“Exactly. We’ll see who she banned around January eighteenth and go from there. Maybe we’ll get lucky and there will only be one.”

“I think Mr. Thomas’s assessment of Angie Vance is accurate,” Dillon said, “at least from what I can tell without talking to her. She was seeking both validation and attention from men. Seeing from early on that she was receiving both when she had sex with them, she kept looking for someone to give her what she needed. Not finding it, she moved on.”

“And that’s why she dated older men?”

He nodded. “Boys her age didn’t give her the approval or affection she needed. Not that she got it from older men, but they were more mature than eighteen-year-old college kids.”

Carina’s cell phone rang. “It’s Will,” she said as she answered it. “Any news?”

“We have three MyJournal members banned by Angie on either January eighteenth or nineteenth. Patrick is working with the company to get any information they have about them. Patrick is all over it, and we might have something tonight or tomorrow. He’s also going to set up a way to track the three members online so if they post to any MyJournal page, we’ll know instantly.”

“Fabulous. Maybe we can find out who his next victim is before he gets to her.”

SEVENTEEN

BECAUSE KILLERS OFTEN ATTEND or observe the memorial services of their victims, the chief gave Will and Carina additional resources to cover the event. It took them an hour to debrief the team and formulate a plan for Angie’s memorial service. Then they went upstairs to talk to Patrick.

Carina introduced Nick to her brother. “The Kincaid family seems to run San Diego,” Nick said with a smile.

“You haven’t even met half of them,” Carina said. “But Patrick’s my favorite.”

The young cop smirked. “She only says that when she wants something.” He rolled his chair across his small office and picked up a printout. “But maybe I really will be your favorite now. I got details on all three banned members. I printed out their MyJournal pages. No personal information-they didn’t use their real names. One has an e-mail address, and I ran it through the database and hit on a name and physical address.” He handed them another page. “Damon Bader lives in Detroit, Michigan.”

“What are the chances he came to San Diego to track down Angie and kill her?” Carina asked half-seriously.

“Next to none. I called the e-crimes unit and they did some preliminary work. The guy has a record, all misdemeanors, and works as a sanitation engineer. Twice divorced, two kids, and he’s fifty-six.”

Didn’t fit the profile, but they had to cover their bases. “We should check the airlines just in case he’s been out here recently,” Carina said. “And talk to his employer about any recent time off.”

“Consider it done,” Patrick said.

“The other two?”

“The first has the screen name ‘Bondage,’ and I read some of his comments on other pages. Probably the world’s biggest liar, but he claims to have done some wild stuff. If he’s for real, he’s a major contender for us. The other screen name is ‘Scout.’ Again, checked him out. Some heavy stuff, but nothing that popped as threatening. Both were banned on the eighteenth by Angie.”

“This is great,” Carina said, “but can’t we find out where they live?”

Patrick shook his head. “MyJournal is a free site. There’s no verification process. Just create a login and password and you have a profile page. Bondage lists his hometown as USA, and Scout doesn’t list a hometown. The only way I can narrow them down is to trace their comments through the MyJournal server to a local Internet service provider. Then, with a warrant, we can get the payment information from the ISP and locate them that way. But the MyJournal attornies are sticklers about privacy law. I’ve already put a call in to their security chief. It’s going to take some time.”

E-crimes were exploding, and the police department was still catching up with the twenty-first century. When they thought they’d gotten a handle on the casework, another cyberscam hit and they were scrambling for more computer resources.

“The answer is here somewhere.” Carina flipped through the pages of printed material from the MyJournal site. “But we need a hundred people and a thousand hours to find it.”

“Welcome to my life,” Patrick said. “I have some other ideas I’m working on, but I’ll talk to you about them tonight.”

“Tonight?” Carina hit her forehead. “Lucy’s birthday party!”

“You have to be there,” Patrick said. “Or she’ll give you the cold shoulder for the rest of your life.”

“I’ll be there, but late. It’s Angie’s memorial service tonight.”

Patrick nodded solemnly. “I’ll cover for you. But I get your slice of cake.”

“Deal.”

They went back downstairs and while Will filled in the team covering the memorial service, Carina looked at Bondage’s page on her computer and Nick looked at Scout’s on Will’s.

“Bondage says he’s twenty-two,” she said as she investigated the site. “This is awful. I don’t believe in censorship, but I still don’t think this stuff should be allowed. Hey, look at this.”

Nick leaned over to see her screen. When his shoulder brushed hers, a jolt ran down her spine, leaving her with tingles and goose bumps. She licked her lips, then hoped Nick didn’t notice.

“What?” he asked, his voice low as he looked at the screen. “White nylon rope.”

On Bondage’s main page was a picture of a partially clothed woman bound by white nylon rope around her wrists and ankles. The woman didn’t look in distress; she was posed with her lips open and her tongue out, her face heavily made up.

The caption read: I love a woman who likes to be tied up.

“Same kind our killer used.”

“It’s common,” Nick said, “but it’s certainly damning. Any identifying information?”

Carina skimmed the personal profile. “Nothing about where he lives, what he does-wait. Here. ‘I work at a coffeehouse in a college town and the girls here are wild.’ ”

“Did Angie frequent any coffeehouse?”

“I don’t remember her friends talking about a specific place other than the Sand Shack. But I’ll ask them tonight at the memorial service.”

Nick said, “Steve’s neighbor Ava said something about how a lot of their friends hung out at the Starbucks near campus.”

“We’ll check it out. We might have time before the service tonight.”

Nick went back to his own screen and Carina felt distinctly colder with him several feet away. She glanced at his broad back, the muscles defined under his white polo shirt. He wore jeans, and wore them very well.

Her heart was beating too fast and she swallowed, turned back to her computer. It took her a moment to focus, all her senses attuned to Nick Thomas and his hot body, his low drawl, his piercing blue eyes.

Get over it, Kincaid. He’s a cop. You don’t date cops.

But he lives in Montana. He’s going home. You know you want to see how he kisses.

Stop it! You don’t do things like that. No one-night stands, remember?

But he’s special.

Was he? Carina wondered as she debated silently with herself. She snuck another quick glance at him. Yeah, there was definitely something about Nick that had all her female hormones working overtime.

“Look at this.” Nick scooted his chair to the side so she could bring hers over.

She read what was on the screen. “What?”

“This is old. He set it up nearly two years ago, but there’s only this one post.”

“So what does that mean?”

“I don’t know. He obviously comments on other people’s pages, but he doesn’t draw people to his page.”

Heads together, they read the sole post on Scout’s MyJournal page.

Hello. I’m Scout. Why? Because I’m always looking around, you know, scouting things out. Ha.