The first thing that came back was the data from Mustang World. The list of new subscribers Hauck had asked for.

Back at home, he glanced over the long list of names. One thousand six hundred and seventy-five of them. Several pages long. It was organized by mailing zip code, starting with Alabama. Mustang enthusiasts from every part of the globe.

From the bank trail he’d found at Dietz’s, it seemed a valid assumption Charles might be in the Caribbean or Central America. Karen told him they’d sailed around there. The bank manager on St. Kitts had told Hauck someone else had been looking for Charles. He’d also have to have access to these banks at some point.

But as he flipped through the long list, Hauck realized Charles could be anywhere. If he was even in here…

Slowly, he started to scan through.

THE NEXT THING that he got was a call from Joe Velko.

The Joint Inter-Agency Task Force agent caught Hauck on a Saturday morning just as he had put on a batch of pancakes for Jessie, who was up with him that weekend. When she asked about the red marks on his neck and the stiffness in his gait, Hauck told her he’d slipped on the boat.

“I pulled up some hits for you on that search,” Joe informed him. “Nothing great. I’ll fax it out to you if you want.”

Hauck went over to his desk. He sat in his shorts and T-shirt, holding a spatula as twelve pages of data came rolling in.

“Listen,” Joe told him, “no promises. Generally we might get a thousand positive hits for any one that could actually lead somewhere—and that means merely something we can pass along to an analyst’s desk. We call any correlations to key input ‘alerts’ and rank them by magnitude. From low to moderate to high. Most classify in the lower bracket. I’ve spared you most of the boilerplate and methodology. Why don’t you flip over to the third page?”

Hauck picked up a pen and found the spot. There was a shadowed box with the heading “Search AF12987543. ALERT.”

Joe explained, “These are random hits from some online newsletter the computer picked up. From something called the Carlyle Antique Car Auction in Pennsylvania.” He chuckled. “Real cloak-and-dagger stuff, Ty. You see how it says, ‘1966 Emberglow Mustang. Condition: Excellent. Low Mileage, 81.5. Shines! Frank Bottomly, Westport, Ct.’”

“I see it.”

“The computer picked up the car and the connection to Connecticut. This communication took place last year—basically just someone making a random query into buying one. You can see the program assigned a rating of LOW against it. There’s a bunch of other stuff like that. Idle chatter. You can go on.”

Hauck flipped through the next few pages. Several e-mails. The program was monitoring private interactions. Tons of back-and-forth chatter on classic-car sites, blogs, eBay, Yahoo.com. Whatever it picked up using the reference points Hauck had provided. A few hits on the Web site of the Concours d’Elegance in Greenwich. All were assessed as LOW. There was even a rock group in Texas called Ember Glow that opened for the singer Kinky Friedman. The priority against that hit was labeled “ZERO.”

There were twelve whole pages of this. One e-mail was literally a guy talking about a girl named Amber, with the comment, “She glows like an angel.”

No Charles Friedman. Nothing from the Caribbean.

Hauck felt frustrated. Nothing to add to the list from Mustang World.

“Dad?” An acrid smell penetrated Hauck’s nostrils. Jessie was standing by the stove in the open kitchen, her pancakes going up in smoke.

“Oh shit! Joe, hold on.”

Hauck ran back into the open kitchen and flipped the black pancakes off the skillet and onto a plate. His daughter’s nose turned up in disappointment. “Thanks.”

“I’ll make more.”

“Emergency?” Joe inquired on the line.

“Yeah, a thirteen-year-old emergency. Dad screwed up breakfast.”

“That takes precedence. Look, go through it. It’s only a first pass. I just wanted you to know I was on it. I’ll call if anything else comes in.”

“Appreciate it, Joe.”