Mortal Faults by Michael Prescott Read Free Book Online

tools supplied the woman’s Social Security number, date of birth, and credit history.
    She’d been at her current address for a little more than a year. Before that, she’d lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, for seven years. She’d bought the Chevy Malibu in Florida eight years ago. Her credit card accounts had been opened eight years ago also. Her driver’s license had been issued in Florida at the same time.
    Before that—nothing. There was a prior address on file with some credit agencies, but when Abby ran a search, it didn’t check out. The address was real, but no Andrea Lowry, or Andrea anybody, had ever resided there.
    Phony background information, and an identity that had appeared out of nowhere, fully formed. It looked as if somebody had reinvented herself.
    Had she been Rose Moran before she was Andrea Lowry? And if so, why make the switch?
    There were many imaginable reasons for a change of ID. Andrea could be on the run from someone. Ex-boyfriend, abusive husband, even a stalker of her own. Or she might be hiding from the law.
    There was another possibility. Witness protection. Andrea could have testified against somebody, then gone into hiding with the government’s help. Maybe her identity had been created by the feds, who had moved her to Florida. Then for reasons of her own she had come west.
    Hard theory to test, though. If Andrea had been an L.A. resident, Abby could have used one of her contacts in the LAPD to check her out. But the town of San Fernando had its own police department, and Abby had no contacts there.
    Anyway, if Andrea was in witness protection, it wouldn’t be in the bailiwick of local law enforcement. It was a federal program.
    Well, she knew a fed. Hadn’t kept in touch over the past year and a half, but now seemed like a good time to catch up.
    Abby found the number in her address book, then called the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Denver office.
    The time was eleven p.m. in L.A., midnight in Denver. A little late for a phone call, but what the hell. Tess would be glad to hear from her.
    Sure she would.

 
     
     
    5
     
    It was like riding a wave, a swell of motion that expanded into a long curling comber arching upward, fighting free of gravity until it hit the shore and broke apart in a crash of spangled fragments, slivers of light.
    “Oh, my God,” Tess said. “My God.”
    On top of her, Joshua Green smiled in the darkness. “Sounds like”—his speech was punctuated by hard breathing—“a religious experience.”
    “Definitely.” Her voice was faint and hoarse.
    He straddled her a moment longer, making the moment last, then rolled clear and lay at her side. “Too bad we have to keep this a secret,” he said between gasps. “The women in the office might look at me differently if they heard your reports.”
    “And why would you care how they look at you?”
    “Hey, I’ve got to keep my options open, in case our relationship goes south.”
    Tess punched him on the arm.
    He grunted. “Ow. Watch it, boss.”
    She liked it when he called her “boss.” The old-fashioned term, still in use in the FBI, was accurate, if not appropriate. As special agent in charge of the Denver office, she really was his boss. He reported to her daily in the role of ASAC—assistant special agent in charge. “I work under you,” he not infrequently pointed out.
    She’d been seeing Josh Green for more than a year, but their affair remained secret—or undercover, another of Josh’s cheerful euphemisms. The Bureau disapproved of sexual relationships between agents of different rank, especially when one agent was the other’s immediate subordinate. They could both be disciplined if they were found out. But clandestine activity was what feds were supposed to be good at, and besides, the lure of the forbidden added an extra zing to their liaisons.
    “Someday your sense of humor is going to land you in trouble,” she warned.
    “It already did. That punch
hurt
.”
    She