Page 31 of If She Sensed

Kate checked her watch.It was 10:10, meaning that two to three hours put them somewhere around one in the morning, assuming there were no snags.She looked at the conference room door, then at the long table, and then at the stale half-pot of coffee that had been sitting on the burner at the back of the room since at least mid-afternoon.

She stood up and went to the back of the room.She pulled the old pot out, rinsed it in the small utility sink beside the cabinet, and started a fresh one.The coffee maker hissed and began to work.The smell of it hit the room within a minute and she was once again amazed—for perhaps the thousandth time in her life—how the smell of freshly brewing coffee could so quickly sharpen her focus.

"You think this gets us somewhere?"Sloane asked from the table.“The list, I mean.”

Kate leaned against the counter and crossed her arms while she waited for the pot to fill."I think it's the first theory we've had today that actually fits the behavior.Whoever this is, they're disciplined.They're not leaving prints, they're not leaving witnesses, they're not leaving anything at the scenes.It would be completely consistent for them to also be invisible on the platform itself."She looked at the window, at the dark reflection of the room against the glass.

"If the list comes back with hundreds of dormant accounts, we're going to need a way to narrow it,’ Sloane commented.

"Then we narrow it," Kate said."We can cross-reference against the program's graduation records to see who actually completed Fresh Horizons versus who just signed up for the forum without going through the program.We can also look at login frequency.If an account was created two years ago and has logged in forty times without ever pressing a single button, that's a different profile than someone who joined and never came back."

The coffee maker finished with a soft gurgle.Kate pulled two mugs from the cabinet, filled both, and carried one to Sloane.She sat back down across from her, wrapped both hands around the warm mug, and looked at the open laptop screens between them.

It was going to be a long night.But for the first time since Carol Paige's neighbor had found the back door standing open, Kate felt like they were looking in the right direction.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The list came through at 11:22.

A bureau tech-head by the name of Dave Ferris appeared in the conference room doorway with a laptop under his arm and an energy drink in his other hand.Kate guessed him to be about thirty or so, but he had a wiry sort of energy that made her think of teenagers pounding energy drinks for study sessions.When he entered the room, he seemed to bring a whirlwind of energy with him.He set his laptop down at the far end of the table without asking permission and dropped into a chair.

"Forty-seven accounts," he said, pulling up the list on his screen."Zero engagement across the forum and the Facebook group.No posts, no comments, no reactions, no shares.Not even an accidental mis-click."He cracked the energy drink and took a long sip."You're welcome, by the way."

Kate had already decided she liked him.Of course, she pitied anyone who had to work with him on a daily basis.He was probably quite exhausting.

“You should have it in your email, too, Agent Sloane.”

Sloane pulled the list up on her own screen and shared it to Kate's laptop.They looked at it together, eyeballing the forty-seven names.Kate looked at the top of the list and then at Dave.

"Walk us through the cross-referencing."

"Sure thing."He turned his laptop to face them slightly and nodded at the screen.“Click the second tab on the document I sent you.”

Kate clicked over.The same forty-seven names, now with columns added: program completion date, zip code, and a notes field Dave had partially populated.Several entries already had short annotations.Moved out of state.Completed program within last 60 days.Account created but never logged in after initial setupand things of that nature.

"I pulled zip codes from the intake records and mapped them against the three victim addresses," Dave said."Anyone within a thirty-minute radius I flagged in yellow."He took another sip of his drink, swallowing it down quickly."I'd have done it in red but the color coding on this platform is, and I say this as someone who builds these things for a living, deeply depressing."

Kate looked at the highlighted rows and saw only eleven names.

"Eleven," Sloane said."That's workable."

"Oh, it gets better," Dave said."Because I also filtered by completion date.Anything in the last six months I'd set aside; that’s too recent to have developed the kind of familiarity with the platform and its members that you're describing."He leaned over and typed something into his laptop and said, "That takes you to seven."

Kate worked through them one at a time, reading the names aloud while Sloane ran parallel searches.Dave seemed to pick up very quickly and, as they worked, began to pull whatever the intake records had on each one.

The first hit was a woman named Sandra Brixton.She had completed the program sixteen months ago and lived in Henrico.Sloane found a marriage announcement on her Facebook page from two months prior.There was a wedding photo, a new last name, and a post that readStarting the next chapter with my person.

"She found her person," Sloane said.Kate wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard a bit of slight mockery to her tone… not at the good news, but at themy person.

"Good for her," Kate said."Next."

“Donna Farwell, completed nearly two years ago,” Dave said as scrolled through her intake record."She currently has a Tennessee zip code.So, I guess we can knock her off, too.”

A woman named Linda Chu was next.According to what Dave had pulled, she had completed the program eleven months ago.Her account had logged in twice and gone dark.Dave pulled her record and found a coordinator note indicating she had withdrawn midway through and never completed the program, but her forum account had remained open in the system.

"She’s not a fit, either," Kate said."Just an open account."

"Correct."Dave crossed her off without ceremony.