The Risk Series: A Bree and Tanner Thriller

Chapter Five

On the way to help with a murder case was not the way Bree had envisioned taking her first airplane ride.

When Tanner had come in from talking on the phone his face had been pinched and tight.

“That was Whitaker. He’s in Dallas and has a serial killer on his hands. He needs help.”

She’d just nodded. She didn’t like that their conversation would have to wait, but knew Tanner’s job was always important. “When do you leave?”

“Actually, it’s more you he needs than me. He has a killer sending some sort of live footage of the murder scene and their tech team can’t figure out from where. He’d like for you to take a look.”

She hadn’t even been sure how to respond. The police wanted her to help with a case?

“You don’t have to go, of course,” Tanner said when she hadn’t answered.

“No. I want to help.” Just the thought of being at a strange police department by herself, even with Whitaker around, was daunting. She shrugged. “I just don’t do well with people. You know.”

He pulled her against him. Thank goodness. Maybe she hadn’t broken their relationship with what she’d said earlier. “I’m going to call the sheriff and get the time off so I can go with you. I wouldn’t ever send you alone. Plus, it’s in Dallas. I don’t even like you being in the same state as Jeter, much less the same city. I don’t care how locked up he is.”

Tanner had arranged all the flights and details. He had even been excited for her when he’d realized this was her first time on a plane, taking the requisite picture of her from the airport terminal. He’d held her hand when the plane had hit a little turbulence. He’d talked to her and given her what few details he’d had about the situation.

Even though everything seemed okay on the surface, Bree knew it wasn’t. Because of what she’d said this morning.

Score another point for the girl incapable of appropriate emotions. She didn’t know how to make this right, and it wasn’t going to get any easier while trying to help solve a murder.

Richard Whitaker was there to pick them up from the Dallas airport. He shook Tanner’s hand and smiled at Bree, knowing her well enough to understand she wouldn’t want to touch anyone unless she had to. She’d learned how to act appropriately around others, but it still didn’t come naturally.

She gave him a little wave. “Hey, Whitaker.”

“Thank you for coming.” He walked with them out to his car.

“So what exactly is going on?” Tanner asked as they drove into downtown Dallas.

Whitaker took a deep breath. “We had two bodies on two different sides of town.”

“What was the cause of death?” Tanner asked.

“They had both drowned.”

“Are you sure that’s even a serial killer?” Bree asked. “People can drown in just two inches of water.”

“Believe me,” Whitaker said. “I would not have brought you out if I wasn’t sure we had a killer on our hands. Yes, the cause of death was drowning. Both victims weren’t in water when they were found, but they had water in their lungs.”

“Definitely drowned then,” Bree muttered.

Whitaker nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. “They were both found in boxes—almost like coffins. Both were restrained in the box by both wrists and ankles.”

“Someone filled it with water while they were trapped there?” Tanner said.

Whitaker nodded sharply. “Yes.”

Tanner let out a curse. “Did you find out about them because of the footage the killer sent you?”

“No, that’s new. Both victims were found by civilians. One in some woods off the highway about ten miles south of town. The other, Shelby Durrant, was found on the north side of town in a restaurant that had been closed for renovations.”

“You know her?” Bree asked.

Whitaker shrugged. “Not very well, but we grew up near each other. She was ten years younger than me, so I never actually hung out with her. She was just one of the neighborhood kids, you know? She was still chained in that damn box when they found her.”

He cleared his throat. Bree and Tanner both gave Whitaker a minute to collect himself.

“Any connection between the victims?” Tanner asked.

“Nothing that we’ve found so far. Both were female, about five foot three, roughly a hundred pounds. Shelby was twenty-two, an African American college student at Dallas Nursing Institute. Victim number two was in her midforties, Caucasian, married, with no kids. Her name was Kelly Quinn. She worked as a bank teller. Nothing we’ve been able to find ties them together in any way.”

“What do you need me to do?” Bree asked.

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.”

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.”

“She’ll be hysterical one hour then much better the next, thank God.” Penelope rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “I’ve watched these clips over a hundred times. Whit has also. But we haven’t found anything that helps at all.”

“Just makes me pretty damn furious,” Whitaker said.

Jeremy walked over to them. “We’re up in less than three minutes, boss.”

Penelope nodded. “Any progress over there?”

“Bree isn’t saying very much, but she seems to know her stuff, which isn’t surprising, given who she is. This will be the first time she’s seeing what’s happening behind the scenes as the footage comes in. No offense, but I don’t think she’ll be quite so quick to say no such thing as impossible after she really understands what’s going on.”

“Give her a chance,” Penelope said.

Jeremy shrugged. “At this point I’m willing to give anybody a chance. I just don’t want us putting all our eggs in one basket. Plus, she’s not making any friends over there.”

“Why? What happened?” Penelope asked, as they all stood.

“One of the first things she did was set up a program so it records what’s happening on everyone’s computer screen. Bree said she wanted to be able to look over what everyone was doing in case they missed anything.”

Whitaker looked over at Tanner and they both winced. People who didn’t know Bree wouldn’t understand the kindness and gentleness that resided under her sometimes-abrupt exterior. Her actions would seem like she thought herself superior to everyone else.

