The Match (Wilde, #2)(38)

He didn’t remember. He just remembered cutting his flesh on the shards of glass. That was how the memories often came to him—in broken shards. His earliest memories: the red banister, dark woods, a portrait of a mustached man, and a woman’s scream. He had dreamt about those images for his entire life, but he still didn’t know what, if anything, they meant.

Wilde first tried the McAndrews’ lower-level windows. Locked. He tried the back door. Locked. He tried the sliding glass door.

Bingo.

That surprised Wilde somewhat. Why lock all your windows but not the sliding glass door? Could have just forgotten or been careless, of course. It wasn’t a big deal. And yet.

The tingle was back.

Wilde ducked low. He’d only slid the door open an inch. Now he slid it another inch. The door glided easily on the track. No sound. Wilde stayed low and slid it some more. Slowly. This could all be overkill, but overconfidence was often a bigger threat than any adversary. He waited and listened.

Nothing.

When he’d slid the door wide enough, Wilde crawled into the den. He debated closing the door behind him, but if he needed to make a quick exit, an open door would save time. For a full minute, Wilde stayed perfectly still, straining to hear any sound.

There was nothing.

Wilde spotted a mainframe computer on the desk in the corner.

Bingo again.

There was no one home. He was sure of it now. But he couldn’t shake that tingle. He wasn’t a woo-woo superstitious man. He didn’t really believe in any of that. Yet there was an unmistakable crackle in the air.

What was he missing?

He didn’t know. It could just be his imagination. He didn’t dismiss that. Then again, there was no harm in being extra cautious. Wilde stayed low and crept toward the desk. This was his goal and reason for breaking into the McAndrews’ home—to download everything he could off the McAndrews’ computer and then get it to Rola’s experts for a full analysis. He would at some point like to question the McAndrews family, though he was doubtful that could get him anywhere. The bigger key was to figure out how the troll DogLufegnev got those compromising photos that had sent Peter Bennett into a tailspin.

The computer was a PC with a Windows operating system and password protection. Wilde pulled out two USB flash drives. He stuck the first one into the USB port. The flash drive was an all-in-one hacker’s tool. It was loaded with self-running programs like mailpv.exe and mspass.exe, and once plugged into the USB port, it would collect various passwords from Facebook, Outlook, your bank account, whatever.

Wilde didn’t need all that.

He just needed the operating system password, so that he could back up the entire contents of the computer on the second flash drive. In the movies, this takes a relatively long time. In reality, the password is bypassed in seconds and the contents should be copied in no more than five minutes.

With the computer unlocked, Wilde opened up the web browser to check through the history. He knew that computers were hardly tell-alls anymore. People mostly used their phones to surf and search nowadays. You could spy on emails or texts, but the good stuff was often hidden in secure messaging apps like Signal or Threema.

First site bookmarked: Instagram.

Unusual. Instagram was normally a phone app, not something people did from their computer. Wilde quickly clicked on the link. Instagram came up. He expected to see DogLufegnev’s handle in the profile box, but the screen name read NurseCaresLove24. The profile photo was of a woman who appeared to be Asian, no more than thirty. On the right, Wilde could see the option to switch profiles. He hit that link.

Dozens of accounts came up.

It was a vast potpourri of accounts—all creeds, genders, nationalities, occupations, persuasions were represented. Wilde scrolled down the screen, counting as he went along. He took out his phone and snapped screenshots of the names just in case they didn’t show up on the flash drive. He’d counted over thirty accounts when he finally located one with the name DogLufegnev.

He clicked on the profile and watched the page load. DogLufegnev had posted only twelve photographs in total, all nature shots. His followers numbered forty-six, and from what Wilde could tell, they all seemed to be other accounts set up on this computer. Wilde hit the private messaging icon. He found the same correspondences between DogLufegnev and Peter Bennett he’d seen at Rola’s house, but what was more curious, far more curious, was the message above it, the last one DogLufegnev received.

It was from someone named PantherStrike88. The message was chillingly simple:

Got you, McAndrews. You’re going to pay.





Whoa, Wilde thought. This Panther account had found McAndrews out.

The flash drive blinked twice, indicating it was done with the download. Wilde pulled it out and put it in his pocket. He clicked on the profile for PantherStrike88, but it was gone. Whoever had created the account—and sent that threatening message—had deleted themselves.

What the hell was going on?

For the first time since Wilde had entered the premises, he heard a sound.

A car.

He quickly stepped toward the front window in time to see the car’s taillights disappearing to the left. It was nothing. A car driving by. That’s all. This street was silent again.

But the tingle was back.

Wilde padded back toward the computer room, debating whether he should stay and keep looking through the computer or leave now, when the first whiff hit him.