“I need to find someone.” I showed him my ID. He looked at it like I offered a look at my pet lizard.

  “I don’t know if I should be talking to you.”

  “Got something to hide?”

  “What?”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Your guests pay for discretion.”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. I hoped he convinced himself. “That’s it.”

  “Not at the rates you charge, they don’t. Now you can help me, or I can talk to your boss.”

  Vince resigned himself to his fate. “OK, OK. Who are you looking for?”

  “A woman named Anna Blair.”

  After a little typing and head-shaking, Vince said, “No one here under that name.”

  “How about Chris Sellers?” I said.

  He checked and got the same result.

  “How about this woman here?” I showed Vince the picture of Anna Blair on my phone. “She should have come back a couple hours ago.”

  “Yeah, I remember her. Miss Curie.”

  “Curie?”

  “Yeah,” Vince said, “Marie Curie.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Do you know who Madam Curie was?”

  “Was? What do you mean? She’s in 312.”

  “Google her,” I said as I headed for the stairs. I took them two at a time, got off at the third floor, and found room 312 quickly. While I knocked on the door, I pondered what I would say. Nothing like having a plan.

  “Who is it?” a nervous voice said from the other side of the door.

  I held my ID up to the peephole. “Take a look at my ID,” I said. “I’m trying to help you and Chris.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Then I guess I’ll focus on helping you for now,” I said.

  I waited. Anna didn’t say anything else. She was on the third floor so there was no other way out of the room not involving a thirty-foot drop. Maybe she scrutinized my ID. Maybe she wondered how such handsomeness could be conveyed in such a small photo. Or she could be holding a gun. I moved to the side as much as I could while still holding my credentials to the peephole.

  The chain unlatched. The deadbolt turned. The door opened. Anna Blair looked exactly like the picture I found on Facebook. She was pretty, though I would have put Gloria and Bobbi Lane above her. I chided myself for the thought. Anna’s brown hair looked newly-washed. She wore a plain black T-shirt, pink gym shorts, and no shoes. “Who says I need help?” she said.

  “You opened the door,” I said.

  “Why do you think I need help?”

  “Brian came to me. He’s worried about his brother and by extension, you.”

  A small smile played on Anna’s lips. “He’s a good kid.”

  “Yes, he is,” I said. I looked around to make sure no one took an interest in our conversation. “I’d rather not talk right here. Is Chris somewhere nearby?”

  “Somewhere, yes. We’re not staying together. He called it a single point of failure, I think.”

  I liked the term, even though Chris was the one Esposito and his men were after. From what I heard about Esposito, I felt he could get Anna to give up Chris’ location. “Probably a good idea,” I said, working on my diplomacy.

  “Look, I’ll talk to you,” Anna said. “But I’m not telling you where Chris is.” I watched her face for a tell, even a glance in one direction. Nothing.

  “All right,” I said. “I have just the place in mind.”

  Ten minutes later, we sat in a booth at Tequila Mockingbird. I’ve always loved the name and liked the food, and this combo is enough to get me to go back every time I visit Ocean City. Those visits became less frequent after I left my teen years behind. Ocean City is great until you travel to some spectacular beaches throughout the world. It still held local appeal to me, though, in part because of places like Tequila Mockingbird. It was decorated like a thousand other Tex-Mex restaurants, and chips and salsa appeared on the table as soon as we took seats.

  Anna Blair sipped a margarita. I nursed a very non-Tex-Mex IPA while we waited for our food. “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  She frowned. “You know Chris is really good at writing code.” I nodded. “Like, really good.” I nodded some more. She seemed to want the acknowledgment. “Anyway, this guy wanted him to write some bad program for him.”

  “Alberto Esposito,” I said, keeping my voice down. “And he wanted ransomware.”

  “That sounds right. Anyway, Chris agreed to help him at first. Then . . . I guess it dawned on him who he was working for; I don’t know. He stopped and told the guy he was done.”

  “And he wouldn’t return the money he’d been paid.”

  “He worked for the money.”

  “Esposito sees it differently,” I said.

  “Whose side are you on?” Anna said, frowning.

  “Yours,” I said, “but once Chris knew who he made a deal with, keeping the money wasn’t smart.”

  “Whatever.” She shook her head. “Anyway, he told me we needed to get out of town, so here we are.”

  “Here you are.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I found you without a lot of effort,” I said. “I’ve been looking for a day or so.”

  “Sure, but you’re a detective.”

  Fajitas sizzled from about twenty feet away. The sound grew closer. Our waitress dropped off our food. Unlike Anna’s fajitas, my fish tacos did not sizzle, but steam rose off them, and they smelled terrific. “My point,” I said, “is it didn’t take a lot for me to find you, and I’m probably not the most motivated guy looking.”

  Anna assembled a fajita. She ordered chicken, and it came with the usual array of colorful vegetables, sour cream, guacamole, and tortillas. She skipped the guac entirely, committing a serious fajita faux pas. I let it pass. “How did you find me, anyway?” she said after a couple bites.

