Read Online Dangerous Games by Michael Prescott - Free Book Online Page A

would require hands-on participation. I’m willing, but I’m not sure they are.”
    “Well, good luck with that. Now—”
    “My point is, I don’t lounge around at poolside sipping drinks and chatting on the phone.”
    “Your personal life is really none of my business.” Tess figured there had been enough small talk. “Now, Ms. Grant…” She paused, expecting to hear the words, Call me Madeleine . She didn’t. “I’m afraid I’m not entirely clear on what happened to you last year.”
    “I was being stalked.”
    Tess nodded. “By William Kolb.”
    “Kolb, yes.” She spoke the name with distaste.
    “And how did this start?”
    “It started when he pulled me over. For running a red light, he said, though I still maintain it was amber.”
    “You’re saying Kolb was a police officer?”
    “LAPD, that’s correct. He worked out of the West Los Angeles station. He was a patrolman. Six years’ experience. He’s thirty—no, thirty-one years old.”
    “So he wrote you a ticket….”
    “Which I paid, of course, though under protest, because as I said, the light was amber. It’s the only ticket I’ve received in my life, by the way.”
    Tess waited.
    “I thought, naturally, that the incident was behind me. Didn’t think anything more about it. Didn’t even connect it with the e-mails at first.”
    “The e-mails?”
    “I started getting them three weeks later. Offensive, suggestive messages. Very personal. Not just junk mail—they were directed specifically at me. Descriptions of my appearance, my home, my car. Familiarity with my daily routine. And…sexual innuendo.”
    “They were anonymous?”
    “Of course. I hired someone to trace them for me, and he said they had been sent through an anonymizer, which removed all the…What’s the term?”
    “Routing information.”
    “Yes. I suppose you have to know these things.”
    “Believe me, what I don’t know about computers fills many books.”
    “At least you know something . The police”—her hands rose and fell in a gesture of futility—“were useless.”
    “When did you bring in the police?”
    “Immediately after the messages started. It was obvious this person was spying on me, following me. He would say he’d seen me at a certain store or on a certain street.”
    “And the police…?”
    “Did nothing. Absolutely nothing. They said if the e-mails were untraceable, there was nothing they could do. I suggested having plainclothes officers place me under surveillance. They might catch sight of whoever was following me. They said they didn’t have the resources to do that.”
    “It must have been frustrating. And frightening.”
    “No, I wasn’t frightened. I was angry. I wanted to tell this person to come out of hiding and show himself. I would have, if I’d been able to reply to his messages, but of course that was impossible, since there was no return address.”
    “I don’t think it would have been advisable, anyway.”
    “Now you sound like the police. Don’t antagonize him. Don’t provoke him. Just live in fear. I’m not so easily intimidated. I began going through my records to see if I could determine who might be harassing me. When I came to the notation in my checkbook about the traffic ticket, I thought of Officer Kolb.”
    “Why him, particularly?”
    “He’d been rude to me. Hostile. Sarcastic and swaggering. A strutting martinet, all puffed up with authority. When I didn’t grovel and cower, he became more offensive. He seemed to take it personally—that he couldn’t make me back down.”
    “Even so, there was no direct link….”
    “It was a feeling, that’s all. The e-mails began three weeks after the traffic stop. And he looked at my license and registration, so he knew where I lived.”
    “Not your e-mail address.”
    “Anybody can obtain that information over the Internet. You know that.”
    “You’re right. But it would have been more direct for him to call you.”
    “Calls can be