her hand in his, but she tugged it away, frowning at him.
In spite of that frown, the way her face flushed the moment he’d touched her was telling. Ever since she’d seen him at the construction site yesterday without his shirt on, she flustered easily around him. It was as if seeing his bare chest had finally made her notice that he was a man instead of the boy she’d once accused him of being. Maybe he should have taken off his shirt in front of her years ago.
It was nice to have the tables turned and have her just as affected by him as he was by her. And if he ruthlessly took advantage of their mutual attraction to throw her off-kilter, well, he wouldn’t lose any sleep over that either.
“We’ll go get your car, but there’s something else I want to take care of before we leave. If you don’t mind.” He started down the long hallway.
Tessa hurried to follow him. “Where are we going?”
“My office. Do you have that list of names and postmarks we printed back at the studio?”
She pulled her purse off her shoulder and dug inside. “Your office, huh? I thought you worked out of your house.” She handed him the printout.
“I said I prefer to work from home, not that I always work from home.”
They entered his office, and while he scanned the list into his computer, Tessa studied the paintings on the wall. She paused in front of his favorite painting, and the way her eyes lit up told him she liked it. He decided not to tell her that Madison had given it to him.
He started the special search algorithm on his computer and then uploaded a picture he’d taken at his studio of the little curlicue that appeared on the bottom of each letter. He initiated an image search even though he doubted it would yield anything useful.
“This will take a while, probably won’t be ready until morning. The program will e-mail me when it’s done. Are you hungry? I’ll take you to dinner. My treat.”
“I could eat. What will take a while?”
“The search I initiated. I grouped the data into five geographical areas. The program will search for crimes or deaths of anyone with names matching our list within each area. The program will crawl across the Internet looking for data, load that into a database, then perform the search. It could take hours or days, depending on the amount of data it has to load. It’s a long shot, and this is the first time I’ve used this particular program on a case, so it’s not proven yet. But it’s worth a try.”
“Why do you think your search will yield better results than mine did?”
“The FBI doesn’t use the same search methodology I use. The program I wrote doesn’t search law-enforcement databases. Mine scans local online data stores of newspapers and television station Web sites based on a target geographical range. Anyone within that area who puts their news online will have the information indexed and added to my database. While that’s being loaded, the name will be compared to each article, each story, looking for a match, all within a specific date range governed by the postmarks on the letters.”
“You’re hoping the news would have reported a crime but we wouldn’t have found it by talking to law-enforcement agencies? That seems unlikely.”
“Again, you’re assuming wherever the deaths occurred that those police have the equipment and hookup to make the data searchable by the FBI. That’s only true in larger urban areas and some of the larger rural incorporated areas. Many towns don’t have that kind of sophisticated network, even in this day and age. You’re also assuming the deaths were labeled as suspicious. If the killer masks the deaths as accidents, they’d never be reported by the cops in response to an FBI inquiry.”
“Maybe,” she allowed.
“One thing you can always count on,” he continued, “is that reporters are eager to blast stories about anything bad. So if someone died in any way that was out of the norm, you can count on
In spite of that frown, the way her face flushed the moment he’d touched her was telling. Ever since she’d seen him at the construction site yesterday without his shirt on, she flustered easily around him. It was as if seeing his bare chest had finally made her notice that he was a man instead of the boy she’d once accused him of being. Maybe he should have taken off his shirt in front of her years ago.
It was nice to have the tables turned and have her just as affected by him as he was by her. And if he ruthlessly took advantage of their mutual attraction to throw her off-kilter, well, he wouldn’t lose any sleep over that either.
“We’ll go get your car, but there’s something else I want to take care of before we leave. If you don’t mind.” He started down the long hallway.
Tessa hurried to follow him. “Where are we going?”
“My office. Do you have that list of names and postmarks we printed back at the studio?”
She pulled her purse off her shoulder and dug inside. “Your office, huh? I thought you worked out of your house.” She handed him the printout.
“I said I prefer to work from home, not that I always work from home.”
They entered his office, and while he scanned the list into his computer, Tessa studied the paintings on the wall. She paused in front of his favorite painting, and the way her eyes lit up told him she liked it. He decided not to tell her that Madison had given it to him.
He started the special search algorithm on his computer and then uploaded a picture he’d taken at his studio of the little curlicue that appeared on the bottom of each letter. He initiated an image search even though he doubted it would yield anything useful.
“This will take a while, probably won’t be ready until morning. The program will e-mail me when it’s done. Are you hungry? I’ll take you to dinner. My treat.”
“I could eat. What will take a while?”
“The search I initiated. I grouped the data into five geographical areas. The program will search for crimes or deaths of anyone with names matching our list within each area. The program will crawl across the Internet looking for data, load that into a database, then perform the search. It could take hours or days, depending on the amount of data it has to load. It’s a long shot, and this is the first time I’ve used this particular program on a case, so it’s not proven yet. But it’s worth a try.”
“Why do you think your search will yield better results than mine did?”
“The FBI doesn’t use the same search methodology I use. The program I wrote doesn’t search law-enforcement databases. Mine scans local online data stores of newspapers and television station Web sites based on a target geographical range. Anyone within that area who puts their news online will have the information indexed and added to my database. While that’s being loaded, the name will be compared to each article, each story, looking for a match, all within a specific date range governed by the postmarks on the letters.”
“You’re hoping the news would have reported a crime but we wouldn’t have found it by talking to law-enforcement agencies? That seems unlikely.”
“Again, you’re assuming wherever the deaths occurred that those police have the equipment and hookup to make the data searchable by the FBI. That’s only true in larger urban areas and some of the larger rural incorporated areas. Many towns don’t have that kind of sophisticated network, even in this day and age. You’re also assuming the deaths were labeled as suspicious. If the killer masks the deaths as accidents, they’d never be reported by the cops in response to an FBI inquiry.”
“Maybe,” she allowed.
“One thing you can always count on,” he continued, “is that reporters are eager to blast stories about anything bad. So if someone died in any way that was out of the norm, you can count on
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