“I’m strong. I want to do this. I can do this.”
He kissed her tenderly on the lips, just the softest of touches. “Good. Then let’s catch these bastards and go home. We’ve got our own lives to get on with.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Someone’s in the chat room.”
The command room fell completely silent at Bree’s words. Tanner didn’t move either. He knew the next few minutes were critical in getting the jump on the killers.
God, he couldn’t be any prouder of Bree and how she’d handled herself and kept it together over the past few hours if... Hell, he just couldn’t be any prouder.
The sooner he got the ring on this woman’s finger and had them bound to each other for the rest of their lives, the better.
The grin that spread on her face a few minutes later just confirmed it all for Tanner.
“I’ve got him,” she whispered. Once again, she rattled off an address.
“This isn’t like last time,” she said. “He’s logging in live, but it has nothing to do with his transmissions of the victim. That means he might log back out at any moment. And there’s no guarantee he’s logging in at the same place he’s keeping the victim.”
Tanner turned to her. “You’ve been studying their interactions. Do you think you could fool him into getting him to tell you where he’s holding her?”
“Maybe. But it might tip the others off. I could invite him into a private chat and see if I could get him to spill some details. I could act like I’m Elliot and I’m concerned about some mechanical or equipment issue.”
Tanner looked over at Penelope. This was her call. If they spooked this guy and caused him to go to ground, they may not get another chance. And she already didn’t trust Bree completely.
But Penelope nodded. “Do it. We’re out of time.”
Bree nodded. “I’ll coax him into a private chat, clone this chat room so he can no longer see the real version and pretend to be him to the other two.”
“That sounds a bit complicated,” Whitaker said.
“It is. It’s basically a shell game. We try to keep them distracted and our hands moving too fast for them to see what we’re really doing. It’s risky.”
“Risky is better than nothing,” Tanner said.
Bree didn’t waste any more time. She immediately turned back to her computer and started doing what she needed to. Penelope sent Whitaker and Leon out to the address Bree had provided them. Maybe they would get lucky and be able to tail the guy the old-fashioned way.
Tanner moved to sit down by Bree in a show of silent support.
“He took the bait,” she said a few minutes later, fingers still moving on the keyboard. “He’s going into a private chat. I can’t ask him questions outright, or he’ll get suspicious. But I can at least clone the other chat so that he’s locked out of that.”
“Instead of asking him questions about his location, can you ask him if he’s having problems with his water box? He doesn’t have to tell you where he is. Just get him to go to the location and log in from there.”
“You’re brilliant, Tanner Dempsey. He has no idea I’m tracing him.” She bit her lip. “Of course, if it was me, I’d already have multiple IDs with which I could log on. I’d never use the same one twice.”
“That’s why you’re the smartest hacker on the planet, and this guy is just a bastard trying to get his jollies by tormentingas many people as possible. He wasn’t expecting you. There’s a difference between thinking you’re the smartest person in the room and actuallybeingthe smartest person in the room.”
She typed rapidly. “I’m telling him that I’m Elliot and that I’ve been offline because I’m having a problem with the water box. That I’ve been manually filling it according to their calculations, but that I think there’s a flaw in the building plans.”
They waited a few seconds to see if their prey would fall for it.
He did.
“Okay, he’s logging out of the main chat room and logging into the private one. I’m cloning the private one so if he goes back in, unless he specifically looks to see if it’s a clone, he won’t realize anything has changed.”
“So Leon and Whitaker are free to pursue?”
“Yes, but they need to be careful not to spook him.”