  “You used a credit card.”

  “Shit.” She shook her head. “I just got that card. Thought it was safe to use.”

  I tried my tacos. The fish had a tasty seasoning to it, and the slaw, pico, and guac complemented it nicely. “The place you used it is far enough from here so no one would find you right away,” I said. “I used something else, too. But you need to be careful. Chris does, too.”

  “We will.”

  We ate our dinners in silence for a few minutes. I broke it with a question. “How long do you guys plan to stay on the run?”

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “I mean, you can’t just chill here for a couple weeks and go back like nothing happened.”

  “Huh.” Anna pursed her lips. “I guess I never thought about it like that.”

  “You’re on the run for a while. You need to be ready.”

  “I am,” she said, adding a quick and forceful nod. Too quick and forceful. I wasn’t convinced.

  “Here’s my card,” I said, sliding one across the table to her. “I’ll stick around here for a day or two and see if we have any unexpected company. In the meantime, you and Chris need to come up with a plan. Living on the lam doesn’t suit you.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Any chance you’ll take me to see him?”

  Anna shook her head. “No.”

  “All right. At least tell him we talked. I reached out to him earlier and was going to meet him until Esposito rolled in.”

  “He mentioned that to me,” she said.

  “I still don’t know how Esposito knew.”

  Anna fell silent. She wasn’t going to be any more help. When the waitress returned, I paid the check—in cash, so as not to contribute to the credit card trail—and took Anna back to her hotel. From there, I checked into the Sea Spray Inn across the street. I felt Anna didn’t know what she got herself into, and the feeling made me more worried for her and for Chris than before.

  Chapter 11

  The next morning, I pulled a T-shirt and gym shorts out of my overnight bag and went for a run along Coastal Highway. It wasn’t Federal Hill Park, but it gave me about a half-hour of exercise. Later in the year, with more coeds walking to the beach, the scenery would be improved. I got back to my room, showered, dressed, and declared myself ready to stop all forms of malfeasance.

  First, though, I wanted breakfast. Stopping malfeasance is harder when you’re hungry. I went to the General’s Kitchen, glad for the light offseason crowd, and ordered an omelet with wheat toast and home fries. The coffee was good enough to merit a second cup. On the drive back to my hotel, I took a lap through the Ocean Getaway Inn’s parking lot. Anna Blair’s Subaru was gone. I didn’t think much of it. She said she and Chris weren’t staying together.

  Back at my hotel room, I renewed my efforts to find Chris Sellers online. If Anna went to see him, he could be online now. I checked all the haunts I knew for him and came up empty. Bobbi Lane said his company email address still worked, but he hadn’t answered her. I sent her a text wondering if anything changed. She replied a few minutes later and said it hadn’t. She also wondered when we could go running again. I suggested tomorrow. She asked where I was, and I told her.

  After coming up empty on finding Chris, I checked my traffic camera script to see if I could get a clue where Anna was. I didn’t get any hits for her car. It definitely left the parking lot. Even if someone stole it, the traffic cameras up and down Coastal Highway would have seen the car. Yesterday, I told Anna I found her via her credit card. Now I wondered if she and Chris were paranoid enough to wonder about traffic cameras. If she didn’t want to be tracked, she could have swapped her license plate or simply taken a bunch of back roads.

  Maybe she didn’t want to be found again.

  A couple hours later, I walked across the street and checked the parking lot. The Subaru was still missing. I went inside. Instead of Vince, a cute redheaded girl of college age worked the front desk. She grinned dimples at me as I approached. “Can I help you, sir?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I was supposed to meet my friend here yesterday, but I got delayed. I hope she hasn’t checked out.”

  “Have you tried calling her?” she said, frowning in confusion as if I hadn’t considered the obvious. Did I look so much older and more technophobic to a college-aged girl?

  “Well, part of my delay left me without a phone, or I would have. Can you tell me if she’s still registered?”

  Vicki, according to her nametag, pondered my problem for a moment before offering a cheerful nod. “I can check for you. What’s the name?”

  “Curie,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. She’s already checked out,” Vicki said after a quick search.

  “Unfortunate. Do you know when?”

  “Seven o’clock this morning.”

  “Wow,” I said. “She got an early start. OK, I’ll have to get a phone and reach her, then. Thanks.”

  Vicki gestured to a phone at the end of the desk. “You could use ours.” She lowered her voice. “We’re not supposed to let people use it, but it sounds like you need it.”

  Social engineering works. Never believe otherwise. “Thanks,” I said, “but I don’t want to land you in hot water.” And I didn’t. I knew what I needed to know. Vicki gave me another smile as I walked out. Anna Blair had been gone for hours, and she knew to evade traffic cameras, so I couldn’t keep track of her. She also knew not to use her credit card. I really needed to stop telling people things.

  I got back to my hotel room. Anna and Chris were in the wind again. I could only presume she told Chris how I found her, so now they’d both be careful going forward. It still concerned me if I could find them, Esposito could find them. They were careful before. If I didn’t know where they went, I couldn’t help them.