They walked over to the monitor screens to prepare for the next transmission. Bree had made herself a little command center and was typing on one keyboard as her eyes darted back and forth between three screens.

Tanner walked over to stand right behind her.

“I don’t have anything yet,” she said without looking at him. “There’s something weird going on that I haven’t been able to put my finger on.”

He rubbed the back of her shoulders. “Nobody expected you to come in and solve this in an hour. Let’s give it a little more time.”

Her disgusted grunt told him she had in fact expected to be able to solve this in an hour.

Just a few seconds later, the countdown clock began to beep. Bree didn’t even look up from her monitor.

The crying, sounding even more eerie because of the voice modulator, came through just a split second before the video did. The video was exactly the same as all the others. Nothing could be seen but the coffin-sized box containing the woman from the neck down. She was struggling against the metal cuffs that attached her wrists and ankles to the sides.

Everyone’s attention was riveted to the screens in front of them, except Bree.

Even when the woman was sobbing and begging to be freed—this was obviously not one of her good moments—Bree didn’t look up from what she was doing. Besides the crying, Bree’s fingers on the keyboard were the only thing that could be heard.

Tanner understood Bree well enough to know what was going on. She knew the victim was not the key to finding the location to where she was being kept. The key was in figuring out the details of the transmission.

But to everybody else it looked like Bree didn’t care at all about the suffering of this poor woman. Like Bree couldn’t be bothered to stop typing for the seconds the transmission would last and at least acknowledge the woman’s misery.

The transmission ended as suddenly as it began. Bree’s hands never stopped moving on the keyboard. Nearly everyone in the room was staring at her, the noise from her fingers sounding throughout the room. Tanner was glad Bree was caught in her own world and had no comprehension of what was going on around her.

“Do you mind if we play it again, Bree?” Penelope finally asked.

“Would hate to disrupt you in any way,” Jeremy muttered.

Bree didn’t even look up. “That’s fine. The victim is irrelevant.”

Even Tanner had to wince a little at that one. Jeremy rolled his eyes and walked over to one of the computers and set the footage to play again.

“Okay, people, what do we see?” Penelope asked when it was done.

“She was already crying before the camera turned on. It was one of the times when she seemed not to be aware of the transmission at all,” Whitaker said.

“All right, so it’s one of her bad hours. Maybe she’s tired. Maybe he hurt her.” Penelope had them play the footage again.

There were so many things that could be happening to the poor woman to make her hysterical.

Hearing the modulated crying caused Tanner to look more closely at the screen. He walked over and stood next to Whitaker. “Your friend Shelby and the other victim.”

“Kelly Quinn,” Whitaker filled in for him.

“You didn’t find any links between them?”

“Nothing of any significance.”

“Did you check where they shop for clothes? They were both similar build, right? I know we don’t have great perspective from this footage, but looking at this new woman, she could possibly be about the same size also. Relatively petite. Slender.”

“Definitely worth a try.” Whitaker called Penelope over and she agreed it was worth redoubling their efforts to see if it led anywhere, and immediately got someone on it.

They played the footage again and Tanner stepped closer to the screens. The crying was so much more jarring with a voice regulator distorting it.

The killer wasn’t letting them see her face and wasn’t letting them hear her real voice.

Why?

Tanner looked over at Whitaker and Penelope. “You guys got any local celebrities missing or anything?”

Penelope raised an eyebrow. “Not that I’ve heard. Why?”

Tanner shrugged. “Just seems like an awful lot of work to use a voice modulator when we can’t see the victim’s face anyway. Leads me to think there might be something about her voice that’s unique. Something we’d recognize right off if we could see or hear her clearly.”

Whitaker muttered a curse. “You’re right. I can’t believe we didn’t think of that.”

Tanner slapped him on the shoulder. “Trying to figure out who framed me for murder gave me a better perspective on thinking outside the box.”

Whitaker had the good grace to look sheepish, since he’d been the person most convinced Tanner was guilty. “I’m glad something good came out of that.”

Penelope played the clip again. “Damn it. I think you’re right, Tanner. I haven’t heard anything about a well-known missing person, but we’ll put some feelers out immediately. But knowing the victim still isn’t going to help us get to her. We need the location.”

“Give Bree time,” he told her.

* * *

BREE WORKED ALL night long on the tracking without stopping.

Whitaker and another one of the detectives on the case, Leon Goulding, an African American man in his late twenties who’d joined the Dallas PD after Whitaker left, took Tanner to show him where the first two victims had been found.

None of them had found anything useful in either the woods or the empty restaurant, but at least it had given Tanner a frame of reference.

Then they’d taken him to the evidence room and shown him the boxes the dead women had been found in—identical to the one the woman from the footage was currently trapped in. The boxes were lying on a table side by side.

“They’re made of low-density polyethylene,” Leon said as Tanner walked around looking at them. “Basically the same thing trash cans are made from.”

Tanner nodded. “So they definitely wouldn’t have any problem holding water.”

Whitaker was studying the boxes too. “That’s correct. We even filled one of them to capacity to double-check. The seams are reinforced with an acrylic binder.”