Elias #2
We'd spent months trying to recover that footage. County IT couldn't recover it. State cybercrime couldn't recover it.
The FBI's digital forensics division had officially logged the files as corrupted beyond repair after what they believed had been an electrical surge during the storm that rolled through that week.
The cameras hadn't failed; they'd been fucking stolen. Someone had copied every second before erasing them.
Clara appeared beneath the amber glow of the streetlamp, walking alone with her hands shoved deep inside the pockets of an oversized hoodie.
She looked exactly like every missing person's photograph we'd plastered across the county over the past two months.
Tired. Completely unaware that she had less than half a minute of freedom left.
Nothing seemed unusual. No one followed her, no suspicious vehicles, no movement in the tree line.
Then, almost lazily, a white delivery van rolled into frame.
No company logo or registration plates. Its headlights never flashed.
It simply coasted to a stop beside the utility pole as if it had rehearsed the parking angle a hundred times before.
The side door slid open. Four men stepped onto the road. Not one of them wasted a moment. They weren't frantic, violent. There was no shouting. No hesitation or confusion over who was responsible for what.
I knew disciplined movement when I saw it. I'd spent enough years wearing camouflage to recognize it instantly. This wasn't four criminals improvising. This was an extraction team.
The first man reached Clara before she'd fully registered, they were there. His hand locked around her upper arm with clinical precision, turning her body just enough for the second man to step into position. Something glinted beneath the streetlight.
A syringe.
He pressed it into the side of her neck. Four seconds. That was all it took. The fight left her body before it ever truly began. Her knees folded, shoulders slackened, head dropped forward as though someone had quietly switched her off.
The third man pulled a black canvas hood over her face while the fourth secured industrial zip ties around her wrists and ankles. Then, with practiced efficiency, two of them lifted her together and slid her into the back of the van.
No panic. No noise. No mistakes. The doors closed. The van pulled away. The timestamp stopped. Twenty-seven seconds. Twenty-seven seconds to erase a woman so completely that an entire department had spent two years trying to understand how she'd disappeared.
The screen faded to black. No one in the room spoke.
Then another video started automatically.
The second video ended and before anyone could say a word, another began.
A different street, a different night. The woman wasn't Clara. She was older. Dark hair. Red jacket. Walking home with grocery bags swinging gently against her legs. I recognized the intersection immediately. Maple Street. Four blocks from the sheriff's department.
Fuck.
I'd driven through that intersection a hundred times. Hell... I'd probably driven through it the next morning. The footage rolled without sound. The same white van appeared from the darkness as if it belonged there. The same four men climbed out.
They didn't hesitate. They didn't speak.
Every movement was rehearsed, economical, practiced to the point that they barely looked human.
One grabbed her arms before she could scream.
Another drove a syringe into the side of her neck with frightening precision.
By the time the needle came free, her knees were already buckling.
The other two worked with terrifying efficiency. A hood. Zip ties. The side door slid open. She disappeared inside.
Twenty-eight seconds.
The van pulled away, nothing else happened. Cars drove past less than a minute later. Life continued.
Like she'd never existed.
The next video started before I could process the first.
Another woman, another street still Blackridge. The streets I patrolled, the roads I knew better than my own damn house. One after another the recordings played across the monitor.
Elm Street. The old train crossing. Behind Miller's Pharmacy.
Outside St. Matthew's Church. The grocery store parking lot.
The abandoned feed warehouse. Places I'd stood, places I'd investigated, places I'd sworn I'd keep safe.
Each woman disappeared exactly the same way.
Different faces and clothes but same white van, men, syringe and same impossible precision.
By the sixth video I realized something that made my stomach knot. These weren't security recordings someone had managed to recover. These were originals.
Somebody had accessed the municipal surveillance system before every single file vanished from evidence. Somebody hadn't merely copied them. They'd preserved them.
Like they knew we'd never find them, like they intended for someone...to watch them later. The final recording faded to black.
Nobody spoke.
The evidence room felt impossibly still. I could hear the fluorescent lights humming overhead. I could hear Derek breathing behind me. Mason slowly removed his glasses, rubbing both hands over his face before looking back at the monitor.
"Holy fucking shit."
His voice barely carried across the room. Derek hadn't moved. His hand gripped the edge of the table so hard I thought the cheap plywood might split beneath his fingers.
"They were here," he whispered.
"They were all here."
I couldn't answer. My chest felt too tight. My mind kept replaying the intersections. The streets. The sidewalks. How many times had I driven right through those places? How many times had I unknowingly crossed the same asphalt where these women had taken their last free breath?
I dragged the timeline backward. Frame by frame. Something nagged at me. Something I'd almost missed. On the last recording just before the van doors slid shut one of the masked men stopped.
Not for long. Barely a second. He turned. Slowly. Deliberately. He looked directly into the camera. Not toward it.
Into it.
As though he already knew someone would eventually be sitting exactly where I was now.
Watching. Waiting. My skin went cold. The video ended.
The monitor turned black. Then suddenly letters began appearing across the screen one at a time.
No handwriting or smudged ink, just clean white text against a black background.
NOW YOU KNOW WHERE THEY WENT.
Silence settled over the room, then another line appeared, slower this time. As if whoever wrote it wanted me to read every single letter.
YOU'RE WELCOME.
I stared at the words until they blurred together. The mouse groaned beneath my grip. Plastic cracked. I hadn't even realized how hard I was squeezing. This wasn't a taunt. Taunts were emotional. This felt...professional.
Clinical.
The killer hadn't erased the evidence, he'd stolen it, protected it, archived it and then...he'd handed it to me.
Not Walker.
Not the FBI.
Not the state police.
Me.
The realization settled over me like ice water.
This wasn't random anymore, this wasn't just a killer leaving messages, whoever was behind this knew my name, knew my email, knew I'd be the one sitting in this room.
Watching these women disappear.
Only one question remained.
Why me? Why did this son of a bitch want me to see what nobody else was ever supposed to find?