Page 38 of Constant Risk
Bree rubbed her forehead. “Almost like competitors, but that’s not right either.”
“Elliot is an engineering student. So maybe not partners or competitors. They’re collaborators in an experiment.” Penelope said.
“That would make sense.” Bree thought back on everything she’d found. “It’s twisted, but it’s like they all had the same set of instructions and just had to build it to the specifications.”
“It’s all great to know the why,” Leon said. “But how do we stop them? If Bree can’t track them, we’re basically back to square one. Every hour we’re getting footage, and granted this time we know we are looking at three different women, but how do wefindthem?”
Penelope moved everyone over to the conference table. “We start with what info we do have. We need to do a statewide missing persons search. We have a definite MO when it comes to victims. Female, five foot three to five foot four, no more than 110 pounds. That can’t be a very big list.”
Leon nodded and stood up. “I’m on it.”
Penelope turned to Bree. “We have a warrant for anything Elliot saved online. Whether these guys were partners, colleagues or competitors, they had to have had some sort of interaction with each other.”
Bree nodded. Depending on how much Elliot had saved, and what safety defaults he had when he realized his defenses had been triggered, the information they found in his online data storage might or might not be useful. But it was definitely worth a try.
“Absolutely. I’ll start searching through it, ghosting and rebuilding as much as possible for any missing data.”
“What about us, boss?” Whitaker asked. “What do you want Tanner and me to do?”
“We’re going back to see if Elliot’s lawyer is here yet. Elliot is the one person who has answers and we’ve got to get them from him.”
Chapter Thirteen
Bree was already starting to sort through the data Elliot had saved to the cloud when Tanner walked over to her five minutes later.
“I’m going with Penelope and Whitaker to interview Elliot again.” He kissed the top of her head. “Are you okay? Do you need a break?”
It was impossible not to be concerned about her. Bree was a civilian. Law enforcement wasn’t her job. She’d already put in long hours yesterday and that didn’t even include the havoc she’d wreaked on her body trying to remember the coding at Elliot’s house. It was unfair of them to ask her to continue to work at this pace, but the lives of three women were at stake.
“I’m okay. My mind is starting to readapt to this pace. Jeter used to work me like this.” Her fingers never stopped tapping on the keyboard even as she spoke. “Not just me, all of his prodigies. He pushed us hard, way too hard, and then we were punished if we couldn’t do it.”
Tanner had seen some of the scars on her body from Jeter’s punishments. The thought that they were doing the same thing to her now made him physically ill.
He crouched down beside her. “Freckles, look at me.”
She did, but just for a second.
He reached up and cupped her cheek with his hand, forcing her to look at him. Her hands stilled on the keyboard. “This is not the same. You can take a break whenever you want to. If you need to go sleep for a couple hours, get up and stretch, hell,go take a shower? All of those are okay and everyone would understand.”
She twisted her head and kissed the inside of his palm. “I know that. I can tough it out. I like that, for once, what Jeter did to me is leading to something good, rather than something painful. Like you said, I don’t get to take any of my power back in court. Maybe this could be the next best thing.”
Any doubt that he’d had—and there really hadn’t been any—about whether he wanted to spend the rest of his life with this woman was erased in that moment. “I love you,” he said.
Hell, he was already down on one knee, he was halfway tempted to ask her to marry him right now. But that wasn’t the story he wanted her telling their grandkids. He would wait until the right time.
“I love you too, hot lips. Now go get some information on Elliot. We’ve got lives to save.”
He kissed her quickly and stood. She was already clicking away on her keyboard again.
Tanner jogged to catch up with Whitaker and Penelope as they headed toward the door.
“Bree okay?” Whitaker asked.
“She’s running on empty, but she’s strong.”
“No doubt about that.” Whitaker nodded, then turned to Penelope. “You know Elliot’s lawyer is not going to let him talk to us. Even if he’s not here yet, he would’ve given that instruction when they talked on the phone.”
Penelope pressed her lips together as she nodded. “We’re actually going to do this all off-the-record. Right now I care more about saving those other women’s lives than I do about making sure Elliot goes down. We’ll deal with the ramifications when we have to.”
