‘So, could this page…’ Leighton looked uncertainly to Vicki who nodded at him to continue. ‘Could it have been activated or triggered by her search - is that even possible?’

‘Sure.’ Vicki yawned. ‘Excuse me.’

‘It’s okay.’ Leighton grinned. ‘I have that effect on most people.’

‘Don’t be silly; I’m just tired. Anyway, most searches are recorded somewhere, and are used to predict future results, so I guess you could program a page to load in response to that. Hang on, there’s something weird here …’ Vicki clicked between windows.

‘What is it?’

‘It looks like the Greyhound site window opened twice simultaneously.’

‘Maybe she clicked on it twice?’ Leighton queried hopefully.

‘Yeah - maybe. But, it’s more likely that one of the pages was false - a dummy page designed to sit on top of the real one.’

‘Like a mask?’

‘Exactly. Like a mask.’

‘But, why?’

‘False pages are often used to collect bank details or scam users into giving up cash or personal information. However, they can also be used to show artificially inflated prices so guiding customers away from them and on to less reliable sites.’

‘Ah.’ Leighton shifted in his seat. ‘Vicki, can your excuse me to use the bathroom.’

‘Sure,’ she said, without looking up, ‘it’s at the end of the long hallway on the right. The light’s on the left wall as you enter.’

The brightly lit corridor was lined with framed sepia photographs of old New York. The first two doors in the hallway were open, and Leighton glanced in as he passed them. Two clinical looking bedrooms featured matching beige and chocolate bedding. Both were lit by identical bedside lamps. In one of the rooms, the bed was covered in a mixture of photographs that looked to have been taken from an overturned shoe box sitting amongst them. Leighton imagined Vicki had been looking through her past, when his arrival interrupted her. He sighed guiltily, and continued on to pass a neat office, a thankfully messier bedroom, and then the bathroom.

When Leighton returned, Vicki was curled up like a child, asleep on the sofa. Some process was happening on her computer, as rows of numbers filled the screen, and a small bar along the bottom recorded progress. Tiptoeing around her, Leighton returned the coffee cups to the kitchen, then returned, and knelt in front of the sleeping girl.

‘Vicki,’ he said softly. There was no response, just the quiet rise and fall of her breathing.

He figured the white vest and grey sweatpants wouldn’t be enough to keep her warm so, he found a linen closet and returned with a fleece blanket.

Tucking it around her shoulders, he had to check himself from brushing her hair away from her face, as he had done to a smaller sleeping girl decades earlier. He lifted up the stack of photographs and the writing pad, and moved to the dining table, where he sat down and began making some basic notes.

Leighton had only managed a page or so when his own eyes began to close. He had planned to rest his head on his arms for a moment, but the combination food and beer and the company had left him drowsy, and within moments, he too, was lost to sleep.

When he opened his eyes again, six hours had passed, and a stranger was standing over him, pointing a 9 mm gun at his head.

21

As the bus approached, Martha Coombs was nervous as hell. At the age of sixty-seven, she had never left the town of Blythe, but ever since her Nigel, her son, had moved down to San Diego, she had been determined to visit him for a few days. Nigel, thankfully, had taken care of organising the whole thing for her. Going down to the city hadn’t been her first choice. Once or twice, she had called him up, and suggested he might come up to visit the old house - she could make his favourite meatloaf, but he had explained he had been too busy with work for that. Martha had lived a long time, and she wasn’t entirely convinced this was the only reason behind her son’s reluctance to visit.

From the age of five, Nigel Coombs had been such a sensitive and fey young man, who she had secretly believed was most likely gay. While his classmates would play whooping war games in the playground, Nigel would collect pretty flowers from the perimeter of the school grounds, and bring them home crushed in his satchel. She had never raised the issue of his sexuality with him, mainly because he was so sensitive such a conversation would prove more difficult for him than it would for her. So, she had waited patiently all through his teenage years for her growing son to confide in her. Even in his early twenties, when he had started working as a hairdresser in Blythe’s only salon, and would come home to share the day’s dramas with his momma, he never mentioned romance of any sort. Then, in the last few years, he had taken to spending entire evenings on his computer. Sometimes, late at night, when he thought she was asleep, she would hear the murmurs of other voices and giggles from his bedroom, as he spoke to that tiny camera.

Still, she couldn’t criticise him – especially after he had taken the time to buy her a bus ticket. And he had explained it wasn’t just an ordinary one, either - this one was for a new bus company, with real nice accommodation. He had sent her a paper ticket through the mail, and told her to put it in safely in her purse straight away.

As the bus rumbled to a stop, Martha checked for the sixth time that the ticket was still in her white leather purse - which it was - then, adjusted the back of her permed hair. When the noisy doors hissed open, Martha was both surprised and relieved to see the bus driver - who was not much younger than herself - was a friendly looking man with a neat little white moustache. However, when she stepped on to the stairs and into the gloom of the bus, she saw almost all of the other passengers were men in their twenties or thirties. She smiled at the driver and held out the ticket.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘my son bought this for me so if it’s not right, you can take it up with him.’

‘Not a problem, ma’am,’ replied the grinning driver, who took her ticket, without even looking at it. ‘You just find yourself a seat, and once you’re comfy, we’ll get moving.’

22

The hands of the woman holding the automatic handgun did not tremble. This, thought Leighton, is someone who had spent sufficient time at a gun club, time to be comfortable gripping that heavy lump of power.

‘Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my house?’ Abigail Reiner asked.

‘It’s okay, ma’am,’ Leighton said groggily.

‘Yes, I know it is now; I’ve called the police,’ she said, as if to confirm his defeat. The woman was dressed in a navy suit finished off with some expensive looking jewellery.

‘Mrs. Reiner,’ Leighton held up a hand, ‘I’m a friend of your daughter.’

‘Ha,’ she snorted. ‘Somehow, I doubt that.’ Glancing around, she looked distastefully at the beer bottles and food cartons. She returned her attention to the him.

‘Mrs. Reiner, my name is Leighton Jones, I’m a retired police officer, I was here speaking to Vicki about the disappearance of her friend - Laurie Taylor.’

Something shifted in the woman’s cold expression.

‘Let me see some identification.’

Leighton reached slowly into his jacket pocket and produced a worn leather wallet, which he held out to her.

Abigail Reiner took the wallet, as if it were infected, peered inside for longer than was necessary, then finally lowered the weapon. Her expression did not soften.

‘As an ex-police officer, you should know better than to ply a naïve young woman with booze. If I discover you’ve touched her, I’ll have you charged with sexual assault. Stay the hell away from my home, and my daughter!’