"How much longer?" I ask.
My father doesn't look up from the keyboard.
"Could be another day. Maybe two. The software has to cross-reference millions of faces. It takes time."
"We don't have time."
"We have as much time as we need." He finally meets my eyes. "Patience, son. The software will find him. And when it does, we'll have everything we need to move."
Patience.
He wants me to be patient.
While Ingrid is lying in my bed with broken ribs and a face she doesn't recognize.
While she wakes up screaming from nightmares every few hours.
While her ring—our ring—is in the hands of the man who beat her half to death.
"It's taking too long," I say. "Every minute he's out there, every hour we don't have a name?—"
"I know." My father's voice is steady. Calm. The voice of a man who's been through worse and came out the other side. "But rushing this doesn't help anyone. We find him the right way, we take him down the right way. That's how we make sure he pays."
I pace the small room.
Can't sit still.
"He thought we'd stop," I said quietly. "By hurting her. He thought we'd back off. Get scared. Fall in line."
My father's jaw tightens. "He thought wrong."
"He thought so fucking wrong." I stop pacing, meet my father's eyes. "This doesn't end with us backing off. This ends with war. He hurt my family. He hurt the woman I'm going to marry. And now?—"
The computer beeps.
We both freeze.
My father turns back to the screen, fingers flying over the keyboard. "We have a match."
I'm behind him in an instant, staring at the face that appears on the screen.
Him.
The man from the spa footage.
The man who beat Ingrid.
The man who took her ring.
Mid-forties.
Hard face.
Dead eyes.
The kind of face you'd pass on the street without a second glance.
The kind of face that hides monsters.
