The Dying Breath: A Forensic Mystery

Justin. Justin.
    She tried to cry out her father’s name, but her voice seemed to gurgle in her throat. “Dad.” It was barely a whisper.
    Once, and then again, she tried with all the force she could muster to push air between her lips but the word came out in a faint croak. She had to concentrate until her mouth would work again. “Dad. Dad! ” she cried, thankful her body was finally responding, grateful that help was going to come.
    “Cammie!” her father cried. “Cammie—what is it?”
    “I need you!”
    Under the computer’s glare she listened to the footsteps running toward her. “Hurry,” she cried with a final strangled sob. “Please hurry!”
    The door to her room flew open and her father ran to her, his face twisted in panic. “What is it, Cammie? What’s wrong? Good Lord, what are you doing up in the middle of the night? You had me scared to death!”
    With a shaking finger, she pointed to her screen.
    He walked close enough to read and then he stopped. Understanding dawned as he looked at the screen. In the computer’s half-light his skin appeared gray, his hair a tousled mat of white, his pajamas, striped cotton, rumpled from sleep. She could see her father blanch as his eyes traced the words written on the screen, his mouth open, his muscles tense as horror registered on his face. “Where is your phone?” he asked her through stiff lips.
    “I don’t have it. The sheriff took it today when—”
    “Ma!” he bellowed. “Bring me a phone. I’m in Cammie’s room and I need it. Now !”
    She could hear her grandmother’s feet thumping loudly as they ran for the cordless phone kept on a table at the end of the hall. “I’m coming, Patrick. What’s happened?”
    Part of Mammaw’s red and white flannel nightgown was balled up in one hand so that she could run without tripping. Patrick took the phone Mammaw thrust at him and hit the numbers as though he would punch them right through the handset.
    “John?” her father cried. “Sorry to wake you but he’s after my daughter again. Yes, Kyle O’Neil. I need you here now—bring the FBI and the CBI and the CIA and any other gun you’ve got. I want an army!”
    A pause, and then the ice blue eyes settled on Cameryn’s. As he spoke, Patrick’s face contorted: panic, fear, pain, anger—one emotion replacing the other, each more intense than the last. “Yes.” His nod was sharp. “Yes—on her computer. He’s crazy, John. He’s crazy and he’s watching.” His voice broke as he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his forefinger. “And wake up the deputy, too. It’s not just Cammie anymore that he wants. Now he’s got Justin in his sights.”

Chapter Eight

    HER GRANDMOTHER MUST be in her heaven, Cameryn thought. Bustling about the Mahoney home with coffee, Mammaw hovered and fussed over the three men and the lone woman crowded inside Cameryn’s small bedroom along with Cameryn and her father. Cameryn, who had changed into sweats, clutched Rags to her chest as she leaned cross-legged against her headboard. Now that she had finished answering their questions she could watch the people huddle around her computer, their brows furrowed as they read and reread Kyle’s e-mails. For now they were letting her be.
    “. . . check out the IRC and follow the IP address . . .”
    “. . . hunt down that password . . . maybe contact DHS . . .”
    The window had been cracked so that a stream of cool air filtered into her increasingly stuffy room. Through a gap in the curtains, she watched the full moon. Sallow as wax, it balanced on the mountain’s tip like a ball on the nose of a seal. Although she had barely slept she was too full of adrenaline to feel tired, and so, alert, her thoughts bounced from one conversation to another. It was strange, this odd sense of apartness. People talked about her, not to her—even Justin stood at a distance, consumed with questions about cyber tracking. She didn’t mind. The one person whom she’d been most anxious to see was here, and as she watched him stare at the screen with his fierce, unyielding concentration, she felt—not calm, but a kind of acceptance. What mattered most had already happened. Justin was safe. That fact allowed her to breathe again.
    “. . . what I figured, he got an IP that’s nontraceable,” Justin said through clenched teeth. “This punk knows what he’s doing.” His fists tightened and released with every word, as though he were siphoning