An alarm bell goes off in my head.

She keeps talking, excited to confide. “He’s always busy with football practice and school. But he finds the time to talk to me. Which is funny, because at church camp he kind of ignored me. Didn’t really notice I was there. Then he e-mailed me afterward and said he was kind of shy. Which I can understand.”

He ignored her in person. I take a slow breath. “Rosa, how did you know it was him? Silly question, I know.”

Rosa frowns. “Oh, like how did I know it wasn’t one of his friends pulling a prank? We talk on Skype. He’s got a crappy Internet connection so it drops out a lot, which is a pain.”

She’s only seen him from video conferencing. We already saw how the Warlock can fake that with the added cover of a bad connection.

Thanks to Katya, we know the Warlock likes to lure his victims from afar. He kept up a fake interaction with Swanson’s wife to keep her convinced her husband was still alive. We still don’t know how he met Claire or Denise. They might have gone willingly with him after they met online or might have thought they were meeting up with someone they already knew and he showed up instead.

I’ve met friends for drinks a hundred times based on text messages. Anyone with ten dollars and access to the Internet can send a spoof text from a number you know. We’re so much more vulnerable than we realize, but we’re so worried about credit card thieves and eBay scammers that the idea of a serial killer using this technology against us is new. It’s something I’m afraid we’re seeing more of.

The Warlock is a spider at the center of a huge online web of deceit, pretending to be dozens of different personas. It’s a chilling thought.

How many of our friends are people we just know from online communication? It doesn’t take a freak like Damian to do this digitally.

“Rosa, what did you tell him in the bathroom? Did you mention us? It’s okay to tell me. We just need to know. We need to make sure he’ll be okay too.”

Rosa’s eyes widen. “What does he have to do with this?”

“Nothing, I’m sure. Did you mention us?”

“Yes. I know I’m not supposed to, but he’s a hundred miles away and has nothing to do with this. And I was supposed to call him anyways about . . .”

“About what, Rosa?”

She shakes her head.

“Rosa. We need to know.”

“I was going to go see his football game on Wednesday night. A friend of his was going to drive me.”

Knoll bursts in through the side door. He’s been listening with Johnson. “Rosa, we need your phone now!”

She looks scared as hell. She should be.

55

I LOOK UP at the Texas sun as an FBI helicopter lands in the field next to the motel kicking up a cloud of dust. Knoll and I rush aboard and buckle up.