But the future? That could be altered.

  Had to be altered, as far as he was concerned.

  The boy’s life depends on it, Padraig. Get to fishing now. Not much time left.

  He turned his attention to the sign-in box in the middle of a blank screen. He used an alias and an unhackable password that a computer nut in Galway had devised for him in return for certain favors.

  After a moment, the screen blinked and showed what looked like whole galaxies of stars rushing at him. The experience thrilled him as much as it had the first time he’d gone down this rabbit hole.

  God, he loved the dark web, with all its secret nooks and crannies. It was a whole universe unto itself. Here you could get a proper clean gun—pistol, rifle, or shotgun—and bullets matched for accuracy. And garrotes and poisons. All the tools of the trade.

  Except one tool, a magical skill that made Filson special in his line of work. No one else on the dark web provided his unique service. He knew. He’d checked.

  So today, as he had almost every day since his diagnosis, Filson was going fishing in the deep, stinking pools and rivers of the dark web. He was angling for one of the scum creatures who loved to swim in those places, reveled in them, felt compelled to dive into them no matter how much they tried to repress their inner longings and addictions.

  At another time, in another place, and for different reasons, Filson might have trolled for victims on the illegal drug sites that had sprung up in the aftermath of the Silk Road’s collapse. But he was focused elsewhere, on the foulest pools and rivers, the ones where the true monsters of society lurked and fed.

  Filson typed in more commands, then used another alias and another password to access one of the rankest rivers of them all, one that held some of the most disgusting fish he’d ever encountered. Glancing again at that picture of the young boy on the wall, he felt his anger and purpose grow. “You won’t have to deal with these kinds in your life, boyo,” he whispered and then returned to his fishing.

  Back in rural Ireland, Filson’s father had been an avid salmon angler who’d taught his son everything he knew about bringing up big fish from the depths. These fishing techniques worked in the virtual world as well as the real one, Filson knew.

  Once Filson was on the site, he accessed an encrypted forum, ignored the new filth posted on its general page, and went to a substring titled Actively Seeking: Mid-Atlantic.

  As his father had taught him, he paused to scan the pool he was about to cast into, looking for signs of fish feeding. He read a few of the posts, understood the rude flavor of them, and saw in his mind just the kind of fly that would raise one of these beasts to the surface.

  Filson typed, tying his fly with suggestion, innuendo, and lurid description. He finished it with a picture, an image he’d copied from the regular internet, added contact information through an encrypted Tor messaging system, then posted the lure on the dark web forum.

  Now all he had to do was be patient.

  It was the only way to be when you were trying to outsmart a bottom-feeder.

  Chapter

  43

  Filson started to laugh, but that turned into a hacking cough with phlegm that he spat into a mason jar he kept on the table. Feeling a familiar heartburn building, he left the laptop, went to the refrigerator, and poured himself a glass of milk.

  From a cabinet, he got out a bottle of Jameson whiskey and added three fingers of it to the milk. This was the only concoction that eased the burning in his throat and gut.

  Ding!

  A strike? he thought. Already?

  Sipping his drink, Filson hustled back to the laptop and saw that, indeed, someone was nosing about his fly. He opened the message, read it, and smiled. He typed an enticing reply.

  Several more messages passed back and forth. Filson took screenshots of them all and signed off, feeling like the fly had been taken and the hook was set.

  His next fish was firmly on the line.

  He quickly signed into another Tor site, pasted the screenshots into a message, and sent the message to an anonymous address he’d memorized.

  As usual, Filson did not have to wait long for the reply: Good criteria. Take him. Same terms. Proofs as well.

  After seeing that, Filson signed out of the dark web and closed his laptop.

  He and the fish had agreed to meet at three a.m., the dark hour when predators felt comfortable enough to come up into the shallows and hunt.

  I am a fisher of men, that’s all there is to it, he thought as he left the table and went to the bathroom. He picked up the electric trimmer he’d bought earlier in the day and cut his full beard down to a neat goatee. Then he cut his shaggy silver hair by a good five inches.

  Satisfied, he opened a box of henna hair dye, also purchased earlier in the day. He put on disposable gloves and generously coated his hair and goatee with the dye.

  Fifteen minutes later, he took a shower and rinsed the dye away. Filson looked himself in the mirror as he dried off and laughed. “You haven’t been a ginger in years, Padraig,” he said. “It becomes you.”

  After dressing, he went to a second bedroom. There he unlocked a locker, removed a box, unlocked that, removed another box, and unlocked that. Inside the third and smallest box, cradled in foam, was a weapon Filson had designed and built himself, using an old friend’s metal lathes and gunsmithing tools. It had been a simple job, really.

  His research had shown that the average pair of human eyes were set roughly fifty-five to seventy-five millimeters apart, measured from the center of one pupil to the center of the other. Filson had used the average of sixty-five millimeters to set the distance between two .25-caliber pistol barrels he then joined to an action he’d designed, milled, and fitted so they operated like side-by-side shotguns, with a single trigger controlling both firing pins. It had a break-action breech as well.

