17. Nikita #2
“Already on it,” I say, using his photo from the latest university yearbook and running it through a facial recognition software.
Immediately things start popping up, but it’s all worthless shit, hits from recent university news, papers he’s written, lectures he’s taught, anything that got his smug-ass picture taken is now popping up so I’m forced to look at photo after photo of the man I can’t wait to kill.
I’d told Savanna the truth. I don’t enjoy killing, but I’m going to enjoy it this time.
While that keeps running, I use another program to start reconstructing what he may have looked like at twenty.
Thanks to all the images popping up, I have a mix of photos that show his face from various angles.
His hair is short enough to show his ears, which will be a key piece when the identification starts.
“I’m not finding any holes in his Ellison identity.
His wife’s social media is filled with happy family photos.
She doesn’t seem scared and neither do his sons.
They could be faking it, but my gut says they’re not.
She’s in a bikini in a lot of these photos, no bruises, no fear in her eyes.
He’s been living quite the lie.” My dad clicks a few more buttons and then waits while he reads whatever is on his screen.
“His finances look good too. Nothing unusual, no red flags, and it’s in line with his salary.
He’s hiding his money somewhere else. He’s been very careful to keep his two lives separate.
He’s smart and methodical, but that’s a good thing. ”
“Is it?” I ask. “Because from where I’m sitting it just makes him really hard to find.”
I briefly look up and meet my dad’s eyes.
“I know, but it also means he’s not going to lose control. That’s a good thing, Niki. It also means he’s going to enjoy fucking with you. You need to prepare yourself for that.”
“I know,” I say, having already thought of it. “He must be laughing his ass off right now, and he’s going to want to rub it in. I fucked up, Dad. I fucked up to an unforgivable degree and Van’s paying the price for it.”
“You didn’t fuck up. You did everything you could. You checked her professor out. I know you did. There was no reason to question what you’d found,” he tries to tell me, but I shake my head, refusing to let him make me feel better.
“I should have, though. I should’ve questioned everything,” I say.
My dad shakes his head, refusing to back down and let me carry this.
“You’ve been looking at thousands of files.
This one went back twenty years and had a fake name.
You can’t check every fucking detail on every certificate, Niki.
It’s impossible. You know as well as I do that you follow the leads, the clues, the things that don’t add up.
There were no red flags with Ellison. This is not your fault, but I know I’ll never be able to convince you of that.
I’d feel the same way you do if I were in your shoes.
I’d be wrong, but I’d still feel the same damn way. ”
I’m grateful when he drops it. I know he means well, but I’m not looking to get rid of this guilt. I let it wash over me, mixing with the rage. I deserve it. No one will convince me otherwise.
The reconstructed image will take a while.
It’s not as simple as matching hair and eyes and basic facial structure.
It’s a precise measuring of his face. It extracts eye distance, nose bridge and width, ear shape, jaw angle, every small, unique piece of a person’s face is gathered and used.
It’s precise, but, unfortunately, it’s not fast. While it continues to work, I hack into the university and start gathering all the digitized yearbook photos, compiling a folder of everything that involves the Alpha Psi Rho fraternity.
At some point during all this, my Uncle Vitaly must order food because soon there are boxes of pizza lined up on my kitchen table. Evgeny hands me a plate, and seeing his face is enough to jar me from my thoughts.
“What are you doing here, Ev?” I ask him, worried he’s going to put himself at risk.
“There’s no way I’m sitting this out,” he tells me, shoving the plate back in my face when I try to push it away. “No one knows I’m here, so relax. How are you holding up?”
“Not so great,” I admit. “Do you know Ellison?”
“No, I never had him for anything, and the education department is on the opposite side of campus from all the classes I take.”
“Yeah, I figured,” I say. “Not that it would do much good if you had. He kept who he is so well hidden, I doubt you would’ve noticed anything suspicious.”
He squeezes my shoulder when I turn my attention back to my screen. “You’ll find her, Niki. Let me know if you need anything, and eat some pizza. I know you’re not planning on sleeping and you need to keep your strength up.”