  I checked out and drove up and down Coastal Highway for about an hour, hoping to luck into spying Anna Blair’s Subaru somewhere. I came up empty. Without anything else to pursue, I headed back home.

  After I got to my house, I checked my traffic camera script. No hits. I looked for Anna Blair’s credit cards. Nothing. On a lark, I tried Chris Sellers’ cards. Nothing. They vanished from the grid again. I hoped they were better at hiding this time. While I wanted to find them, I wanted to make sure Esposito and his cronies couldn’t.

  I logged onto codingchat.com and sent Chris a message.

  Chris,

  I found Anna. It looks like you two have gone off the grid again. I can help you, but you need to let me. If I found you before, I’m worried Esposito will find you now. You should be worried, too. Reply to me here or at my cell: 410-555-7274.

  I didn’t have an idea of how to keep looking for them. They were ahead of me from the jump, and could have gone myriad places in the hours before I realized they were in the wind. The elapsed time since opened up more possible places. I didn’t even have a way of narrowing them down at the moment. They could have driven north from Ocean City, up through Delaware, and could be eating lobster in Maine right now for all I knew.

  My phone rang. Of course, it was Brian Sellers. When life hands you lemons, sometimes it follows up by pelting you with more of them. He’d keep calling.

  “Hi, C.T., it’s Brian.”

  I was used to old people telling me who was calling. People Brian’s age grew up with caller ID. Then again, maybe he lumped me in with Luddites like Vicki at the hotel did. “Hi, Brian,” I said, summoning my diplomacy.

  “Have you found Chris?”

  “I would have told you if I had.”

  “Oh.” I could almost hear him deflate over the phone.

  “I found Anna, though,” I said.

  “Oh!” Life came back into his voice. “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Maybe. If I can find her, the people she and Chris are hiding from might be able to also.”

  “You said you found her.” He paused. “What happened?”

  “Yesterday’s news,” I said. “She and Chris left early this morning. I don’t know where they are right now.”

  “Can you find them again?” Brian said.

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “Keep trying to reach him. You never know; it might make a difference one of these times.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I’m going to keep trying, too,” I said. “If I found them once, I should be able to again.”

  “Good luck,” he said.

  I declined to say I would need it, even though I would.

  Gloria called as I sat down to eat dinner. I made steak kabobs with rice pilaf. At least they would reheat well. “How’s your case going?” she said.

  I liked her taking a greater interest in my cases, but I wasn’t sold on talking shop with her yet. It felt a little odd. I wanted some separation between my professional and personal lives. The fact of Gloria consuming more and more of my personal life was something we would need to hammer out one day. I liked her, but I wondered if our relationship of fun and convenience was morphing into something more. “Well,” I said, “and not so well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I told her about finding Anna, what I learned, and then Anna’s early departure. “You’ll find them again,” Gloria said.

  “I hope so,” I said. “My concern is I found them before, and I’m still not the only one looking. What if I’m not first to find them the next time?”

  “You found her before, you can find her again.”

  “I’ll try. I need to before the other guys do.”

  “Do you know where you’re going to look next?” she said.

  “Not really,” I said. “They could be anywhere along the east coast by now . . . or well past the Mississippi River if they made a turn.”

  “Are they both from around here?”

  “I think so.” I would have to check about Anna.

  “Then I doubt they packed up and drove to Kansas,” Gloria said.

  I nodded. “They don’t really see themselves as on the run. Anna made it clear enough, and I don’t think I changed her mind. They think they’re just holing up until all this blows over.”

  “See? You should listen to me more often,” Gloria said. I could hear the smile in her voice. Her smile was terrific, and it forced me to reciprocate.

  “It all depends on what you say,” I said.

  “I could whisper some suggestions into your near next time I see you.”

  “I’ll definitely listen to you more, then,” I said.

  Later, I came back downstairs. There had to be better ways of trying to find Chris Sellers than the ancient messaging feature of a coding forum. Brian gave me the email address he checked most often (he said he didn’t have one for Anna). I sent an email, saying pretty much the same thing I’d been saying all along. If I needed to type it again, I could add this is a recording to the end of it.

  I didn’t expect a response while I kept working and wasn’t disappointed. Chris didn’t have much reason to trust me, even if his brother did. I doubted my little tete-a-tete with Anna won me many favors, especially considering what I told her. Maybe he’d catch another glimpse of Esposito or one of his goons somewhere and realize I was the better alternative.

  Until then, I didn’t have any brilliant ideas on how to find him. Nor did I have any bad ideas, short of driving around and scrutinizing silver Subarus. I wasn’t desperate enough to try it yet. On a lark, I checked the results of my traffic camera script again. No hits. I didn’t expect there to be any. Low expectations make disappointment impossible. This case kept reinforcing the idea.

  I didn’t want to let Brian Sellers down. His brother made a stupid decision, but the kid didn’t need to pay the price for it. I didn’t have any ideas for the night, however, and after not being disappointed at my lack of results for anything again, I went back upstairs.

  Chapter 12

 

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