“Stop. I’ve heard enough.” Taylor held up his hand. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me. I need to have a word with Agent Bishop. In private.” His words were directed at the two men in the room but his stare never left her.
Six
Jess jumped when the door slammed shut. She tried to cover by rubbing her hands together and pretending she was cold. Loud noises had never bothered her before. She once had the unique ability to tune out almost everything, but recently the filter had malfunctioned and even small noises made her startle. It was nothing serious, probably just lack of sleep.
For an excruciating moment, Director Taylor didn’t speak; he just looked at her. Her skin burned from the scrutiny. She wished he would just say what he needed to say and be done with it.
“You’ve had a distinguished career. No one can deny you’ve been an asset to your team.”
She bit into the side of her mouth while she waited for the but. People liked to soften criticisms with banal compliments, sandwiching them between platitudes to make it more palatable. She hated that. She would take the truth straight every day of the week. She didn’t need it prettied up.
Director Taylor let out a dramatic sigh. “But I wouldn’t have approved your recruitment.”
She did her best to conceal her shock, but she could not control the way her lungs constricted like a vice was squeezing out the air. She tried to speak but she couldn’t. He couldn’t have said something more hurtful if he’d tried. Her job was her life. It was the only thing she was good at, and now it was the only thing she had.
“But I wasn’t the director then, so you were allowed into Quantico. And obviously you did fine there.”
Jess’s head snapped up. “With all due respect, I didn’t just do fine. I excelled.” Now was not the time for false modesty—he was openly questioning her fitness for her job. That was the one area of her life she had no doubt about. She was good at her job and deserved to be here.
“You didn’t ask me why I don’t think you were an appropriate candidate for the FBI.”
She shrugged. “Does it really matter? It seems a moot point now.” An uncomfortable heat prickled her skin. She knew where he was steering the conversation and it was not a place she wanted to go. Ever. That part of her life was dead and buried.
“You’re very smart. Probably one of the brightest agents I’ve known.”
She didn’t thank him or even acknowledge he had spoken because she knew this was the sugar that came before the sting.
Director Taylor leaned forward. “It’s that intelligence that got you here. When I took over and became aware of your particular situation, one question kept coming back to me.” He paused like he wanted her to ask him what it was, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to know his thoughts on this particular subject. When she didn’t speak he said, “I’ve been trying to think of how to phrase this delicately.”
“Don’t. Just say it. I care about the content not your delivery.” The only reason he wanted to think about his phrasing was so he could feel good about himself. He didn’t get to say something offensive and then congratulate himself for saying it well.
“Okay then, I’ll just ask. How did you pass the psych evaluation?”
Jess blinked, unsure of the question.
“Given your childhood…”
The desire to run away overwhelmed her. Her muscles coiled tight, ready to bolt, go anywhere but here. But she wouldn’t. Not today. “Obviously I have more fortitude than you give me credit for.”
“Fortitude? Or was it your intelligence? Was it simply you knew how to answer the questions?”
She forced the muscles in her face to be completely impassive so she wouldn’t give anything away. He was merely guessing. There was no way he knew anything. She had never told anyone that she had gamed the system by studying every psychometric measurement known. It wasn’t difficult. She’d spent her entire childhood in the company of mental health professionals. She knew what they wanted to hear. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“One of our psychologists did raise questions about you though, didn’t he?”
Her back straightened. “My appointments with Dr. Cameron are confidential.”
“But the results of the assessment aren’t.”
She had no response. Dr. Cameron was the first therapist to see through her shit, or at least the first to call her on it.
“Can I be frank with you?” he asked.
“Was that you holding back before?”
His mouth twitched into a quick smile. “Jeanie Gilbert speaks very highly of you. She’s why you have a career. She championed your appointment. She saw something in you.”
Jess’s chest tightened. She didn’t know that Jeanie had been the one who went to bat for her in the beginning. Maybe on some level she’d known because her entire career she’d looked up to Jeanie, emulated her, did her best to make her proud.
“I trust her implicitly and she trusts you. Despite my reservations, I’m going to put you in charge of this investigation. I’ll have the current stipulations for your return waived. I hope you don’t let her down.”
Seven
Jess took the lid off the bottle of ibuprofen and swallowed the last two tablets without water. Luckily, she had a pharmacy’s worth of the small white pills in her bottom drawer because she wouldn’t make it through the day if she missed a dose. She glanced up to see Special Agent Alex Chan enter the conference room, a brown paper bag in one hand and a Styrofoam cup from the Coffee Kiosk in the other. “I heard you convinced the boss you weren’t really crazy after all. Kudos on faking sanity,” he said as he handed her the cup.
