Constant Risk

by Janie Crouch

  Whitaker looked at his watch as they pulled up in front of the Dallas police station. “That’s going to become very obvious in about twenty-two minutes.”

  As they got out of the car she looked over at Tanner, but he just shrugged. Evidently he didn’t know any more than her. Twenty-two minutes was oddly specific.

  Whitaker signed them in at the front counter of the station and led them past a number of uniformed officers’ desks to the back section of the building, where it was much quieter.

  He opened a door leading out of those offices and everything changed.

  People were buzzing around everywhere. This was obviously command central for the case. Multiple pictures of the two dead women hung on a large bulletin board. Some of them were from when they were alive. The others, definitely more painful to look at, were the bodies in those boxes Whitaker had told them about.

  Dead.

  They kept moving past the pictures into a large conference room. The entire back wall was made out of screens and had a half dozen computer terminals sitting right in front of them. At least ten people were surrounding the terminals.

  Everybody was talking at once, vying to be heard. This was the situation Whitaker wanted her to work in? Even being in the general vicinity of this many strangers already had her cringing.

  Her discomfort didn’t get any better a few seconds later when a gorgeous blonde wearing jeans and a thin sweater—detective badge clipped on her belt—walked over to them.

  “Whit,” the beautiful woman said in, of course, a gorgeous smoky voice to match her perfect face and body. “Glad you’re back. It’s almost time.”

  The woman turned to Bree and Tanner, offering her hand. “Captain Dempsey, Miss Daniels, I’m Penelope Brickman, lead detective on this case. Thanks so much for coming.”

  Tanner shook her hand. “Hope we can help. Please, call me Tanner. Especially since I’m not here in any sort of official capacity.”

  Bree force herself to shake the woman’s hand too. “Bree, please.”

  She was a little bit proud of herself for saying something appropriate rather than shoving all five feet eight inches of the woman’s gorgeousness into a closet far away from Tanner.

  “Did you catch them up?” Penelope asked Whitaker.

  “Mostly. The footage... I figured that was just something they had to see for themselves.”

  Penelope nodded. “Yeah, explaining wouldn’t do much good.”

  “How often does the footage arrive?” Bree asked. “Is it live or prerecorded? I’m assuming it’s been rerouted through multiple channels or you wouldn’t need me here.”

  “I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not any sort of computer expert.” Penelope gave them both a rueful smile. “I can get around and do the basics with computers, but I tend more toward old-fashioned methods of solving crime and police work. Hitting the pavement and talking to people.”

  “I’m the same,” Tanner said. “People tend to give up their secrets a lot more easily—”

  “—than machines.” They both finished together, then smiled.

  Bree barely refrained from rolling her eyes. These two should just go get married and make a bunch of crime-fighting babies together. Babies, of course, who would never deign to touch the keys of a computer.

  A yell at the front of the room caught their attention. The people at the computers were getting more frantic.

  “What’s going on?” Tanner asked.

  “Everybody’s on edge,” Whitaker said. “It’s almost time for the message. Every hour on the hour the bastard sends us some footage.”

  Every hour on the hour. That was the first completely useful bit of information Bree had received.

  Without waiting to hear anything else, Bree walked over to the computers. The people surrounding them were still talking all over each other, arguing about the best way to track the message that was coming in.

  Bree just listened. Nothing coming out of their mouths was particularly complicated in terms of ideas on how to track the killer.

  “Listen, people,” the guy sitting at the main console said. “If we could catch this guy with any of those methods we would’ve damn well done so long before now. If you don’t have something intelligent to say, then stand here quietly.”

  The group grumbled but quieted. Bree might not like how the guy was talking to everyone else but she definitely had to admit he was right. None of the ways they were suggesting were particularly inspiring.

  The guy pointed at Bree. “Who are you?”

  “I’m just observing for the moment.”

  “Great. Another useless person taking up space.”

  Bree ignored him. She might be pretty hesitant when it came to a lot of things—beautiful blondes included—but her confidence in her knowledge of computers was secure. She could probably do more than everyone in this room combined. But she had no need to prove that to anyone.

  Yet.

  “How long do you think it will be this time?” the young woman next to her asked another woman sitting at a console.

  “It was three and a half minutes last time. That was the longest so far. Maybe they will keep getting longer.”

  “But the time before that was only fifteen seconds,” the first responded. “There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to his methods.”

  A large digital clock on the wall beeped loudly and started counting down from thirty. Evidently the killer was punctual enough for them to set a clock to his transmissions.

  Another good piece of information. That meant the footage was being sent on a computerized schedule, not just when the killer felt like it.

  “Look alive, people,” Mean Guy said as he sat down at the main computer terminal. “Remember we’re still running all possible scenarios and solutions. Just because it didn’t work one time doesn’t mean it won’t work this time. Everybody do your job.”

  Sure enough, right as the clock reached zero, every screen on the wall of monitors lit up.

  The picture was just slightly blurry, enough to make it a little hazy. Bree wanted to ask if that was always the case, but didn’t want to interrupt anyone from the jobs they were trying to do. The broadcasting window was limited. She could ask questions later.

