Page 64 of Constant Risk
“I have to admit, that was quite fortuitous. I thought I was going to need to travel all the way to Colorado before seeing Bethany. But instead, the case brought her here. But it did so much more than that.”
Tanner felt the slightest give in the zip tie around his wrist. Would it be possible to work his hand out? He could feel his backup weapon still in his ankle holster, but had no way to get to it, restrained like this.
“Once I hacked into the Dallas PD system, I was able to see everything you all—and Bethany—were seeing. She was so busy trying to figure out how to follow the broadcasts, she didn’t even try to fortify her computer actions against possible outsiders. So I was able to know exactly where Bethany was and what she was doing every minute. It was quite refreshing, I tell you, to be following someone as brilliant as her.”
Tanner let Jeter continue to monologue. Anything to buy him time to try to get his wrist loose.
“Plus, your case provided me with the ketamine I needed to knock you unconscious. And most important, it made me realize how I could get Bethany’s attention.”
“I thought you said you weren’t going to drown me.” Tanner kept trying to twist his wrist to loosen the zip tie but it wasn’t working.
“No.” Jeter asked, “Who has time for that sort of drama? No, I have a much better plan. I’m going to suffocate you.”
Suddenly the box Tanner was in seemed much smaller.
“I’ll add a little carbon monoxide to make sure the job is well and truly done, thus our stay at a restaurant—but yeah. I thought suffocating you would get Bethany here pretty damn quickly.”
“Bree is too smart to show up here just because you threaten her.”
“Well, that’s where the case comes in once again... How about some live footage of you dying? That’ll be pretty damn motivating for our girl, don’t you think?”
“YOUREALLYAREBRILLIANT,” Jeremy said as Bree finished showing him everything she’d done to track the killers. “I can’t believe you wrote that shell program to track number four in under ninety seconds.”
Bree shook her head. “Honestly, I can’t believe she fell for it. Obviously she must have been really upset or she would’ve quickly realized it was a trap.”
Of course, obviously she’d been really upset since she killed herself.
“Thank God it worked,” Jeremy muttered. “After all that, I can’t believe none of the victims died.”
“Except the first two,” Bree reminded him. “The ones that were never broadcast.”
“Penelope is concentrating on Rory Gresham for those two, since he was the ringleader. Looks like he was practicing on them. Making sure it would all work before he brought the others in.”
Bree stretched her back. “I hope she can get a confession out of him.”
Jeremy smiled and stood up. “If anyone can, it’s Penelope. And if she can’t, he’ll still be going away for a long time. At least four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.”
“I hope that’s a long time.”
Jeremy patted her shoulder with his nonburned hand. “I’m sorry I was a jerk to you before. If it wasn’t for you, all four of those women would be dead.”
She shrugged. “I got lucky for some of it.”
“Yeah, well, your luck is still based in skill. So just take the compliment. I hope we’ll get to work together again, Bree.”
Bree looked around after Jeremy went over to talk to Penelope, searching for Tanner. She hadn’t seen him since she’d started talking to Jeremy and that had to have been twenty or thirty... She looked at her phone. Crap. Make that two hours ago.
Maybe he’d gotten tired of waiting for her to finish with Jeremy and decided to grab some lunch or something.
“You looking for Tanner?” Whitaker walked over to her.
“Yeah. I had no idea Jeremy and I had been discussing my methods for two hours. Where’d Tanner go?”
“Um, he had some things he wanted to look into with the case.”
“Is there a problem? Oh, no, there aren’t more victims or anything, right?” The thought that she might have missed something ate at her.
“Oh, no, nothing like that. Actually I think this had to do with another case.”