She accepted the coffee and took off the lid to let it cool down. “Good to see you too,” she admitted. The insult was probably the most heartfelt thing he would say all day. Chan was a jerk and a womanizer but she had missed him, because familiarity made him her jerk. She got him, that the jibe was his way of saying he was sorry about what had happened with Lindsay and he wanted everything to be okay again. Normal people would use those words but she preferred Chan’s way because she didn’t do normal-people emotion either.
“Here, I got you this too.” He handed her the bag. “It’s lemon-poppyseed. Tart like you.”
She smiled. Coffee and a muffin—he must have really missed her.
“So, I heard you really pissed off a couple of cyber agents this morning,” he said.
She shrugged. “Pissing people off is kind of my specialty.” She would ask how he had heard but she knew Chan was a gossip magnet; he always had his ear to the ground for bitch intel. She might have stepped on some toes but she wasn’t about to apologize for it because the suicide game deserved an entire team devoted to it, not just two cyber agents running around trying to clean up the mess afterwards. This wasn’t a game of whack-a-mole. These were kids’ lives.
She glanced up when her analyst Tina Flowers walked in. David Milligan and Jamison Briggs followed a few steps behind. Other than Jamison, she had not seen any of them since Lindsay’s funeral. Her breath caught in her throat as a tsunami of grief hit her when she realized again that Lindsay was really gone. She could almost ignore it before, pretend she was just away on vacation somewhere, but seeing the rest of her team here and not having Lindsay just down the hall ready to chat and support her made it all too real.
Tina had texted and called, but Jess had always had an excuse not to go out. She didn’t want to be around people or try to feel better, and she really didn’t want to have to make believe that things were returning to normal for her because they weren’t. They never would.
Tina crossed the room and threw her arms around Jess. “Welcome back.”
Jess froze. She didn’t like to hug; she hated it, in fact. She hated all physical contact outside of sex. That is what she had always said, and Lindsay had respected that boundary. But she regretted it now, not hugging Lindsay when she had the chance, so she stood perfectly still and allowed Tina to embrace her even
though having someone touch her made her skin burn with anxious heat.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” Tina whispered as she pulled back. Unshed tears made her green eyes sparkle like polished marbles.
“Thanks,” Jess said. “Me too.”
Jess waited for everyone to take their seats before she started. “Thank you all for clearing your schedules. I know you have been working a strangler case while I was away but we have been reassigned and I want to get you briefed as soon as possible so we can get ahead of this.”
“Aren’t we going to wait for Jeanie?” Milligan asked. His mousy-brown hair had been cut recently. The short cut looked tidy but unfortunately his wardrobe kept him from ever looking entirely put together. He was wearing his blue silk tie with the marinara sauce stain on it. All of his clothes had a hole or stain on them somewhere, all small blemishes dotted around the fabric. She would die of shock if he ever turned up without pizza or sauce or baby formula somewhere on his person.
“Unfortunately, Jeanie is not able to work with us on this case because there is a conflict of interest.”
“What?” Milligan’s face contorted in confusion.
Jess stood up and handed out copies of the packet she had been given by Agent Smart. She had been allowed to make copies for her team only after she had sworn that they would not leave the building. “This is a copy of the report on our new case. As you can see it is classified and you are not allowed to take the report out of this room. It must be given back to me at the end of every meeting. I will keep them locked in my office if you need to reference them at any point. And it should go without saying, but you are not to discuss the case with the media or online—not with anyone, for that matter. This is strictly confidential.”
“Why so cloak and dagger?” Chan asked as he flipped open the first page.
“Just read it.” It was easier than trying to encapsulate everything she had learned in the last twelve hours. She glanced around the room, watching as the expressions on her colleagues’ faces changed from confusion to horror as they read. She looked down and studied the scar on her hand, every mottled shade of purple, every jagged turn, as she waited for everyone to finish reading the report.
Chan’s head snapped up. “Is this for real?”
“Yeah.” Jess nodded. “Twelve kids have died so far. We don’t know how many more are playing.”
“Oh my goodness.” Tina shivered. “I need to call my brother and warn him to keep his kids off the internet. This is scary stuff.”
“No, you can’t tell anyone about this. We need to keep this under wraps. We don’t want copycats. And we don’t want to draw attention to this. There are a lot of vulnerable kids out there who could be sucked in. We just need to find the curator and shut this down before anyone else dies.”
“I don’t get it.” Milligan shook his head. “Why do the kids keep playing? I get why they interacted with the curator at the beginning—kids are dumb and curious and it seems innocuous to chat with people online—but why did they keep interacting after it started to get weird? I would have bailed the second someone asked me to cut myself.”
“Would you really have?” Jamison asked. His tone was neutral but the question was pointed.
“Yes. I’m not going to self-mutilate because some creep on the internet says to, even if he does threaten me or my family. That’s a crock.”
Jamison closed the report. “People do all sorts of messed-up things when people in a position of power tell them to. History is littered with examples of decent folk just doing what they were told.”
