A yell at the front of the room caught their attention. The people at the computers were getting more frantic.
“What’s going on?” Tanner asked.
“Everybody’s on edge,” Whitaker said. “It’s almost time for the message. Every hour on the hour the bastard sends us some footage.”
Every hour on the hour. That was the first completely useful bit of information Bree had received.
Without waiting to hear anything else, Bree walked over to the computers. The people surrounding them were still talking all over each other, arguing about the best way to track the message that was coming in.
Bree just listened. Nothing coming out of their mouths was particularly complicated in terms of ideas on how to track the killer.
“Listen, people,” the guy sitting at the main console said. “If we could catch this guy with any of those methods we would’ve damn well done so long before now. If you don’t have something intelligent to say, then stand here quietly.”
The group grumbled but quieted. Bree might not like how the guy was talking to everyone else but she definitely had to admit he was right. None of the ways they were suggesting were particularly inspiring.
The guy pointed at Bree. “Who are you?”
“I’m just observing for the moment.”
“Great. Another useless person taking up space.”
Bree ignored him. She might be pretty hesitant when it came to a lot of things—beautiful blondes included—but her confidence in her knowledge of computers was secure. She could probably do more than everyone in this room combined. But she had no need to prove that to anyone.
Yet.
“How long do you think it will be this time?” the young woman next to her asked another woman sitting at a console.
“It was three and a half minutes last time. That was the longest so far. Maybe they will keep getting longer.”
“But the time before that was only fifteen seconds,” the first responded. “There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to his methods.”
A large digital clock on the wall beeped loudly and started counting down from thirty. Evidently the killer was punctual enough for them to set a clock to his transmissions.
Another good piece of information. That meant the footage was being sent on a computerized schedule, not just when the killer felt like it.
“Look alive, people,” Mean Guy said as he sat down at the main computer terminal. “Remember we’re still running all possible scenarios and solutions. Just because it didn’t work one time doesn’t mean it won’t work this time. Everybody do your job.”
Sure enough, right as the clock reached zero, every screen on the wall of monitors lit up.
The picture was just slightly blurry, enough to make it a little hazy. Bree wanted to ask if that was always the case, but didn’t want to interrupt anyone from the jobs they were trying to do. The broadcasting window was limited. She could ask questions later.
The picture wasn’t so blurry that you couldn’t see what was going on. There was a woman restrained in a long, thin box. It looked almost like a clear coffin. The woman in the box was shown from the neck down. Her head was completely out of the shot. There was nothing distinguishing about the box itself.
Water was dripping into the box at the woman’s feet in a regular, timed pattern. It had already filled a few inches of the container, but not enough to be very noticeable.
Something caught the woman’s attention because she immediately began sobbing.
“Please! Help me please. Can you hear me? Please help me!”
Bree realized Tanner was next to her when he muttered a curse under his breath.
Bree’s eyebrows furrowed. “Why does her voice sound funny?” she whispered to him.
“Bastard is using some sort of voice modulator.”
That didn’t make any sense to her, but neither did trapping a woman in some sort of coffin and slowly filling it up with water.
They had exactly twenty-three more seconds of the woman’s hysterical crying before the feed completely cut off.
