CHAPTER 29

  WIRED KINGDOM TECH SUPPORT FACILITY

  His eyes looked the same in death as they did in life, Tara thought, looking down on Trevor Lane’s corpse. Big and brown, maybe a little sad, although she might have been projecting that melancholy on the deceased man.

  By now she’d heard the initial reports: victim found dead, single gunshot wound to the head, no known witnesses, body discovered by a Wired Kingdom producer and assistant. Anthony Silveras and his apprentice were still on the scene answering questions from eager police officers, some of whom were on their first murder scene.

  Tara recognized Silveras from the television studio the night before. She had no reason to disbelieve what he told police. He was on his way to check on Trevor after the web site had been down for more than an hour. When he arrived at the technical office, this is what he found.

  Presently a uniformed beat cop came trotting up from around the corner, out of breath. “No side or back entrances, or even windows,” he declared, looking in Silveras’ direction. “He’s right.”

  Anthony puffed up his chest, indignant. “Of course I’m right. Didn’t I just tell you the front door is the only entrance?”

  “Cool it pal, he’s just doing his job.” This from a fifty-something, white-haired police detective who never took his eyes off Tara while she examined the body. He would have loved to tell her not to touch anything, but he didn’t have to. Professional, even by FBI standards, he noted. He watched as she slipped a credit card-sized digital camera from a pocket and took her own photos of the corpse from several angles, not wanting to wait for the professional shots.

  She put the camera away and stood up. The police detective nodded at Silveras, who removed his keys and approached the office door.

  “You check the roof?” Tara asked the policeman as Anthony reached the door.

  “The roof?” Several faces tipped skyward.

  “No,” the police detective answered, irked at being tested, not by a woman so much as by someone considerably younger than himself. “But I have men posted on the building corners and more casing the neighborhood. If anybody was up there when we got here,” he said, turning his head toward the roof, “they’re still up there.”

  “One time I was on a case where the perp was hanging out on the roof while we were collecting evidence inside. Saw him when he stepped over a skylight thirty minutes after we’d been in. We’re photographing the dead body of a guy he shot, and he’s up there watching the whole time.”

  The police detective quietly indicated for two of his officers to keep sharp eyes on the roof. The others readied their weapons as Anthony approached the door with his key.

  There was an uncomfortable silence before Tara continued.

  “The entrance wound indicates to me that the shot was fired relatively straight on. The shooter probably came in a vehicle and left in the same. But you never know,” she finished, comfortable enough that there was not a shooter lurking silently above them to ignore the roof and focus on Silveras unlocking the door.

  Nothing happened. The key was inserted but wouldn’t turn. Some nervous laughter made its way around the group while the producer double-checked his keys. He shook his head. “Lock’s been changed,” he declared.

  “You sure?” the police detective asked.

  “Positive.”

  “When’s the last time you used that key?” a different policeman asked.

  “Maybe three months ago,” Anthony admitted.

  “Makes sense,” Tara interjected. “Lane wanted to keep everyone—even his employers—out of what he probably came to think of as his office.”

  “So now what?” Anthony asked. He flipped open his cell phone. “I can have a locksmith here . . .”

  “Forget it,” the police detective said. “Sully, Harris—”

  Two cops hurried over to the trunk of a squad car and returned with a battering ram.

  “Wait a minute is that really neces—”

  “Yes it is,” Tara said. The policeman gave her an appreciative look. “Whoever killed Lane could still be in there. It’s worth the price of a door.”

  “Especially a piece of shit door like that,” one cop said. The wooden entrance, although stout, was warped and peeling. Crude graffiti covered it from top to bottom.

  The door to Wired Kingdom’s technical headquarters blew off its hinges on the second thrust from the steel-encased concrete ram. Tara stood to one side with the officers, her weapon drawn but not aimed. She did not expect anyone to be inside. The position Trevor’s body lay in told her that he was hit from streetside. Plus, she was beginning to believe Trevor’s story, or at least parts of it. He was afraid of somebody. In Tara’s experience, violent crime involving business outside of drugs, sex or street weapons tended to be highly targeted. They wanted one guy dead. Now he was dead. They wouldn’t mess with anyone else.

  The cops all had their weapons pointed inside. Tara let the cops enter first, covering each other as they went. When she heard a round of “Clear!” she walked slowly up the steps, dodging Trevor’s corpse, and over the battered door into the dead man’s office.

  Destruction was evident. Pieces of glass and electronic debris trailed outside of the server room as if coughed up by a gigantic robot. In the main room, bookshelves had been toppled and computers knocked to the floor.

  Taking in the chaos, one cop said, “Looks like somebody tossed the joint and left. The deceased worked here, right? Maybe he tried to stop ’em.”

  Another officer emerged from the server room, following a path of blood drops on the floor. “Somebody really did a number in there,” he said, shaking his head. “Everything smashed. Don’t slip,” he said to Tara, who made her way past him to look inside.

  She found it hard to believe it was the same space where Trevor had first given her the copy of the whale’s video. The entire floor was a jumble of s
hattered circuit boards and shards of glass. Loose wiring jutted forth from mangled plastic like uprooted plants.

  Mentally picturing the tenacious ferocity it would have taken one man to do all this in a short amount of time gave Tara the chills. For she knew it was one man. . . . Her thoughts were interrupted by Anthony, who stared with incomprehension over her shoulder.

  “Now we know why our web site’s down,” he said.

  “Yeah,” his assistant said, surveying the debris field of electronic waste. “I’m no webmaster, but I do know that the computers are supposed to be in one piece to work.”

  While the officers huddled about various piles of ruin, Tara slowly made her way to Trevor’s desk, where she saw one PC still standing—not on the desk, but on the floor. Kneeling down, she was surprised to see a screensaver still working on the violently displaced screen. Somehow she found the dancing geometric shapes disconcerting as they floated across the upended display. Tara found the keyboard still attached to the PC. Donning a pair of white latex gloves, she gingerly hit the SHIFT key. Thankfully, the parade of fractals making its way across the screen vanished, replaced by innocuous-looking text.

  Tara’s eyes caught on the .gov e-mail address displayed in the “From” field of what she realized was an open e-mail account. Aware that this could very well be the last e-mail Trevor Lane had read before he was murdered, Tara read the message. She tilted her head sideways because she didn’t want to move the monitor from its oddly angled position on the floor. Coast Guard GPS Interference Test.

  She recognized the testing zone coordinates as being similar to those she gave the helicopter pilot yesterday on their first trip to look for the Blue.

  She checked her watch. If what she read was correct—and she would have it verified by staff at the field office—the testing was set to conclude in . . . under six hours! But what difference will it make if the whale-cam’s GPS works when the entire web site is down? she wondered. How will I see the what the damn coordinates are?

  “Find something, Special Agent Shores?” The police detective stood next to her, taking in her peculiar posture with equal parts amusement and concern as to what she might be observing.