The nurse rose and walked around the desk. “She is down the hall. I will take you to her room, and then I will page Dr. Kapur, her attending surgeon.” The nurse strode toward Leah Roberts’ room, the parents on her heels.

Angie hovered outside the glass window, watching Leah Roberts’ parents huddle around the bed. She slid her phone from her pocket and dialed Cooper Ellis’ number.

“Detective Ellis.”

“Cooper, it’s Angie. I just got an I.D. on Jane Doe.”

“Let me grab a pen.” He returned to the phone within seconds. “What’s her name?”

“Leah Roberts. Her parents are with her right now.”

“Is she conscious?”

Angie watched Leah’s father lift the ghost woman’s translucent hand and press it against his cheek.

“No. And I spoke to her surgeon. She is still sedated but they hope she will recover consciousness within a few hours.”

“I’ll run a check on her.”

Through the glass window, Leah Robert’s mother touched her daughter’s darkened eyebrows.

In Angie’s experience, three-quarters of the suspects of a crime had relatives who knew something was ‘up’ with their loved one.

But the other twenty-five per cent wore the exact same expression as Leah Roberts’ parents: disbelief.

And a sense of impending doom.

“I’m going to talk to the parents.”

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

9:31 a.m. EST

The south Florida sun poured through the window. Matt half-rose from his desk, and yanked the cord of the blind. The plastic edge bounced against the windowsill, the clatter breaking the stillness of the ripe, humid morning.

He sank back into his chair.

No message yet from WeepingGelsan. The hacktivist was relatively new to the Forum, and clearly a Dr. Who fan. Matt had immediately recognized that the two symbols of the word ‘Angels’ had been reversed to create ‘Gelsan’. The Weeping Angels were one of the Doctor’s more terrifying adversaries. They would strike when you blinked.

This particular Dr. Who fan seemed young, maybe in high school. He would not have been Matt’s first choice to confide his concerns about Leah. But based on Weeping Gelsan’s IP address, he lived in Halifax. And Matt needed to know what the hell was going on there. CNN had reported that a Canadian politician had gunned down an intruder in his parents’ Halifax house. The politician could only be Harry Owen.

And he knew that Aggroboy hadn’t been shot, because he’d already been bragging about the exploit on the Forum.

Matt jumped to his feet and began to pace around the room. Why had AggroBoy lied about Leah’s whereabouts?

Was she dead?

His phone buzzed. He snatched it from the desk. Relief rushed through him when he read the private message: condor this is weepinggelsan

He immediately typed: What happened to Leah? Is she okay?

she was shot in the chest