“But those people were being given orders by real-life people, and there were actual consequences for not following orders,” Milligan said.
“There were consequences for these kids, at least perceived ones. They thought their families were at risk. The psychology of power dynamics is complicated. People are programmed to follow directions from authority figures. We tell children from birth to do what they’re told. Society would break down if we didn’t. Following rules is a good thing but people in power can exploit it. Did you ever read the experiment where people administered electric shocks to other people because they had been instructed to do it by a professor? Most of the participants in the experiment showed clear distress and didn’t want to keep administering shocks, especially after they heard the screams of the ones being tortured, but they kept going because they didn’t know they could stop. People listen to authority.”
“That’s just messed-up,” Milligan said.
“Yeah, it is, but we are all susceptible to it,” Jamison said.
“I still don’t see how you could force anyone into committing suicide who didn’t want to do it.”
Jess stepped in. “These kids were predisposed to mental health issues. Most demonstrated suicidal ideation, but even if they hadn’t, the curator still had a fighting chance of getting them to commit suicide based solely on the mind-control techniques he employed. This is calculated and very well-thought-out.” She hated that she sounded like she was praising the monster behind this, but there was no denying the game was expertly thought-out. The mind behind this was as brilliant as it was evil.
Milligan shook his head, clearly not convinced. “But how is this a murder investigation? They are killing themselves. No one is actually forcing them.”
“Do you remember the Stanford Prison Experiment? I’ve never seen a study that more aptly demonstrates the power of situations and authority. It showed that we all have the propensity for evil and insanity. It’s all about the situations we are put in along the way. Going into the experiment, the participants knew it was not real and they could leave at any time. They were not really arrested and held against their will. Hell, they were even paid to participate, but people still got caught up in it and forgot they had the choice to leave. It affected both the subjects playing wardens and the ones playing inmates. It stopped being make-believe for them within hours. Almost immediately the wardens began to abuse their power and the inmates took it because they thought they had to. The first mental breakdown happened at the thirty-six-hour mark. The poor guy forgot he had the agency to leave. In less than two days, he was a broken man. Now put that dynamic on a vulnerable teenager and add in mind control and threats to their families. Perceived threats are real threats. There is no longer choice; that’s why it’s murder.”
Milligan gave a single nod.
“You said Jeanie has a conflict of interest,” Chan reminded her. “I don’t see that in here. Why can’t she work this case?”
Jess took a deep breath. “Another victim was discovered last night. There hasn’t been time to update the report. His name is Levi Smith. He was a seventeen-year-old senior at Gracemount Academy and he was Jeanie’s nephew. That is why she is not allowed to investigate the case.”
Milligan’s eyes widened. “Shit.”
“Yeah, shit is right,” Jess agreed. “Director Taylor has authorized me to lead the team on this, and we are going to put the fact that we know a member of the victim’s family to the side and investigate this the way we would any other crime. Jeanie will be kept in the loop in the same capacity as any other family member, but she will not be involved in the investigation and we are not to share information with her that could threaten the case once it goes to trial. Remember there is no use catching bad guys if we can’t put them away.” The mantra had been drilled into her at Quantico and it was always in the forefront of her mind. Doing things by the book was paramount to an investigation if they wanted to ensure a successful prosecution.
Jess glanced around the room. “Our primary objective is containment. Director Taylor was very specific about that. If nothing else, we keep any more kids from dying and we keep it out of the press. We need to find out as much as we can about this game if we’re going to get ahead of it. I have Levi’s laptop. Hopefully you can pull something off this.” She slid the computer across to Tina. “I don’t have the password but I can try to find out. Two cyber agents have bee
n working this case for nearly six months trying to clamp down. Chan and Milligan, I have scheduled you and Tina to meet with them to get you all up to speed.”
It wasn’t until Jamison’s eyes locked on hers that she realized what she had said. She had partnered Chan and Milligan, leaving her to work with Jamison. Everyone’s stares trained hard on her. Even Tina looked shocked. Heat spread over her chest and up her cheeks. She had not been partnered with Jamison since before she shot him. They had barely even spoken.
Her pulse spiked as mortification roiled through her. She had no business pairing herself with Jamison. She could not ask him to work with her when her actions had nearly killed him. She opened her mouth to correct herself but slammed it shut before she could speak. Changing her mind would only make her look weak and indecisive. For this case, she was the team leader. She needed to act like it. If Jamison objected to the pairing, she would assign him to work with Milligan, but if he was prepared to ignore their history, so was she.
Jamison stared at her, studying her, his eyes narrowed in confusion. The hairs on her neck stood on end. She willed him to say something and give her an out but he didn’t. She couldn’t read him at all. In an instant, his face was impassive again, impossible to read. He was a consummate professional. Any ill will or misgiving he had would be pushed down. Nothing got in the way of a case for him. She had always admired that.
Catch Your Death Page 5