Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow (Tracy Whitney #2)(20)

She hesitated. “I can’t tell you, I’m afraid.”

“Why not?”

“I’d be betraying a friend. It’s complicated but . . . you’ll just have to trust me.”

Now it was Jeff’s turn to hesitate. “Do you have another copy?”

Rebecca looked surprised. “Yes. Why?”

“I destroyed the original you gave me. I was angry and I wasn’t thinking straight. But I’d like to look at it again. I’m hoping there might be some clue in there, something I missed the first time that might help me find Tracy. Can I have it?”

Rebecca pouted. “All right.” She’d hoped, assumed, that Jeff had come here tonight to see her. Doing her best to mask her disappointment, she walked over to her desk drawer. Pulling out a disk, she handed it to him.

“She doesn’t love you, you know.”

Jeff winced.

“Not like I do.”

He looked at Rebecca, genuinely surprised.

“You don’t love me. You barely even know me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes it is. Believe me. Besides, I’m far too old for you.”

“Says who?” Rebecca coiled herself around him like a cobra, kissing him with a passion that caught Jeff completely off guard. She was a gorgeous girl, but he wasn’t ready for this. Gently but firmly, he pushed her away.

“I’m married,” he said. “What happened between us the other day—”

“Almost happened,” Rebecca corrected him.

“Almost happened,” Jeff agreed. “Well, it shouldn’t have. I was hurt and angry, and you’re a beautiful girl. But I love my wife.”

“Your wife’s a whore!” Rebecca’s sweet, innocent features twisted suddenly into an ugly mask of jealousy and rage. Jeff stepped away from her, shocked. He had never seen this side of her before.

A horrible thought struck him. As if someone had cut the cable of an elevator he was taking, he felt his stomach lurch and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“How did you get the footage?” he asked again. “Tell me!”

“I won’t!” snapped Rebecca. “Can’t you see you’re missing the point here? Tracy’s been screwing around behind your back. That’s the headline. Who cares how I caught her. The point is I did. I did it because I care about you, Jeff. I love you!”

But Jeff was already gone, the disk clutched tightly in his hand.


AT SEVEN O’CLOCK THE next morning, Jeff sat in Victor Litchenko’s basement office in Pimlico, staring at a screen.

Victor was an old friend and one of the top audiovisual experts in the London underworld. A master at doctoring footage, both images and sound, Victor Litchenko described himself as a “digital artist.” Few who’d worked with him disagreed.

“It’s actually not a bad piece of work,” the Russian said at last, sipping at the double espresso Jeff had brought him. “The most common mistake amateurs make is to go for something too complex. But here she simply doctored the time line and changed the lighting. Very easy. Very effective.”

“So it is Tracy?”

“It is Tracy. The footage itself is genuine, nothing’s been superimposed or patched together. All she did was to change the time clock in the bottom right-hand corner. You think this was shot at two A.M. because there’s a set of numbers there telling you so. If you strip those out, like so”—he tapped a few keys—“and remove the superimposed shadowing she used like . . . so . . .” Some more tapping. “Voilà! Now, what do you see?”

Jeff frowned. “I see the same exact thing but in the daytime. There’s Tracy, coming out of the hotel. And there’s her lover.”

“Ah, ah, ah.” Victor interrupted him. “Look again. What makes you think that’s her lover?”

“Well, they’re . . . She kisses him. Right there,” said Jeff.

“On the cheek,” said Victor. “How many women do you kiss on the cheek every day? And then what happens?” He fast-forwarded the footage in slow motion. “They embrace. A friendly hug. They part ways. Shall I tell you what that looks like to me?”

“What?” Jeff’s mouth felt dry.

“It looks like two friends having lunch.”

Jeff watched the footage again, slowly.

“It’s the oldest trick in the book, and one of the best,” said Victor. “I’ve used it in countless divorce cases. A man and a woman coming out of a hotel at two A.M. and embracing, after the woman’s told her husband she’s spending the night three hundred miles away? That’s an affair. But edit the circumstances just a little, and what have you got?”

Jeff’s voice was a whisper. “Nothing.”

Victor Litchenko nodded. “Exactly. Nothing at all.”

THE DESK CLERK AT the British Museum smiled warmly.

“Mr. Stevens! Welcome back.”

Jeff hurried past her up to his office and pulled open the door.

His desk had been dusted but otherwise was exactly as he’d left it the day he stormed out. The day he last saw Tracy.

Rebecca’s desk was empty.

All her things were gone.

IT TOOK HIM TWENTY minutes to reach Rebecca’s building. Ignoring the bell to her flat—no warnings, not this time—Jeff pulled a hairpin out of his jacket pocket and expertly picked the lock.