Brantley nodded, tossing around that information. He figured they would have to work toward that as well if the governor gave them the heave-ho.
For the next half hour, they went on a tour of the various floors that housed Sniper 1’s finance, operations, and marketing teams, their IT department, technology division, bullpens for field agents, client-facing meeting areas, as well as the main offices of their executives, including RT and Z.
While Brantley admired all they’d built, he could never see himself sitting at a desk in some fancy high-rise building. He wanted to be where the action was.
“So where’s the testing floor?” Brantley inquired when they’d stopped in one of the many oversized conference rooms.
“Testing?” RT asked, glancing over at Z, who in turn looked at Reese.
“That’s his polite way of sayin’ he wants to see your secret spy toys.”
Z’s eyes lit up with amusement.
“Don’t bother tellin’ me that’s a myth,” Brantley told RT. “Your husband’s notorious for sharin’ his toys with us.”
RT glanced over at Z, clearly not in the loop on the sharing.
“What?” Z shrugged his enormous shoulders. “They needed stuff. We’ve got stuff.”
RT sighed.
“Why don’t you be a bit more specific on what you’re lookin’ for,” Reese suggested, nudging Brantley with his arm.
“I want to find Juliet Prince,” he stated, all humor gone.
“She’s the woman who kidnapped your cousin’s daughter, right?”
Brantley nodded. “JJ’s runnin’ software to track her, but so far we’ve got nothin’. The couple of leads it’s generated were bogus, so I’m not exactly confident we’re goin’ about it the right way.”
RT seemed to consider that before he spoke. “While we’ve taken on a few high-profile cases in the past, we don’t usually search for people. I wish I could tell you we had somethin’ that’ll give you her exact location at this very moment, but we’re not that good.”
“No one’s that good,” Z added.
RT shared a look with Z, then sighed again when Z nodded.
“Fine,” RT huffed softly, then peered over at Brantley. “We have been playin’ with some new software and algorithms related to facial recognition that might get you closer to findin’ her.”
“Facial recognition software’s not a new development,” Reese stated.
“Correct.” RT looked between them. “However, we’ve got teams workin’ to develop and refine a variety of options out there. While most facial recognition software already identifies matches based on a number of markers, such as distance between the eyes, height of the ears, compared to what’s in a database, we’re lookin’ to implement it against live feeds.”
“Big brother,” Reese noted.
“To a degree, yes.” It was obvious RT wasn’t too happy admitting that. “But it’s only as good as the data we can compare it to, so the more live feeds we have, the better off we are.”
“Which means we’re in bed with the government,” Z added quickly.
“In a sense,” RT said, shaking his head at Z’s outburst. “We’re also workin’ with various companies, like those who design the doorbells and personal security systems, to partner. If we can have access to their feeds, we’ll be able to get eyes everywhere. But the software is proprietary, and we intend to keep it that way.”
Brantley understood. However, he also understood the need for more information. Information the government and some businesses already compiled and maintained. When it came to looking for a missing child, Brantley would pull out all the stops. He didn’t give a shit what avenue they had to pursue as long as it brought that child back safely to their parents.
The same could be said for catching a crazed woman who had no qualms kidnapping a child in order to dole out punishment for a perceived slight.
“I’ll take whatever you’ve got,” Brantley told RT. “Every time we think we’ve got a bead on her, she’s not there.”
“Doesn’t mean she wasn’t,” Reese said. “We’re just not fast enough.”
Brantley wasn’t so optimistic in his thinking. There was nothing they’d uncovered that proved to him they’d been close to finding Juliet Prince since she abandoned Kate in a run-down house in Mississippi back in September, just two days after she abducted her. The leads they’d gotten had come from across the country, and while Juliet seemed quite adept at lying low, he didn’t believe she was blazing a path across the US. If she was, she wasn’t flying, because they had managed to pull some strings and get her on the TSA’s no-fly list.