  The picture wasn’t so blurry that you couldn’t see what was going on. There was a woman restrained in a long, thin box. It looked almost like a clear coffin. The woman in the box was shown from the neck down. Her head was completely out of the shot. There was nothing distinguishing about the box itself.

  Water was dripping into the box at the woman’s feet in a regular, timed pattern. It had already filled a few inches of the container, but not enough to be very noticeable.

  Something caught the woman’s attention because she immediately began sobbing.

  “Please! Help me please. Can you hear me? Please help me!”

  Bree realized Tanner was next to her when he muttered a curse under his breath.

  Bree’s eyebrows furrowed. “Why does her voice sound funny?” she whispered to him.

  “Bastard is using some sort of voice modulator.”

  That didn’t make any sense to her, but neither did trapping a woman in some sort of coffin and slowly filling it up with water.

  They had exactly twenty-three more seconds of the woman’s hysterical crying before the feed completely cut off.

  Bree looked over at Tanner, who looked as stunned as she felt, then glanced back around her. “I should’ve been watching what they were doing rather than the screen.” She pointed to the dozen people huddled around the multiple computers.

  “It’s hard to look away from something like that.” Tanner reached over and squeezed her elbow. “And from what I understand, you only have to wait another fifty-nine minutes to get your chance and do it all over again. No wonder everyone here is such a mess.”r />
  Not having to wait long was a good thing. Footage coming in once an hour meant more opportunities for them to catch this guy.

  “All right, people, sound off,” Mean Guy said, like some NASA mission control simulation. “Tell me we got something.”

  “IP address was rerouted through multiple VPNs once again.”

  “Jumped to at least one public Wi-Fi, but not the same one as last time, so no triangulation.”

  “Top level was definitely utilizing a proxy server again. Encrypted coding.”

  With every announcement of unsuccessful attempts to home in on the killer, the group became more despondent. Mean Guy got shorter and shorter in his responses.

  The blonde, Penelope, walked to the front of the room. She erased the number twelve from the whiteboard and wrote down thirteen, then turned to the people around her.

  “I know you’re tired. I know you’re frustrated. We’ve been watching this happen for twelve hours now. I know seeing that woman suffering every single hour eats at all of us. But you need to focus. We’ve got less than an hour to have a new way of trying to catch this guy.”

  Mean Guy threw his hands up. “Triangulating his location just isn’t possible. Whichever way we come at him from, he’s already expecting it.”

  “Jeremy...” Penelope started.

  “It’s not impossible.” Bree hadn’t meant to cut off whatever Penelope had planned to tell mean Jeremy, but that had to be said.

  “What?” Jeremy stood up from behind his computer and took a slight step toward Bree, eyes narrowed. She immediately felt Tanner shift a little closer, ready to step in, not that she thought Jeremy was going to hurt her.

  She shrugged. “No offense—it’s not impossible.”

  “Really?” he scoffed. “You’ve been here less than five minutes, saw twenty-three seconds of footage, and now you just know everything?” He turned back to Penelope. “No offense, boss, but this is not the sort of help we need.”

  Bree wasn’t going to be cowed. Not about this. “Impossible is the term regular people use to make themselves feel safer about technology. To hide away from its fullest potential,” she said softly. “And I knew that long before I walked in here today.”

  She’d learned it the hardest way possible when she was just a teenager.

  Jeremy threw up his hands. “You think you can do better than we have? Be my guest.”

  A year ago, unable to read the interpersonal clues or tones, Bree would’ve thought that was an actual legitimate welcome to take over.

  She leaned over toward Tanner. “I don’t think he really meant that as an offer,” she whispered. “I think he feels threatened by me. But I just want to help.”

  Tanner nodded and gave her a small smile. “He’s frustrated. Everyone is. But they do want your help.”

  “Then I need everybody to get out of my way so I can get to work.” She knew others could hear her, but it was the truth.

  Jeremy let out a curse and a laugh.

  Penelope cleared her throat. “People, this is Bree Daniels.”

  There was a slight murmur as her name was recognized.

  “Yes, that Bree Daniels, who was responsible for bringing down Michael Jeter and the rest of the criminals hiding behind Communication For All,” Penelope continued. “I daresay she might have some ideas we haven’t thought of. So let’s give her some room to work.”

  Jeremy walked over to Penelope and began arguing about something, but Bree wasn’t paying any attention. She sat down in the seat Jeremy had vacated and pulled up what she needed on the system. It was time to go to work.

  Nothing was impossible when it came to her and computers.

  Chapter Six

  Tanner walked away from Bree as soon as she sat down in front of the computer system. She wouldn’t be aware of him—wouldn’t be aware of almost anything—while she worked.

  Whitaker caught his eye and motioned him over.

  “Bree wasn’t offended by Jeremy, was she? He’s IT, not a cop, and he’s pretty damn knowledgeable about computers. Dude can be a jerk, but in this case it’s mostly frustration. Like Penelope said, for twelve hours we’ve been watching this poor girl lying in that damned box, terrified. The water’s getting higher.”