I nod, but there’s no way I can stomach food right now. My dad raises a brow when I scoot my plate away after Ev has walked off. He hardly ate the whole time my brother was missing, so he doesn’t bother saying anything to me. He does grab a bottle of water and slide it across the island, though.
“Non-negotiable,” is all he says when I side-eye it.
I know he’s right. Food can wait, but water is essential.
I unscrew the cap and take a big drink, feeling guilty when the cool water hits the back of my throat.
I can’t help but wonder if Savanna is thirsty, if she’s been given water to drink, or if she’s scared and thirsty and a million other things that I refuse to think about.
When my phone dings, I grab it, and my first thought is that it might be from Savanna, but then I remember her phone is with me. The number that pops up is one I don’t recognize, and when I see the attached link, I know it’s from Cupid.
“What is it?” my dad asks, leaning closer as I click on the link that takes me to a file host. My breath catches when I see the photo that’s waiting for me.
Savanna is sitting on a filthy mattress, arms wrapped around her bent legs.
She’s clutching a ratty blanket, trying to cover up, but she’s clothed at least. Her face is swollen, a bruise forming on her cheek, and the fear in her blue eyes is something I’ll be seeing in my nightmares.
“Do you recognize the room?” I hear my dad ask.
“No,” I say right as the file host auto-deletes the upload. My phone slips from my hand, clattering on the counter.
“What just happened?” I hear Luka ask.
“He sent a photo,” my dad says. “Sav was sitting on a bed in a dingy-looking room, almost like a cellar, cement walls and floor, iron bed frame. Is there any place on campus that might look like that?”
“I don’t think so,” Ev says. “Not any place I’ve ever seen or heard about at least.”
“There’s no way she’s on campus,” I say. “He would’ve taken her somewhere private.” I scrub a hand over my face, and all I can think to say is, “Van’s terrified of bugs and spiders.”
“She’s strong,” my dad reminds me, “and she looked okay. He probably smacked her when he first took her, but she’s okay.” He waits a few seconds before saying what I’d already been thinking. “She was still in her clothes, Niki. That’s good. That’s very good.”
“Yeah,” I say, but I don’t add that it might not stay that way because we’re all already thinking it, whether we want to admit it or not.
Cupid is taunting me. I knew he would. He’s fucking with me, sending me little pieces of Savanna, and then making it impossible for me to trace any of it.
I keep thinking about the picture, the fear I’d seen in her eyes, the way she’d been clutching that blanket like it was a barrier between her and the monster standing in front of her.
When I hear another ding, it takes me a second to realize it’s Savanna’s phone. I see the text from her mom and hold it up so my dad can see.
“What the hell am I going to say to them?” I ask. “This is going to kill them.”
“You don’t tell them anything right now. Hopefully we can find her before they even realize she’s gone,” he says.
“And if we don’t?” I ask.
My dad holds my stare. “Then we’ll figure it out together. Right now we focus on finding her.”
By the time the reconstructed photos are done, I’m about to scream at how useless I feel.
The end result is five photos showing an approximation of what a younger Cupid could’ve looked like.
They’re slightly different, but overall it fits and looks like a younger version of how he looks today.
With the software already scanning the archived yearbook photos, I add these images in and wait for any matches to turn up.
While I wait, I pull up a map of the city, trying to figure out realistically how far they could’ve gone.
It’s a needle in a haystack, though. None of the security cameras turned up anything, and I searched his vehicle on the CCTV cameras that are pointed at all the streets surrounding the campus.
He’s scrubbed all of them. There’s not a single image to even give me a small hint at what direction they might’ve gone in.
Everything is a dead end. Exactly how he planned it.
By the time my brother arrives, I’ve got a deep tension headache that’s lodged itself behind my eyes and traveling along the base of my skull and across my shoulders.
Every part of my body feels wound up to the breaking point.
My family’s been forcing water on me, and Damien made me switch to Gatorade an hour ago since I still can’t bring myself to eat anything.