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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

COTTONWOOD, ARIZONA

THURSDAY, MARCH 23, 2023

10:00 A.M.

Off the line with Frigg, Ali sat at her desk trying to make forward progress on her to-do list, but the circumstances surrounding Chuck Brewster’s homicide kept derailing her ability to concentrate. She was about to go to the break room for a cup of coffee when her phone rang with Cami’s face showing in caller ID.

“Hey, Cami,” Ali said cheerfully. “Good to hear from you. How’s it going?”

“Not so well,” Cami said. “I just had a visit from the cops.”

“The cops?” Ali echoed. “How come?”

“Two homicide detectives from the Essex Police. Adrian Willoughby’s body was found floating face down in a lake somewhere in Essex early this morning.”

The name Adrian Willoughby didn’t ring any bells as far as Ali was concerned. “Who?” she asked.

“Adrian Willoughby. Remember back in 2020 when a blogger kept giving us all kinds of bad press?”

That did sound faintly familiar. “Oh, him,” Ali said. “I had forgotten about him completely. He’s dead?”

“Yes, not just dead but murdered. He died Saturday night. They know the exact time of his death because he was wearing an Apple Watch.”

“But what does that have to do with you?”

“He had pictures of me on his computer,” Cami explained. “Candid photos that were taken of me last week while I was in L.A. The authorities here used facial rec from those to figure out that I had entered the UK at Heathrow on Tuesday morning.”

Ali did a sharp intake of breath. “Are you kidding? Were the photos taken by Bogdan Petrov?”

“Most likely,” Cami answered. “And Willoughby responded to the text containing my photos with a single, one-word reply. It said GO—all caps.”

“As in do it?”

“That’s what it sounds like to me.”

“Does this mean Willoughby sent Petrov after you?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Willoughby’s finances were in the tank, and the kind of tech Petrov had at his disposal—his ability to wipe the Lancaster’s surveillance system, for instance—would have cost a lot of money. But speaking of Petrov, that’s the other thing Rachel just told me.”

“What about him?”

“Sonja Bjornson’s people managed to retrieve a tracking device from my rental car and traced that to Petrov’s phone. The last time it pinged was somewhere near San Bernardino. His body was found yesterday morning in an irrigation ditch near there. It’s just now been identified.”

Ali was aghast. “So he’s dead, too?”

“Apparently.”

“Of what?”

“Shot in the back of the head, execution style.”

“So Willoughby sent Petrov after you, and now both of them are dead. That means someone is cleaning up after them, but why on earth would Adrian Willoughby target you in the first place?”

Cami sighed. “I’m afraid I gave him some pretty good reasons,” she admitted.

For the next several minutes, Ali listened in astonishment while Cami recounted how, back in 2020, in the aftermath of that conference in London, Willoughby had made an unwelcome pass at her. In return, she had wreaked havoc in the smarmy creep’s personal life.

“All right,” Ali said when Cami finished, “what you did wasn’t exactly according to Hoyle, but it was also little more than a prank. I can’t imagine why he’d be motivated to send a hit man after you three years later.”

“Maybe he was doing someone else’s bidding,” Cami suggested. “You do remember who he was working for back then, don’t you?”

The early months of 2020 were pretty hazy for Ali. With B. out of commission due to serious injuries from an automobile crash and with the pandemic bearing down on everyone, she’d had her hands more than full.

“I don’t remember much,” Ali admitted.

“He was a well-known blogger in cybersecurity circles,” Cami said, “and a lot of what he wrote showed High Noon in a very bad light. It wasn’t until later that we figured out that George Smythe of Cybersecurity International had been paying Adrian under the table.”

The name George Smythe certainly jogged Ali’s memory. He had attended the same conference where, in B.’s absence, Cami had delivered a paper to the assembled group. After her presentation, Smythe—seemingly the perfect English gentleman—had approached Ali. While praising Cami’s presentation, Smythe had gone on to suggest that he hoped High Noon would make better use of her talents than keeping her locked away in a computer lab. That conversation was one of the things that had led to Cami’s being put in charge of outside sales.

“When we were trying to identify problematic people on Saturday,” Ali said once Cami finished, “ones who might have had issues with you, why didn’t either one of those names come up?”

“Because it didn’t dawn on me that either one of them would be involved,” Cami replied. “Nothing about them seemed important enough to mention.”

“Well, they’ve been mentioned now,” Ali said. “As soon as we’re off the phone, I’ll turn Frigg loose on both of them. Give me the names of those Essex detectives.”

“Detective Inspector Howard Wallace and Detective Sergeant Matthew Frost.”

“All right,” Ali said as she jotted down the names. “And if you can, send along the number of that cell phone WWS located for Bogdan Petrov. Let’s hope Frigg has enough bandwidth to monitor three separate homicide investigations on two different continents at the same time.”

“Three?” Cami echoed. “What do you mean three? Who else is dead?”

Obviously Cami wasn’t the only one who had left a bit of critical information out of that lunchtime meeting on Saturday. Somehow Chuck and Clarice Brewster’s names hadn’t come up, either.

Let he who is without sin… Ali thought.

“With all the uproar going on,” Ali said aloud, “I must have forgotten to mention that B.’s former partner, Chuck Brewster, was murdered somewhere in the Seattle area last week while you were in L.A. We’re looking into the situation on behalf of B.’s ex-wife who may or may not have been involved in the homicide.”

“That’s a lot to deal with,” Cami said after a moment. “Are you sure you want me to have WWS send you that phone number?”

“I’m sure,” Ali said. “I’ll turn it over to Frigg and see what she turns up.”