Reaper stood and shook Gabriel’s hand. “I’ll bring Whiskey around before you head to work in the morning. Thanks for letting her play tonight.”
Whiskey got a final good-bye scrub from Gabriel, then she trotted alongside Reaper as they left.
Gabriel shut the door and moved to his computer, pulling up the Mourning Notes feed. He started at the beginning and read and skimmed through every comment, looking for clues as he listened to the consistently thirty-second-long concerts.
From what could be seen of this woman’s image, it could well be Kate Hamilton. His mind flashed to Little Bird, and Gabriel scrubbed his knuckles into his eyes.Shit.
Focusing back on the feed, in no video was his face visible, nor was Whiskey easily seen until the very last one.
Four days ago, he was possibly identified; speculation began.
Three days ago, they were mentioning Whiskey’s name.
Two days ago, there was nothing posted.
Yesterday's post was just as problematic as the one that cited the newspaper article.
Gabriel had walked down to the church, then across the street to the witch cottage. The motion-detector lights turned on, and there he stood, staring at the camera.
Fear slicked through his system.
Then he looked at it more closely, with his FBI hat on.
Gabriel knew it was Whiskey and him, but could anyone else identify him?
His build? Yes.
His face? No.
The massive rose bush cast branches between him and the lens, along with a shadow. Even with his high-tech software, Gabriel wouldn’t be able to adjust the information to see his features.
And to test the theory, he put his picture into the system and tried to make himself emerge as recognizable, but failed.
The comments didn’t attach their name to him in this video. There were some flattering comments about his build, but otherwise the comments were mostly about the new song choice.
Next, Gabriel searched for the newspaper article Reaper mentioned to see what that photo looked like, hoping it would be grainy and distant.
There he was, kneeling next to Whiskey, a clear picture of his face. The photographer had made him look heroic, possibly by their choice of camera angle. That felt uncomfortable. He didn’t like to be advanced in that light.
It seemed egoistic or self-congratulatory or something, when, in reality, Gabriel ran at the end of the leash, then made a fire—nothing noteworthy at all.
This whole thing was stupid.
Gabriel pulled the videos up again to look at them through the lens of an FBI geolocator.
Using the comments made on the video that tagged Kate, Gabriel typed his name along with his brother’s name in the search bar. Instantly, he got his name, age, family members, Daniel’s obituary, and a complete list of places he’d lived in his life.
One of those addresses was his present house. The house he’d moved back to after his parents died.
Then he put that address into a map search and panned out a bit. There was the graveyard, the church, and the little cottage in the woods.
That honestly took him less than five minutes and could have been done by any middle school kid.
Gabriel looked up the street address for the cottage and went to public records.
A single name was on the deed: Sommer Hayes.
“Well, Sommer Hayes, it looks like we might just meet tonight.”
