“No!” Twelve-year-old Bethany tried to rush to her mother, but Jeter’s heavy hand on her shoulder wouldn’t let her move. He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Now, are you ready to concentrate, or do you want to continue to make excuses? I need your best, Bethany. Is your best good enough?”
She nodded.
“It’s time to think outside the box. If everything was simple, anyone could do it. The answer isn’t where you expect it.”
“I’m telling you, she’s done. I’m taking her home.”
Tanner was crouched beside her holding both of her hands in his, yelling at Penelope and Whitaker as Bree blinked her eyes open.
What the heck had just happened?
“Tanner?”
“Yeah, freckles, I’m here.” He smiled at her before turning to glare back at the people sitting at the conference table. “You need some rest and to get away from all this.”
She’d been having some sort of flashback. Everyone around the room was staring at her.
“No. I’m okay.”
Tanner shook his head. “No, you’re not okay. This is not your job, and pushing yourself this way isn’t healthy.”
She shook her head, sitting up straighter in the chair. “I can have a breakdown later, then. Right now we need to do whatever we have to do to get these women out.”
“Bree.” Tanner’s brown eyes were right in front of hers. “We all want to do our best, but there’s one thing that we’ve all had to learn the hard way. Sometimes our best isn’t good enough to save the victims.”
“But...”
He trailed a finger down her cheek. “You’re pushing yourself too hard if it’s causing you to black out and have flashbacks.”
“Tanner’s right, Bree,” Whitaker added. “About all of it. But especially about the fact that we can’t always save the victims. None of us like to talk about it, but it’s always a possibility.”
She shook her head. “No. My best is good enough. It’s time to think outside the box.”
As much as she even hated the thought of it, Jeter had been right. He’d been right then and he was right now. Bree was being weak. Not properly motivated.
These women were going todieif she couldn’t figure this out. Much worse than anything Jeter had ever done to her or her mother.
The answer isn’t where you expect it.
But where? Where was it? There was something she was missing. “I haven’t been looking in the right places.”
“What do you mean?” Penelope asked.
“These guys met online, so we’ve been focusing our search in clubs, classes, chat rooms from the last two years. They would’ve had to communicate regularly.”
Tanner stood beside her. “Yes, that’s true.”
“I’ve written half a dozen programs to look for key terms in any of those places. The people helping me have looked over it themselves. But we haven’t found anything. He just left us with so much information. It feels like it’s impossible to wade through it all.”
“That probably means something is there,” Tanner said.
She nodded. “You’re right. And it’s smart of him. It’s the best sort of camouflage he could’ve picked. He’s got hundreds of chat rooms about codes, engineering, patterns... And we haven’t found anything there.”
Penelope let out a sigh. “Maybe we need to talk to Elliot again. We won’t get much because of the lawyer, but maybe I can bring the DA in on this super quick. See if we can strike a deal if Elliot is willing to talk right now.”
Tanner shook his head. “That’s not going to be an easy process even if you have the DA on speed dial.”
“It’s like that little bastard said. It’s a chess game,” Whitaker said. “But we don’t even have all the pieces.”
