Chapter 18 #2
“The video feed is routed through one address chain,” Ruiz said and I didn’t complain when Carter plugged in an earbud to the console that let him hear the conversation clearly. “Audio is coming through another.”
“Can you trace it?” I cared less about how it worked than what we could do with it.
“No.” The swiftness of Ruiz’s answer had Carter’s brows up and I gritted my teeth.
“Wrong answer,” I informed him. “Try.”
“I am.” Ruiz wasn’t quite belligerent, but he was walking the edge. “This is not as simple as it sounds, sir.”
He issued the “sir” in the tone most people reserved for an insult rather than a respectful address.
Carter cut a look at me as he motioned to the headset. “May I?” He mouthed those two words, rather than speak them aloud.
I nodded once.
“Ruiz,” Carter said. “Could he be somewhere else?”
“Yes.” The answer came, clipped and curt.
For his part, Carter grimaced. “What—is it possible, that he could have prerecorded this audio?”
Ruiz hesitated, which was an answer in and of itself. I stared at Carter then at the monitor where Mallory focused across the desk to—whomever or whatever was there.
“Yes,” the agent answered. “It—it could also be generated, sir—sirs.”
The temperature in the van seemed to plummet and skyrocket at the same time. On the screen, Mallory laughed. The act lit up her face and I could practically feel the warmth of that husky sound.
The unsub said, “You have a lovely laugh.”
I watched her.
She almost smiled again. While she controlled the twitch of her lips, it was the gleam in her eyes that gave her away. “Thank you.”
She meant it.
“You're welcome.”
Perfect. It was all too perfect and even as Carter swore and Ruiz muttered something too low for me to hear, I was reworking the whole scenario in my head.
If the audio was synthetic, the unsub had anticipated surveillance. If he'd anticipated surveillance, he had anticipated us. If he'd anticipated us, then everything we had heard needed to be reconsidered.
We couldn’t just discard it, we had to examine the way it had been framed and what could have been reworded—strategically.
“Compare her audio too,” I ordered Ruiz.
“What?” The agent seemed startled.
“Mallory's.” I said by way of explanation. “We’re assuming the microphone inside whatever room she is in is feeding us her live voice.”
“Oh shit,” Ruiz muttered. “I’m on it.”
Carter glared at me, waiting for an explanation.
“If he’s controlling how the vocal is being routed, we don’t have any reason to think he has to pass it through the room she’s in.” I might not be an audio/visual expert, but I’d worked enough cases.
The devil was always in those little details that no one thought to pull apart.
“You’re saying that might not be her.” Carter stared at the monitor as he curled his fingers and his knuckles went white.
“It sounds like her,” Ruiz was quick to assure Carter, but he didn’t buy that answer anymore than I did.
“That wasn’t what I was asking,” Carter didn’t growl the words, but he was close. A vein throbbed in his temple a line drew taut along his jaw as though he were fighting to keep himself in place.
“It’s possible,” Ruiz said after another prolonged hesitation.
On the screen, Mallory spoke. “I believe you.”
Again. The same phrase.
I frowned.
Exactly the same phrase.
Same inflection.
Same breath at the beginning.
Same fractional rasp on the final word.
“Ruiz back that up and match it to the earlier iteration.”
“One sec,” the agent said. While he might not be in this van with us, I could practically feel his stress as I demanded more and more.
The third screen split into two and we had both instances up. He overlaid the waveforms. They matched.
Exactly.
“That's not live audio,” Ruiz said. “It might have been at some point, but what we’re getting is a remix, recorded, and packaged for sending.”
“Do we still have thermal eyes inside?” I was already pushing up from my chair.
Nobody answered.
“Get me eyes now,” I snapped. I was already yanking off the heavier headset and sliding the ear bud back into place.
I checked my weapon and headed for the van’s side door. Carter was a half-step behind me. We had spent the better part of an hour believing we were listening to Mallory McBryan have a conversation with a serial killer.
Instead, we’d been listening to whatever the unsub wanted us to think Mallory had said. That meant whatever eyes we had at all were not to be trusted.
“Sir?” another agent said. “We have too much interference.”
“Can you confirm the unsub or McBryan at all?”
I was crossing the street with Carter right behind me. The mistake was mine. He’d set us up.
All of us.
“Where’s the entry team?” I demanded.
“Thirty seconds out.”
“Make it fifteen.”
Carter caught up to me at the entrance. “Where did we lose thermal?”
“We didn’t lose it.” I swiped a card through the digital lock to open it. After identifying where they were going, I’d gotten a key made. Our tech guys could do just about everything—except catch this snafu before it happened.
He grabbed the door before it could swing closed behind me. “They just said there was too much interference.”
“Exactly.” I didn’t have time to explain this.
“That’s not an answer.” Who was he more pissed at? Me or himself? I was definitely more angry with him for letting Mallory do this in the first place.
“No, it’s the problem,” I told him. The lobby remained mostly dark and empty. There were a few construction lights illuminating the security desk and the plastic sheeting beyond it.
Renovations had been stalled here for a while and there were still areas that didn’t have access to permanent power. It was one of the reasons the location bothered me. Too many independent systems and too many ways to access or control them. Nothing centrally located.
I crossed directly to the elevators and punched the call button.
Nothing happened.
Again.
Nothing.
It didn’t even light up.
“Fuck.” Irritation scraped me raw inside. But Carter was already moving toward the stairwell. I shifted to intercept and grabbed his arm. “Wait for the team.”
“Let. Go.” He looked at my hand and then at me.”
I did. Not because he’d ordered it in that cold, hostile tone but because there were three armored black SUVs pulling to the curb outside.
Agents spilled onto the sidewalk before the vehicles fully stopped. Ruiz was with them, headset still in place and a tablet tucked beneath one arm.
“Elevators are locked,” I told him even as he cleared the doors.
“We didn't do that.”
“I know.” That was becoming the answer to too many questions.
Special Agent Foster took over the tactical deployment without needing direction from me. Four agents headed for the rear access. Two more remained in the lobby. Another pair would hold the stairwell below us once we began moving.
Carter started toward the stairs again.
Foster blocked him. “You stay here.”
“No.”
It was almost impressive how much refusal Carter could pack into one syllable.
“This isn't a negotiation.”
“You're right.” Carter stepped around him.
Foster caught his shoulder.
Carter stopped.
The two men stared at each other.
Under other circumstances, I might have enjoyed watching Foster explain federal tactical procedure to a newsroom director who possessed neither patience nor respect for institutional authority.
Tonight, I didn't have time. “He comes,” I said.
Foster looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I had. “Brewster—”
“He knows McBryan's behavior better than anyone here.”