You still owe us some answers, Karen. No one’s gone away. We’re still here.

“They’re threatening my children, Ty. I can’t let that happen.”

He placed his palm over her hand. “No. We won’t.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

The cell call came in just as Hauck was getting ready to go into visit Chief Fitzpatrick, to request that a patrol car be assigned to watch Karen’s house again.

“Joe?”

“Listen,” the JIATF man said, “I have something important here. I’m faxing it out to you now.”

The pages started to flow before Hauck even arrived back at his desk. “What I’m sending you is a transcript of a series of online conversations taken off a car-enthusiast site,” Velko explained. “The first exchange took place in February.” Three months earlier. Joe sounded excited. “I think we got something here.”

Hauck started to read the transcript as fast as he could tear the pages from the machine. The first page was headed ALERT. In the shadow box, there was a transcript number and a date, February 24. There was also a listing of the key “trigger phrases” Hauck had given Joe: “1966 Ford Mustang. Emberglow. Greenwich, Ct. Concours d’ Élégance. Charlie’s Baby.” A few of his favorite phrases.

The alert box was marked “HIGH.”

Hauck sat down at his desk and read, his blood pulsing expectantly.

KlassicKarMania.com:

Mal784: Hey, trading a 66 Ember Glow ’Stang in for a 69 Merc 230 Cabriolet. Any1 interested?

DragsterB: Saw one of those in a movie out last year. Sandra Bullock. Looked fine.

Xpgma: The car or the girl?

DragsterB: Real funny, dude.

Mal784: Lake House. Yeah, except mine’s a ragtop, GT. 62,000 miles. 280hp. Near mint. Any1 interested? Take $38.5.

DragsterB: I know someone who might be.

SunDog: Where is it?

Mal784: Florida. Boynton Beach. Rarely sees the light of day.

SunDog: Maybe. Had one once myself. Up north. What’s the VIN code? C or K?

Mal784: K. High performance. All the way.

SunDog: How’s the inside?

Mal784: Orig Pony leather. Orig radio. Not a scratch. Little bastards have a way of getting under your skin, right?

SunDog: Had to sell. Moved. Used to show it around.

Mal784: Where?

DragsterB: This a private conversation? Anyone out there got a line on a set of Crager 16" rims????

SunDog: A few places. Stockbridge, Mass. The Concours in Greenwich. Once down your way, in Palm Beach.

Mal784: Hey, you used to be on here a while back? Different name, though. CharlieBoy or something, wasn’t it?

SunDog: Change of life, man. Lemme see the car. Post a picture.

Mal784: Gimme your address.

SunDog: Put it on this site, Mal. I’ll look.

That was all. Hauck read through the exchange again. Every instinct told him he was onto something. He flipped the page over. There was another exchange. This one was two weeks later, March 10.

Mal784: You don’t know your Mustangs for shit, bro. Check out the VIN#. K’s are higher horsepowers. Command higher price. Yours is a J. 27-28K tops.

Opie$: Okay, I’ll check.

Mal784: You’ll learn something. Some people don’t know what they have.

SunDog: So, Mal, you still got that Ember Glow????

Mal784: Hey!!! Look what the tide dragged in. What happened to you, guy? I posted a shot, like you said. Never heard back.

SunDog: Saw it. Lights-out machine, no doubt. No luck, huh? Anyway, not for my life now.

Mal784: I can deal. My middle name.

SunDog: Not that. I’m more on water than dry land now. Then I got to find a way to get it through customs down here.

Mal784: Donde?

SunDog: Caribbean. No matter. Would only rot in the sun down here. But I may come back to you. Thx.

Mal784: You late, you wait, man. Putting it up through the auctions now.

SunDog: Best of luck. From an ol’ short seller, another time. I’ll keep checking.

Opie$: Hey, I just looked. What about VINS beginning with N?

“Ty, you read them yet?” Joe Velko asked.

Hauck shuffled the pages. “Yeah. I think we hit the jackpot here. So how do we trace this dude, SunDog?”

“I already put out an IP user trace through the Web site’s server, Ty. You understand, I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for you?”

“I know that, Joe.”

“So I went to the blog site. They didn’t put up a lot of resistance. It’s amazing what a government agency can do, post-9/11, even without a subpoena. Got a pen?”

Hauck scrambled around the desk. “I’m feeling safer already, Joe. Shoot.”

“SunDog is just a user name. We traced it back to a Web address, which they supplied us. [email protected].”

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

Hauck fixed on the name. Oilman. He knew without needing anything else that they had found him. Everything inside him told him this was Charles.

“Is this traceable, Joe?”

“Yes…and no. As you know, Hotmail is a free Internet site. Therefore you don’t need anything but a given name to register, and it doesn’t even have to be a real one to get that done. Or even a real address. But we can go back to them and trace what was on the application. And there’s a communication history we can go back on. What I can’t do, however, is narrow that down to a specific place.”

Hauck’s blood surged with optimism. “Okay…”

“The activity seems to be coming from the Caribbean region. Not to a specific location though, but on a wireless LAN. There’s been activity picked up around St. Maarten, the BVIs. Even as far away as Panama.”

“The guy’s been traveling?”

“Maybe, or on a boat.”

A boat. That made sense to Hauck. “Can we narrow that down?”

“With time,” the JIATF man explained. “We can set up a surveillance and monitor future activity and triangulate a point of origin. But that takes manpower. And paperwork. And other countries involved. You understand what I mean. And I gather that’s something you’re not eager to deal with, are you, Ty?”

“No,” he admitted. “Not if I can help it, Joe.”

“That’s what I thought. So this is the next-best step. We traced the application information through the Hotmail people. That much I can do, but after that you’re on your own.”

“That’s great!”

“The address on the account is to a post-office box at the central post office on the island of St. Maarten in the Caribbean. I went as far as I could without getting anyone else involved and checked down there. It’s registered to a Steven Hanson, Ty. That ring a bell?”

“Hanson?” At first it was a blank, but then something went off inside him. “Hold on a second, Joe…”

He swiveled around the desk, rifling through a stack of papers. Until he found it.

The list of new subscribers from Mustang World.

He had narrowed it down to just a handful of names. From all over the region: Panama. Honduras. The Bahamas. The BVIs… It took a few seconds, scanning the list. Hopewell, March, Camp, O’Shea.

But there it was! S. Hanson. Date of subscription: 1/17. This year! The only address given was a post-office box on St. Kitts.

Steven Hanson.

A surge of validation ran through Hauck’s veins.

Steven Hanson was Oilman0716. And Oilman0716 had to be Charles. Too much fit.

The car. The Concours. The little phrases. Karen had been right. This was the part of him that could not change. His baby.

They had found him!