Chapter Seven
The bastard was smart, Bree would give him that. She walked toward Tanner, frowning when she saw him talking to the beautiful blonde woman whose name she couldn’t remember, even though she’d said it when they’d met, however many hours ago. The detective in charge.
Blondie looked excited. “You located the victim?”
Bree shook her head. “Not yet.”
She looked around and realized everyone was staring at her and grimaced. She never liked to be the center of attention. She felt better when Tanner slipped his arm around her.
Talking to Tanner was easier, so Bree focused on him. “The guy is using multiple VPNs and proxy servers to hide the actual location of where he’s streaming from. Bouncing it around all over the place but keeping it local enough that I wouldn’t question it or eliminate it completely.”
Jeremy walked over, nodding. “That’s what I was trying to tell you from the beginning.”
Bree looked over at him. “And you were right. There’s no way to track the killer that way.”
“Then what exactly is your breakthrough?” Blondie asked.
“I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”
“Penelope.” She arched an eyebrow. “I am the detective in charge of the case.”
Bree nodded. “Right. Penelope. I know. I’m sorry, I’m not very good with names. It was actually the victim herself who got me thinking in the right direction.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes. “I didn’t think you were even aware there was a victim given how little you paid attention to her.”
Bree winced.
“Enough, Jeremy,” Whitaker said from the conference table.
Tanner’s arm tightened around her, but Jeremy was right. Bree hadn’t been even remotely as focused on the victim as she had been the computer side of things. She could’ve at least been a little more sympathetic.
“You’re doing fine,” Tanner whispered in her ear. “Everybody here has a job, and yours was to focus on the transmissions.”
Everybody else had a job also, and yet had somehow managed to be sympathetic to the plight of the woman. Everyone except Bree. She rubbed her fingers over her eyes. “Right. Well, the woman started talking about the water.”
“And?” Penelope said. “You got something from that?”
“My brain just picked out that she seemed to be talking about it every fourth set of footage.”
Penelope looked at Whitaker and then over at Tanner. “Is that right?”
Jeremy pulled up the footage and played the last twelve transmissions.
“I’ll be damned,” Penelope muttered. “She does talk about the water every fourth one. Do you think she’s trying to signal us?”
Bree shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea what she’s doing. I can’t even imagine what goes through someone’s mind if they’re trapped like that. The pattern of it just got me thinking in a different way.”
“So, her mentioning the water didn’t have anything to do with whatever it is you’ve come up with?” Whitaker asked.
Bree shook her head. “No, not at all. It just got me started on looking for patterns, rather than taking all the footage holistically.”
Penelope rubbed her hand over her eyes. “Can somebody please tell me what she’s talking about?”
They didn’t understand. Bree turned to Tanner instead. “I found a fractal pattern in the transmissions.”
He probably didn’t understand either, but at least Tanner nodded. “How does that help us?”
“It means that every fourth time there’s something a little bit different with how the killer is transmitting. Those times it’s a self-similar pattern with expanding symmetry.”
Penelope snapped to attention. “Is the woman trying to tell us that by talking about the water.”
Bree shook her head. “No. There’s no way she could know about it. I thought the transmissions were random, but not all of them are. This is something he overlooked, or thought we wouldn’t discover.”
“Okay,” Tanner said. “How does it help us?”
“I can use it to catch him. I don’t have to track him, just find the system using the fractal pattern. It’s very specific. But I can only do it every fourth transmission, and it has to be while the transmission is live.”
“But now you know what you’re looking for,” Tanner said.
She reached up and squeezed his bicep. He understood. Tanner always understood. “Yes. Now that I know what it is, it’s just a matter of time. I might not be able to get you to the actual room, but I’ll be able to get you pretty damn close.”
Whitaker walked over and squeezed her shoulder. “You get us close, we’ll do the rest.”
“I can’t do anything for another three hours. That’s when the next transmission that’s using the fractal pattern will go live.”
“How many more footage segments do you need?” Tanner asked.
“The next one will get us close, but I can’t guarantee exactly how close. We’ll need to be ready to move to where that one leads. Then I’ll need at least one more after that to pinpoint.”
“There’s nothing you can do with any of the other footage segments? No clues there?” Penelope asked. “You’re saying we’re at least seven hours and possibly eleven or more before we have actionable intel?”
Bree shrugged. “Yes. I can’t work any faster than the pattern he submits on.”
Penelope shook her head. “That’s too long. The victim might not even be alive at that point.”
Bree blinked a few times and looked over at Tanner. “I haven’t worked out the exact math in my head, but it seems like she should have at least thirty-six more hours before the water covers her. Is my math off?”
His arm slipped back around her waist. “That’s correct, but medical experts are concerned about hypothermia.”
“Unless that water is temperature controlled, she could die,” Whitaker said.
What was Bree supposed to do? She couldn’t magically make the pattern work more quickly. “I’m sorry. This anomaly in how the footage is being transmitted is only occurring every fourth time. I can’t change that or speed it up.”
“If he made an error in whatever he did with every fourth set of footage, maybe he made an error somewhere else,” Penelope said. “We just need to find it. And we need to do it now.”
Translation: Bree needed to find it.
Bree nodded. “Let me write the pattern recognition program I’ll need to trace him when the next flawed transmission comes in. Then I’ll do my best to see if I can find any mistakes in the other transmissions.”
Without another word, Bree turned away from them all, giving Tanner’s hand a squeeze as she did. She’d been working on this for twelve hours. She’d already looked for any mistakes the killer might have made and hadn’t found anything.
She wrote the program and had it ready to go, then spent the next two hours searching for another needle in the haystack.
