Chapter Twenty-One
Tanner knew he was in trouble as soon as he woke up. He was in a box, not unlike the ones Rory Gresham and his cronies had used on their victims.
But this one was wood. Basically a plain coffin, just not yet closed.
“Don’t worry, Tanner. I can call you Tanner, right?
Deputy Captain Dempsey seems so formal.” Jeter waved from a few feet away.
“Either way, don’t worry, I’m not going to drown you.
You had enough drowning excitement for one week, right?
Plus, who has time to figure out all those details about how many drips of water it will take. That’s just nuts.”
Tanner blinked, trying to clear his mind. “Who is that man in the hospital and how does he have your fingerprints?”
How was it possible that Jeter was standing here right now without a scratch on him?
Tanner’s hands were tied at the wrists and resting on his chest. He tried to move his legs but they were restrained also inside this casket-shaped box.
“I’m going to be honest with you, and this might make you think I’m a bad person, but I honestly don’t know the name of the guy in the hospital.
Believe it or not, I’ve been prepared for something of this measure to occur for the last ten years.
That man lived a wonderful life of luxury and all he had to do was be roughly my same height and build, have the same blood type as me and have his fingerprints removed and mine lasered onto his fingers. ”
“He’s your double.”
“Yes, exactly! But honestly, I didn’t even come up with the idea myself. You’d be surprised at how many political leaders have doubles in case their death is the only option for escaping a situation, and yet they don’t actually want to die.”
Tanner shook his head, still trying to shake away some of the cobwebs. This couldn’t be happening.
“I know, right?” Jeter said. “It’s all such cloak-and-dagger craziness. Hard to believe it’s true.”
“So you’ve been planning this from the beginning,” Tanner said. He kept his eyes on Jeter but glanced up behind him and around whenever he could. “I can’t believe you don’t have a whole army here.”
Jeter threw his arms up. “I have been around people—so many damn people—every day for months. I needed time alone for a while. But don’t worry—I still have my loyal followers I’ll band together eventually.”
Tanner followed Jeter with his eyes as the man walked around. Why did this place look familiar?
“Between you and me, I’m not cut out for prison.
The man taking my place will do much better, plus his family will live in complete luxury for the rest of their existence.
But me? I have other, better things to do than sit in a cell every day.
I need to be able to move around. Some people aren’t meant to do nothing, you know what I mean, Tanner? I can’t be someone who does nothing.”
“Why didn’t you just kill me in the parking lot?”
“Why, Bree, of course. My Bethany. You are the only way I can get her to come to me of her own accord. If I didn’t use you, she would go to ground, hide. And we both know how good she is at that.”
“Do you expect me to just call her and lead her here to slaughter? I’ll die first.”
Jeter actually winked at him. “Don’t worry—you’re going to die anyway. I mean, hell, Deputy, you said so in that hospital room. If I wanted her, I had to go through you.”
“You were listening in the hospital room?”
Jeter rolled his eyes. “I feel like all I’ve been doing for the past twenty-four hours is listening. Listening in the hospital room. Listening to your investigation.”
“What?”
“Oh, come on. I even helped you with the last one. Bethany got a little sloppy making that shell program to trace the chat room. Your suspect wasn’t going to fall for it.
And that woman in the box was going to die.
I stepped in, shot the suspect in the head and sent you a little message.
I would think you’d be a little more grateful for that. ”
Jeter had been a step ahead of them this whole time, waiting for the right moment to strike against Bree.
Tanner shifted slightly and finally realized why this place seemed so familiar. They were inside the restaurant where Shelby’s body had been found. One of the first places Whitaker had shown him when he and Bree got here—in his old neighborhood.
“You’ve been inside the police files,” Tanner said. “Otherwise you would’ve never known about this place.”
He shrugged. “I’ve just wanted to be close to Bethany, and this case has been her sole focus the last couple of days. She’s really just so wonderful, isn’t she? Her brain. I want to say it’s the sexiest thing about her, but now that she’s all grown up I can’t say that anymore.”
Tanner began to fight against his restraints.
“Come on now, Tanner. You’re about to be her fiancé, right? You can’t tell me you don’t think she’s sexy.”
Jeter began tossing something casually in his hand. It didn’t take Tanner long to realize it was the ring box.
“You stay away from her, Jeter. Just disappear and leave her alone. I’m not going to let you take her.”
Jeter tilted his head to the side with a condescending smile. “Like I said, you’re not going to be alive to have a say-so. Your case has actually been pretty helpful to me overall.”
Tanner stopped his struggles. There was no way out of this box the way he was restrained. He needed to work smarter, not harder.
And do it before Jeter got Bree here.
“How did the case help you? Besides getting us to Dallas.”
“I have to admit, that was quite fortuitous. I thought I was going to need to travel all the way to Colorado before seeing Bethany. But instead, the case brought her here. But it did so much more than that.”
