Page 44 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

No one in the kitchen. Only one of the two bedrooms had been used. The bed had been made. Iliana’s clothes hung neatly from hangers. There was a phone charger but no phone. And no sign of a computer anywhere.

Bree called out to Jannie as she returned, “Empty.”

Jannie said, “Tina wants to know if Iliana’s running shoes are there — Asics. And a blue and gold Paxson State running jacket? She’d wear it in this wind.”

Bree pivoted, returned to the bedroom, looked, and called over her shoulder. “No Asics. No running jacket. Ask Tina if she had a laptop.”

A moment later, Jannie called back, “Yes, a MacBook with a Paxson Cross-Country sticker on the lid.”

“It’s not here.”

Then she put her phone to her lips. “We are leaving now, Ms. Holmes.” She shut the camera app off. Before exiting and shutting the door of the condo, she glanced at her text messages and saw one from Amelia Franks that beganFinally.

Jannie was on the landing standing next to Tina Dawson, a tall, fit blonde wearing a Paxson State Track hoodie, shorts, and running shoes. Both girls looked at Bree anxiously.

“If none of her running stuff is in there, she went out for a run,” Tina said.

“Hold that thought. I’m trying to do two things at once here.”

She stepped aside, opened the FBI agent’s text, and saw the image of the Irish passport of Maggie Fontaine used to board AA 839. The photograph was clear.

The woman in seat 2A was unmistakably Leigh Anne Asher.

Her heart sank. Even though she had thought it likely, the evidence was now incontrovertible. Elena Martin’s old friend was dead. And she had been engaged. But how could she have two passports under two different names?

She called up one of the earlier pictures Agent Franks had sent. This time she blew up the picture to look at the man with the bashed head hanging beside Asher.

Who are you?she wondered.Are you just some random guy? Or are you her fiancé?

“Bree!” Jannie said, snapping her out of her thoughts. “What are we going to do?”

“You said she was going to take a run in a nearby park, right?”

Jannie nodded. “I guess it’s part of the race course.”

Tina said, “That’s what she told me too. Mantua Park. Gerry Connolly Cross County Trail. She said it would be a good place for me to loosen up after the drive down. And I think the trail is part of the course at George Mason. She gave me directions, what trail to take and all.”

“You were going to stay here with her?”

“She invited me. Said it was better than the dump Paxson was putting us up in.”

Bree said, “Were you two close? Did she confide in you?”

Tina frowned. “We just met like six weeks ago. Confide in me about what?”

“Nothing,” Bree said, heading for the stairs. “Let’s go look around that park.”

“What if she’s not there?” Jannie asked.

“We start calling hospitals. And then we call the police.”

CHAPTER 42

IN A MODEST APARTMENTbuilding in suburban Maryland, Padraig Filson checked to see if the VPN software he was running fully masked the IP address of his laptop. Assured that it did, he typed in commands that bounced his request through six different internet servers around the world before sending it into a virtual universe most people had heard of but never seen.

Filson smiled.Can you imagine what we could have done with this back in the day? Everything would have gone down so much faster. Easier.

He looked at the wall where he had thumbtacked a snapshot of a towheaded, freckle-faced young boy grinning through two missing front teeth. Filson sighed, knowing that rewriting the past behind that snapshot was just a pipe dream.

---