Free Lilith: a novel by Edward Trimnell Page A

questions about the South Florida city if asked.
    Finally, Don needed a last name: Morris. This was generic, but not patently fake generic, like the proverbial Smith, as in John Smith or Jane Smith. In all of the online people directories, there were multiple Don Morrises in the Cincinnati area—too many to be casually tracked down and verified by Lilith.
    It was not a full-proof alias, of course. Without a corroborating driver’s license and other official documentation, Don Morris could not even obtain a local library card. And the alias could never stand up to any level of professional vetting.
    But it would probably not come to that. Lilith, in her own alias as an honest woman engaged in online dating, would be bound by the protocols of that world. If Lilith questioned her targets like a potential employer or a representative of officialdom would, she would scare away her victims.
    It was a safe bet that Lilith would be aware of this risk, and would not take such a chance. She would not overplay the role of interrogator, so as not to alarm the men she planned to eventually kill.
     
     
    “Okay,” Dave said. “Check it out.”
    Alan and Maribel were gathered around Dave’s computer, within the cramped space of his cubicle. Seated, Dave launched a view of the completed profile in Internet Explorer.
    “Hi, my name is Don,” Dave read. “I’m 37 years old, and I enjoy dining out, movies, and attending professional sports events. My work involves computers. I’d like to meet a lady between the ages of 27 and 38, who enjoys good conversation, going out, and taking walks.”
    “It’s a little lame,” Maribel said tentatively. “I mean— Don sounds a little lame. Not you , Dave.”
    “All dating profiles are lame,” Dave said.
    “I don’t read that many of them,” Maribel replied.
    Flustered, Dave was about to respond when Alan broke in.
    “A little bit lame is okay. Lilith preys on the lame. This is good work, Dave. Now you need to spend some time online, on these sites, posing as Don. If Lilith is out there, I believe that ‘Don’ will draw her in.”
     

13.
     
    Later that evening, in a restaurant not far from the home where Robert Billings had been shot, thirty-two-year-old Jessica Knox met Mark Quinn for the first time.
    Like Robert Billings, Mark Quinn was in his mid-thirties. Also like Robert Billings, Jessica had been able to easily peg Quinn as an early middle-aged man whose romantic life ordinarily ranged from lackluster to nonexistent. Quinn was tall and prematurely balding. He was also awkward and fidgety; and he would have made a horrible first impression if Jessica Knox had been on a real date—which she was of course not.
    Unlike Robert Billings, however, Mark Quinn appraised Jessica—whom he knew only as “Lisa”—with a scrutiny that she found unnerving.
    Robert Billings, like the two men before him, had been so thrilled to receive attention from a woman of Jessica’s caliber that it took little effort to deceive him. Those men had all deceived themselves, to one degree or another.
    But Mark Quinn showed every sign of being different in this regard. It was partly what he said, of course, but it was also a “vibe”.
    “You don’t look like your pictures,” Quinn said, somewhat abruptly. He took a sip from his water glass. “Not exactly. Actually not at all, now that I look at you. I mean, you have dark hair, and the photo on your online profile is of a dark-haired woman about the same age and build, but that is about where the resemblance ends.”
    Mark had been drawn in, originally, by one of the fake profiles that contained the photos of a Ukrainian model—something Travis had pulled off the Internet. Gathering the online photos, setting up the profiles on the dating sites—that initial part of it was Travis’s job.
    There was, certainly, no way that Jessica could risk having her real photos attached to one of those profiles. That would simply be too risky. Although she