Tanner felt the slightest give in the zip tie around his wrist. Would it be possible to work his hand out? He could feel his backup weapon still in his ankle holster, but had no way to get to it, restrained like this.
“Once I hacked into the Dallas PD system, I was able to see everything you all—and Bethany—were seeing. She was so busy trying to figure out how to follow the broadcasts, she didn’t even try to fortify her computer actions against possible outsiders.
So I was able to know exactly where Bethany was and what she was doing every minute.
It was quite refreshing, I tell you, to be following someone as brilliant as her. ”
Tanner let Jeter continue to monologue. Anything to buy him time to try to get his wrist loose.
“Plus, your case provided me with the ketamine I needed to knock you unconscious. And most important, it made me realize how I could get Bethany’s attention.”
“I thought you said you weren’t going to drown me.” Tanner kept trying to twist his wrist to loosen the zip tie but it wasn’t working.
“No.” Jeter asked, “Who has time for that sort of drama? No, I have a much better plan. I’m going to suffocate you.”
Suddenly the box Tanner was in seemed much smaller.
“I’ll add a little carbon monoxide to make sure the job is well and truly done, thus our stay at a restaurant—but yeah. I thought suffocating you would get Bethany here pretty damn quickly.”
“Bree is too smart to show up here just because you threaten her.”
“Well, that’s where the case comes in once again... How about some live footage of you dying? That’ll be pretty damn motivating for our girl, don’t you think?”
“YOU REALLY ARE brILLIANT,” Jeremy said as Bree finished showing him everything she’d done to track the killers. “I can’t believe you wrote that shell program to track number four in under ninety seconds.”
Bree shook her head. “Honestly, I can’t believe she fell for it. Obviously she must have been really upset or she would’ve quickly realized it was a trap.”
Of course, obviously she’d been really upset since she killed herself.
“Thank God it worked,” Jeremy muttered. “After all that, I can’t believe none of the victims died.”
“Except the first two,” Bree reminded him. “The ones that were never broadcast.”
“Penelope is concentrating on Rory Gresham for those two, since he was the ringleader. Looks like he was practicing on them. Making sure it would all work before he brought the others in.”
Bree stretched her back. “I hope she can get a confession out of him.”
Jeremy smiled and stood up. “If anyone can, it’s Penelope. And if she can’t, he’ll still be going away for a long time. At least four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.”
“I hope that’s a long time.”
Jeremy patted her shoulder with his nonburned hand. “I’m sorry I was a jerk to you before. If it wasn’t for you, all four of those women would be dead.”
She shrugged. “I got lucky for some of it.”
“Yeah, well, your luck is still based in skill. So just take the compliment. I hope we’ll get to work together again, Bree.”
Bree looked around after Jeremy went over to talk to Penelope, searching for Tanner. She hadn’t seen him since she’d started talking to Jeremy and that had to have been twenty or thirty... She looked at her phone. Crap. Make that two hours ago.
Maybe he’d gotten tired of waiting for her to finish with Jeremy and decided to grab some lunch or something.
“You looking for Tanner?” Whitaker walked over to her.
“Yeah. I had no idea Jeremy and I had been discussing my methods for two hours. Where’d Tanner go?”
“Um, he had some things he wanted to look into with the case.”
“Is there a problem? Oh, no, there aren’t more victims or anything, right?” The thought that she might have missed something ate at her.
“Oh, no, nothing like that. Actually I think this had to do with another case.”
“What other case?”
Whitaker looked down at his phone. “Look, you haven’t heard from Tanner? He texted me over an hour ago. He should be back here any second. I’m sure he’ll explain everything then.”
Bree’s eyes narrowed. “What would he need to explain, Richard? Where is he?”
Whitaker shifted on his feet. “I think it’s better if you hear it from him. I’m sure he’ll—”
Bree’s phone chirped in her hand. She looked down and saw a text from Tanner. She shooed Whitaker away with her hand. “You’re off the hook, poker face. I’ll get him to tell me what’s going on.”
“Good,” Whitaker muttered, and took off in a hurry.
I need something from you.
Bree’s brows furrowed at the message. Tanner usually started texts with a greeting when they hadn’t been around each other. She shot back one of her own.
Everything okay? What do you need?
I need you to sit down at the air gap system and make sure no one is paying attention to you.
Bree froze and stared down at the phone in her hand. If she’d had to have guessed she would’ve said that Tanner wouldn’t even have known what an air gap computer system was, much less that they had one here. It was an internal system, not connected to the internet.
Are you there?
The terse words had her moving quickly to the terminal. Tanner needed something from her and if she could give it, she would. She could ask questions later.
A few seconds later she was in front of the system, using the DOS operating function to get to a workable spot on the computer. She typed back on her phone.
Okay, I’m on. What do you need?
She waited, but nothing came back up on her phone. Finally a near-silent beep on the computer itself got her attention.
And two tiny words.
Hello, Bethany.