  He’d welded a reinforcing rod between the barrels to give them more stability and put a tritium aiming sight on it that glowed even in the pitch-dark. The pistol stock was custom-made, a composite he’d produced with a 3D printer based on measurements he’d taken of his own hand. The butt of it had a hole so the weapon could be hung on a hook.

  He picked the gun up and shut the empty breech, surprised once again at how balanced, how right it felt in his hands. Maybe he’d missed his calling. I could have been a gunsmith, Filson thought.

  He looked over at his reflection in a mirror on the closet’s sliding door. He ignored the dye job and studied his ravaged eyes and face, then took a long swig of the milk and whiskey, feeling it fire his tongue and cool his throat and gut.

  Filson laughed at his reflection. “Nah, Padraig. No gunsmith. You were born for this life, weren’t you? You and your mad fishing father before you.”

  Then he raised the double-barreled pistol and aimed the glowing green tritium sight at the reflection of the bridge of his repeatedly broken nose. When he squeezed the crisp trigger and heard the firing pins snap, he broke into a cackle that soon had him coughing harder than ever.

  Chapter

  44

  Fairfax, Virginia

  Bree, Jannie, and Tina Dawson stood on the west side of Mantua Park at the entrance to the Gerry Connolly Cross County Trail, almost directly across the street from the Airbnb the missing Iliana Meadows had rented.

  Bree had her phone out with the Google Maps application up. She looked at Tina. “Give me the directions she gave you.”

  The cross-country runner got out her phone, found the text. “She says, ‘Enter across from condo. Trail follows Accotink Creek. Cross Barkley Drive. Go south to Prosperity Avenue. That’s a mile and a half. Turn around. An easy three miles.’” Tina choked a little. “Then she say, ‘Have fun! See you soon! We’ll order out!’”

  “Don’t worry, Tina,” Bree said. “We’ll find her. She’s probably just sprained an ankle or something.”

  They entered the park and took the trail down along Accotink Creek. It was pretty there that crisp autumn early evening. Many of the trees on the slopes along the creek and trail were in full fall color.

  A steady wind blew, rustling the leaves and deepening the chill as they walked, looking up the trail and at the hillsides flanking it. They encountered a few runners and two moms hiking with babies on their backs.

  They stopped all of them and showed each one a picture of Iliana. “She’d be wearing a jacket like this one,” Jannie said, pointing at Tina’s.

  None of them had seen the cross-country runner or anyone with a similar jacket.

  A few hundred yards on, a branch of the trail turned north toward Arlington Boulevard. Somewhere up there in the trees, a dog was yapping. The main path extended east and south toward Barkley Drive. They followed it, with Jannie and Tina calling for Iliana.

  There was no response. They reached the intersection of the paths and Barkley Drive, which was busy with traffic. The trail disappeared into the woods south of it.

  Bree said, “You know what? I’ll take the trail from here south to Prosperity. You two go back, see if we missed anything, then get in Tina’s car. You’ll come get me.”

  Tina looked upset.

  “What’s the matter?” Jannie asked.

  The young woman said, “I have nowhere to stay tonight. I told Coach I was going to stay with Iliana.”

  Bree exchanged glances with Jannie. “What coach was that?”

  “Thayer,” she said. “He usually sets up our lodging.”

  “You’ll stay with us tonight,” Jannie said. “We’re not far.”

  Tina hesitated. “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely,” Bree said. “Wait until you taste Jannie’s great-grandmother’s cooking.”

  The young woman smiled. “Okay. I’d like that. It’s been a while since I had a home-cooked meal before a race.”

  “Call me on my cell if you find anything on the way back,” Bree said, then hustled across Barkley Drive.

  The light was more slanted in these woods, the trail more heavily used. Bree saw five times as many people using this section, and she decided that if something had happened to Iliana, it had to have been back there, across Barkley, on the trail north and west to Pickett Road.

  She jogged back, crossed Barkley, and was puffing when her cell phone rang. “Jannie?”

  Her stepdaughter was on the verge of crying. “We found her jacket, Bree.”

  “Don’t touch it,” Bree said, quickening her pace. “I’m on my way.”

  “Why would it be here like this?” Jannie said. “Down in the creek?”

  “Get back on the trail and wait for me!”

  She caught up to Jannie near the spur trail that ran north to Arlington Boulevard. Her stepdaughter was crying hard.

  Somewhere, that dog was still yapping.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?” Jannie said, gesturing down into the creek bottom where a blue and gold Paxson State jacket was caught on an exposed tree root next to a culvert that ran under the spur trail. “I don’t know how we missed it the first time, but Tina saw it when we were coming back.”

  “Where is Tina?” Bree asked, getting out her phone to photograph the jacket.

  Jannie gestured toward the spur trail. “She said she wanted to know what that dog was barking at, and—”

  Over the yapping and from the woods west of the spur trail came a cutting scream of horror and loss.

  Chapter

  45

  Captain Davis invoked his Miranda rights and refused to answer any more of our questions until he’d spoken with an attorney. We had forty-eight hours to hold him without charges while FBI criminologists pored over everything in his residence, looking for additional evidence.

