Page 143 of Fame & Obsession

My pace doubles, and my lungs burn. As I round the fifth block, my phone rings, and the immediate relief that floods through me has me answering it without looking at it first.

“Phoebe?”

“Bale?”

Slowing my pace, I pull the phone away, glancing at the caller ID. “Hough, please tell me you have an address I need itnow.”

“Bale, do you know a Tara Lambert?”

My pace stops completely as I think over past girlfriends and drunk hook-ups over the years. “No, the name’s not familiar. Why?”

“I got a positive ID on the IP and info from a Machine Access Control, for the AngElmie issue. I didn’t want to say anything before because I was at the station. There’s always someone listening at that damn place.”

“Go on.”

“Nobody can snap their fingers and trace an IP address. There’s a process involved. I could take it to a judge and provide evidence that there’s reasonable cause a crime has been committed. At that point, the judge would rule to give me a court order and force the ISP to give me the location of the IP they assigned that router. That usually takes days.”

“We don’t have days!” I explode. “Why did you let us do all of this shit? Do you understand what we’ve done?” Panic claws at my chest.

“Yes, Bale, I know exactly what you’ve done. Which is exactly why I couldn’t explain to you then that a golfing buddy of mine works at one of the main ISP providers in Jersey and has a dirty little obsession with high-priced hookers. You tend to get around bureaucratic red tape like court orders when the son of a congressman doesn’t want anyone to know where his dick has been.”

“She’s in Jersey?”

“I had a hunch your stalker either lived near you or would move near you. Most celebrity stalkers of this magnitude do.”

“Who is she?”

“IP identification isn’t that cut and dry. It’s assigned by the internet service provider. The router acts as the front man, much like yourself, for a bunch of computers on a Local Area Network and—”

“Hough, no offense, but some shit’s going down here, so just say that in fucking English this time.”

“Fine. If a crazy bitch gets into someone’s wireless and does some illegal shit, the wireless holder looks like the smoking gun. Your wireless holder is an eighty-nine-year-old man named Harold James. I don’t think he’s your stalker. However, Mr. James remembered sharing his wireless password with the ‘nice girl down the street.’”

Jesus, just say that to start with.

“Fucking great. How does Tara Lambert fit in all this?”

“Once we traced the WordStory file that Phoebe emailed us to Harold James, and he identified sharing his wireless code with Tara Lambert, we raided her house. The laptop had been tampered with. Since the MAC information is in the software, any hacker can do it.”

“In English,” I growl. “What does that mean?”

“Who knows where it originated. What’s important is that we can prove thatwas the hardware that sent the information to Phoebe’s fake website.”

“Oh God.” Bile rises in my throat, threatening to spew all over the tourists in front of me. “I don’t understand. How does Mia fit into all this, and how is this Tara person connected to her?”

“Julian, I think you need to sit down somewhere.”

“No, damn it! I can’t get in touch with Phoebe. Tell me right now, or I’m taking this into my own hands.”

Hough sighs. “Julian, I did some alias digging.”

Phoebe’s regurgitated warning from Faith wails like a siren in my head.

“Faith said stalkers are a lot like hackers. They’re loyal to one online name. They couldn’t care less about real names. They toss those away without issue…”

“Julian? Are you listening to me?”

“Huh?”