At every top of the hour when new footage came in she ran it against the pattern recognition program she’d written, but nothing showed up.
She wasn’t surprised. The fractal pattern was damn near brilliant and it was just sheer luck she’d discovered it.
If he was using something similar for his other transmissions, Bree couldn’t spot it.
She was also tired, and working at a pace her brain wasn’t used to. At one time, thanks to Jeter threatening physical harm to her or her mom, she’d been able to work at this pace for days at a time.
Not being tortured for the past ten years had caused her brain to get lazy.
She was tired, wanted to rest. Plus, every time she looked over at Tanner, beautiful, blonde Penelope with all her appropriate emotional reactions was next to him. By all accounts Penelope had been here over twenty-four hours. Who looked that good after working twenty-four hours straight?
Bree caught her own reflection in the monitor. She didn’t look good, that was for sure. But she didn’t even try to fix the messy bun she’d piled her hair into. What would be the use. She had a pen resting behind either ear. Both of which she’d been looking for but hadn’t been able to find.
She was a mess. But attempting to fix her hair wasn’t going to change that.
They were twenty minutes from the transmission Bree needed to help pinpoint the killer when she heard a phone buzzing on a desk nearby. She waited for someone to pick it up before she realized it was hers.
When she glanced at the screen and saw it was Gregory Lightfoot, she almost let it go to voice mail. But the lawyer would just call back, and in a few minutes hopefully they would be on the road on the way to catch the killer. She might not be available.
“Lightfoot. I don’t have a lot of time I’m helping the police.”
“Good morning to you too, Bree,” Gregory said good-naturedly.
She cringed. “Sorry. All my people skills have already been used up.” Such as they were.
He chuckled. “I’ll keep this short, and hopefully this will be good news. Michael Jeter took a plea bargain.”
Bree’s hand raised to her throat and her heart rate kicked up. “What sort of plea bargain?”
Surely they wouldn’t let him out of jail. Would they? She felt like the room was closing in on her—the air being sucked out.
“Freckles, what’s wrong?”
She turned her head and found Tanner crouching on the floor beside her so his face was at the same height as hers.
She grabbed his hand. “Jeter made some sort of deal.”
She turned the phone so Tanner could also hear what Gregory was saying. She didn’t want to put it on speaker in front of all these people.
“Lightfoot, what’s going on?” Tanner asked.
“It’s good news, I promise. Yes, Jeter plea-bargained, but only to take the death penalty off the table. He’ll be serving four life sentences without the possibility of parole.”
Her eyes met Tanner’s deep brown ones. “He won’t ever be able to get out of prison?”
“Never,” Gregory assured her. “I think Jeter knew he was going to get the death penalty, so this was the best play he had. But he’s never getting out of prison, I can promise you that.”
“Where will he do his time?” Tanner asked.
“That’s a little bit more complicated. They’re transferring him tomorrow to the federal prison in Beaumont. He’ll be there probably three to six months until the details are finalized.”
Tanner nodded and it reassured Bree—if Tanner was happy about him being at Beaumont then that meant it was a good place for Jeter to be.
“That’s a solid max security. Definitely better than the county jail he’s been in,” Tanner said.
“Best of all, this solves all your testimony problems, Bree. You’re not going to have to take the stand at all.”
Finally, some good news.
She promised to contact Gregory for more details as soon as this case was done and she was back home, and ended the call. Right now she needed to focus on catching an entirely different bastard.
Tanner squeezed her hand. “You okay?”
She shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. I just need time to process this. But that will have to wait until I’m done here. I’d rather stick with this. Computers, I know. Feelings are much more complicated.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Anyone would need time to sort this out, so don’t feel bad about that. Do you have everything ready for the next transmission?”
“Yes. I’m sorry I couldn’t find anything to make this quicker.”
He pulled her against him and kissed her hard and brief. “You found the pattern. That’s more than anyone else did. We’re going to catch this guy and we’re going to be in time to save this woman. Because of you.”
“Because of a lucky break.”
He used his knuckles to knock gently on the side of her head. “Because of a pattern your giant brain figured out. Doesn’t matter what got it thinking in that direction.”
She kissed him. “Thank you. I know I’ve been a mess. Everything I’ve learned about interacting with people seems to have flown out the window over the last few hours. I haven’t made many friends here.”
He grinned at her—that smile that had her heart stuttering in her chest. “Eh, you’re not here to make friends. Everyone’s tension level is high. Or maybe everyone’s interaction skills have flown out a window.”
Penelope’s interpersonal skills seemed to be working fine. Bree knew not to say anything. She was tired, stressed and not completely rational.
But damn it, that woman should not look so beautiful. And definitely should not be standing so close to Tanner every time Bree turned around.
“Is everyone else ready to go?” she asked. “I’m ready on my end with the equipment I need. But we’ll need to move pretty quickly once I begin to triangulate.”
“Yes. There’s a solid plan in place. You’ll ride with me and Whitaker. Penelope will follow with Leon and a couple other officers.”
“We’ll have to find the place and be ready and set up by the time he transmits again. Unless for some reason we get extremely lucky, and he’s extremely sloppy, the info we get from this first transmission will only lead us part of the way.”
Damn it. Why hadn’t she figured out a way to bypass whatever rerouting system the killer would use? That would’ve been a better use of her time rather than hunting for some possible other mistake like Penelope wanted.
“Whatever it is you’re thinking—stop,” Tanner pulled her close to him one last time. “No focusing on all the things you could’ve/should’ve/would’ve done. You did the best you could with the info you had.”
The time began to beep, signaling the upcoming transmission.
“I hope so. Because we’re out of time.”