Free Cherry Bomb by J. A. Konrath

uses a search engine to find her next victim. First the name. Then the town. It takes less than three minutes to get a phone number, and another two minutes to find the address. Scary how easy it is to find someone , Alex muses. People should pay closer attention to protecting their privacy.
    The drive will take a few hours. Alex decides to wait until morning before leaving. She can’t go back to the Old Stone Inn, because her bed is currently occupied. She calls the cell phone using the computer program, and a window opens, showing her a live feed of Lance. The picture isn’t very good—even with all the lights on, the room is pretty dim. The camera phone is taped up to the wall, offering a wide angle. She presses some buttons, zooms in on Lance’s chest.
    He’s asleep. Or unconscious. The burns have stopped bleeding, begun to scab over. It makes the symbols easier to see. She saves a picture of her laptop screen as a JPEG, crops it in Photoshop, and uploads it to her cell, viewing it from various angles, and judging it clue-worthy.
    It’s all Greek to me, Alex thinks.
    Jack will get a copy later to night.
    Alex hits the hibernate key, blanking out her screen, and lets her eyes prowl around.
    The bookstore is one of those large chains, ten times bigger than the library in the town where she grew up. Alex’s father hated libraries. Believed that people only needed one book, the Bible, and that all others led to Satan. But according to Father, pretty much everything led to Satan. He blamed the dev il for his appetites. He should have learned to embrace them. Indulge them without remorse.
    Like she does.
    Alex yawns, stretches out her long legs, and leans back in the chair to scope out women.
    One walks by, wiggling her hips, getting in line for coffee. The right build. Right age. She orders something called chai tea. Alex doesn’t know what that is. It would be a good thing to use as a way of introduction. But when Alex stands she notices how short the woman is, and doesn’t bother. She sits back down.
    Another woman, tall enough, but too young. Some men, whom Alex barely glances at. Then, a brunette. Age and height fine. A big ass, but people can lose weight. Alex gets into line behind her.
    The woman orders a large vanilla latte and a pecan Danish, neither of which will help narrow her gluteus maximus.
    “Are the Danish good here?”
    The woman glances over her shoulder.
    Alex doesn’t smile behind the veil. She knows how it contorts her face, makes her look even more freakish. It’s a definite handicap. Smiles disarm people. Taking a smile away from a recreational killer is like taking a pinky from a major league pitcher.
    “They’re pretty good. Not as good as the coffee place on Prospect.”
    The woman faces the cashier again. She’s either in a hurry, not wanting to chat, or Alex’s veil has set off subconscious warning bells. Strangers aren’t to be trusted. People who hide their face are hiding something else.
    Alex moves in a little closer, watches as the woman digs into her purse for a wallet. Though her clothes are decent, expensive, her handbag looks more like a backpack than an accessory. Alex catches glimpses of a tissue pack, some children’s Tylenol, and a large key ring attached to a Lucite-encased family photo.
    No good. Alex returns to her table, and is surprised to find a little girl standing next to it. She’s blond, perhaps eight years old, and staring at Alex’s laptop screen.
    “Is that man hurt?”
    She points at the live feed of the hotel room. Lance has woken up, and he’s thrashing around on the bed like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. The child must have pressed a key, brought the computer back from hibernation mode.
    Alex closes the cover, then looks around to make sure no one else saw anything.
    “It’s a movie. He’s pretending to be hurt.”
    “My favorite movie is Toy Story . Have you seen Toy Story ? It’s about a cowboy named Woody, who is really named Tom Hanks.