  The U.S. attorney who had jurisdiction over the case was getting bombarded with calls from people complaining about Davis being taken into custody and the subsequent search of his house. Rebecca Cantrell called Ned Mahoney, John Sampson, and me to her office in Arlington after we’d left Davis at the federal holding facility in Alexandria.

  A short, pretty brunette in her late forties, Cantrell had worked multiple terrorism cases while an assistant U.S. attorney in New York. She had a reputation for being extremely thorough.

  “You’re sure you’ve got Davis cold?” Cantrell asked after she’d waved us into chairs in front of her desk.

  “Residue of explosive components on the coverall and hoodie,” I said.

  “From a nitrate bomb,” Sampson added.

  “He’s a high-profile suspect. We’re accusing a former NFL player and war hero of killing a hundred people. What’s the motive?”

  “We don’t—”

  “Rage,” Mahoney said. “His ex-girlfriend killed her daughter and herself after Davis flunked out of an American Airlines pilot program.”

  “What?”

  “True,” I said. “Davis was very close to the daughter. Treated her like his own.”

  “Right to the end,” Sampson added. “And he claims he had enough money from football he didn’t need the job.”

  “So the motive is shaky,” Cantrell said.

  “With all due respect, I don’t think a grand jury will see it that way.”

  “With all due and deep respect, Agent Mahoney, I’m the grand-jury expert here and if we’re going to destroy a man’s reputation in public, I’d like to do it with utter confidence in his eventual conviction on all charges.”

  “That could take time. Longer than forty-eight hours.”

  “I think I can keep him in custody a bit longer based on the explosives residue. But for now, we’ll stick to that window, which should give me enough time to proceed to arraignment if I choose to.”

  I said, “What will make you confident enough to charge?”

  “All open angles closed,” Cantrell said. “All other known suspects eliminated.”

  Mahoney said, “We’re still working on Cameron Blades, the guy who threatened American Airlines after they lost his mother’s ashes.”

  “He had fifty-caliber-machine-gun components?”

  “Affirmative. And no federal firearms license for them, according to ATF.”

  The U.S. attorney sat back in her chair. “Any chance they were collaborating? Davis and Blades?”

  “I suppose, but we’ve seen no evidence of that.”

  Cantrell pressed her fingers into a steeple and thought for several moments. “Okay,” she said finally. “I want you three to change tack, be my devil’s advocates.”

  “How so?” Mahoney said, looking uneasy.

  Cantrell sat forward and slid a manila folder across to us. “Someone used a machine gun to shoot at a single-engine plane last year about thirty miles west of Fort Bragg,” she said. “Didn’t take it down because the plane was too far away, but the fuselage had several bullet holes, and people in that area said they heard the automatic-weapon fire coming from a remote part of a national forest.”

  “That didn’t come up in our records,” Mahoney said, frowning and opening the file.

  “NTSB handled it and came up with nothing,” Cantrell said. “But there’s a sheriff’s detective down there who contacted us and said we need to look at a few things she believes may be connected to the downed jet. Look, any good defense attorney is going to find this eventually, so let’s do the work before they do. Mahoney, I’d like you and Dr. Cross to fly down there ASAP and hear her out.”

  Before we could reply, she turned to John. “And Detective Sampson, I know you’re the sole caretaker of your daughter, so I won’t ask you to go out of town on short notice. But I’ve spoken with your chief, and in addition to your work on the Dead Hours killings, we want you to check out the alibi that this teacher, Fiona Plum, gave Captain Davis. And check the security cameras at that sports bar he claims he went to.”

  Sampson nodded. “He says he got sick eating crab after the sports bar.”

  “Check that out too,” Cantrell said.

  Chapter

  46

  Bree took one last look at the corpse of Iliana Meadows before walking away from the scene with Fairfax County Police detective Marcia Creighton.

  When Detective Creighton showed up as one of the responding investigators, Bree was instantly relieved. She and Creighton had known each other for years, having worked several cases together that crossed district and state lines.

  Ahead of them and down the spur trail, other detectives were talking to Tina Dawson and Jannie. Dawson had a space blanket around her shoulders, the shock and horror she’d felt at her discovery now replaced by trembling disbelief.

  Jannie wiped at tears with her sleeve as she answered a detective’s question.

  Creighton stopped twenty yards away and said quietly to Bree, “Looks like the victim was hit from behind, blunt force.”

  “Sharp-edged weapon, though, the way it caved in her skull,” Bree said. “A rock?”

  “Or a tree limb with a broken piece coming off it. The ME will give us more when they look at her, but I saw no signs of sexual assault.”

  “No,” Bree said.

  “You know what Jannie and Tina are going to say?”

  “Iliana told Jannie that someone was blackmailing her over a sex video her high-school coach had shot of the two of them together.”

  “When she was underage?”

  Bree nodded.

  “She have any idea who the blackmailer was?”

  “No. The demands came to her and her high-school coach by e-mail. They wanted fifty thousand dollars the first time. The second time—evidently two days ago—they wanted a hundred grand.”

  “How does a college freshman come up with fifty K?”

  Bree explained about the father dying in the industrial accident.

  “And the coach?”

  “I’ve got nothing firsthand.”