  “How long do we have before it’s critical?”

  “In every single piece of footage that’s been sent to us the water has been dripping at the exact same rate. Slightly faster than one drop per second. That means it’s filling up at a rate of about one gallon every three hours.”

  Tanner did some quick math in his head. “So, around two and a half days before she drowns?”

  “Could be closer to only two.”

  Tanner ran a hand over his eyes. “And your friend Shelby? Are you sure this was the same guy? There was no video of her, right?”

  “No, thank God. I’m not sure I could’ve handled it. But the box was the same for her, as well as for the other dead woman. The general consensus right now is that they were some sort of warm-up.”

  “Or escalation,” Tanner said. “Maybe he got bored killing them just for himself, decided to make it into a broadcast sport.”

  Whitaker grimaced. “Yeah, that’s possible too.”

  Over his shoulder he could hear Bree demanding people move so she could work on two different computers at once. A few seconds later he turned around and she had all the different video segments up on the multiple monitors, playing in repeat, some two or more to a screen.

  Even with no sound, it was jarring to watch the woman in the box. Bree stood for a long time, just staring at the monitors, taking it all in.

  Penelope walked over to them and turned to the screens herself. “You guys have any idea what she’s doing? We don’t need her watching the footage—we need her figuring out where it’s coming from.”

  Tanner gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Bree rarely does anything without a purpose. If she’s studying the footage, it’s because she thinks it will help her.”

  Penelope crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. But we’ve got less than forty-five minutes until the next live stream. She needs to be ready.”

  Tanner turned away from the monitor. “Believe me. Bree will be ready. That clock you have running the countdown? She won’t need it. Her brain is already keeping completely accurate track of the time without her even trying.”

  Because that’s how Bree’s brain worked. The things most people had to put conscious effort into, it did automatically.

  Like a computer.

  Penelope nodded. “Good, because like Jeremy said, our team thinks this guy can’t be traced.”

  “If it’s possible, Bree will do it,” Whitaker said.

  “And she’ll do it faster than anyone,” Tanner finished for him.

  Penelope didn’t look convinced, and Tanner couldn’t blame her. Bree was young, not very polished, and most people were going to underestimate her for that.

  “I can’t help with computer stuff, but I’d be happy to be an extra set of eyes and ears for anything else, if you don’t mind my involvement.” Tanner didn’t want to step on any toes. Some departments liked to keep investigations as close to the vest as possible.

  Evidently Penelope wasn’t one of those types of leaders. She nodded. “I’ll take every eye on this we can get. Maybe you’ll see something we’re missing. Because I’m damn tired of sitting here waiting for the top of each hour to come by just for us to be toyed with again.”

  They sat down at the conference table and Whitaker pulled up a link.

  “These are the twelve live streams in the order in which we received them. All in all, it’s a little bit less than fifteen minutes of footage.”

  Tanner played each one so he could get an understanding of the full scope, then immediately started watching again, this time pausing whenever he needed to in order to study
details.

  The killer never showed up in a single shot. The camera never panned or zoomed—never moved at all.

  “The room isn’t very big,” Tanner said. “I would think the camera is mounted over the door.”

  Whitaker leaned over his shoulder to look at the footage.

  “I agree.” Penelope sat down next to him. “We can’t see the woman’s face, but we think that there’s some sort of light on the camera that switches on when it’s transmitting.”

  Tanner nodded, skipping to footage number four and pointing to the screen. “Yes. Because she’s inactive for a few moments and then sees whatever she sees, and that’s when she starts begging for help. So she’s probably not blindfolded.”

  He skipped ahead to the other footage, pointing out where she did the same thing.

  “Right,” Penelope said. “And sometimes she doesn’t seem to see anything at all. Maybe she’s sleeping?”

  Tanner and Whitaker both nodded. “There are no windows in the room,” Whitaker said. “The light is always constant. She probably has no idea if it’s day or night.”

  Tanner nodded. “And who knows how long this bastard held her before he even started sending the footage.”

  “She’s definitely more hysterical in some of the recordings than others.” Penelope put her hand over Tanner’s on the mouse, then glanced at him. “Do you mind if I...”

  He moved his hand. “Be my guest.”

  She clicked so that five different images took up the screen. “These were when she was most hysterical. Already sobbing before the live stream even came through.”

  Tanner watched each separate clip. Penelope was definitely right. The woman was already crying when the footage started, not because she realized the camera was on.

  Listening to her—fear and desperation so close to the surface—was agonizing.

  Tanner muttered a curse. “Is there any pattern that we see? Are there clips where she’s upset longer? Is he hurting her and wanting us to see it? I don’t see any markings on her body to indicate he’s hurt her.”

  “No,” Whitaker said. “When it first happened we thought maybe he was escalating. That the clips would get longer as he got more violent, or show her harmed, but that hasn’t happened. And there doesn’t seem to be any pattern to how long the clips run.”