Mike Omer - In the Darkness

“Yes,” Zoe said. “Originally, we assumed the killer picked his target and then stalked her house, waiting for her to go out. That way, he could grab her just as she was coming home, late at night, with no witnesses to see.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What if he isn’t stalking one target? What if he has a selection of targets that he found via social media? Probably mostly through Instagram. He checks out those girls’ profiles, and when they post online that they’re going out or tag themselves out of home, he knows he has a window of opportunity. That’s when he goes to their home and waits for them.”

“Does that check out with the profiles of Maribel Howe and Nicole Medina?”

“Yes,” Lyons answered instantly before Zoe could. “Maribel posted she was going to see a movie, and Nicole tagged herself at the party.”

“And both profiles are public,” Zoe said.

“Hmm. In the original scenario, I assumed he followed the girls to their home, which is how he knew their address. How does he know where they live if he just found them online?”

“There are a bunch of ways to find out addresses,” Tatum answered. “In Nicole’s case, she constantly tagged her location when she posted photos, so all he had to do was follow the location of the pictures she took at home.”

“Maribel Howe was a bit more careful,” Zoe said. “She never actively posted her location. But she did use Musical.ly.”

“I’m a bit slow when it comes to the social media networks,” Foster said. “What exactly is Musical.ly?”

“It’s a social media app for people who post themselves singing,” Tatum replied. “Mostly teens, but they have some older users. And Musical.ly posts have the location of the user by default. The majority of users don’t even realize it’s there.”

“Maribel’s Musical.ly and Instagram profiles are connected,” Zoe said. “Anyone could find her address in less than five minutes.”

Foster sighed heavily. “That definitely sounds plausible. What do we do about it?”

Zoe’s phone rang. It was Harry. He probably wanted to talk to her about the article. She declined the call, resolving to return it in five minutes.

“We can canvass the local users of social media and warn potential users, for one,” Tatum said.

“We can create a bait,” Zoe said.

“Zoe and I discussed this last night. I’m not a fan of the bait idea,” Tatum said.

“I’ve done it before.”

“And you said the girl almost got killed.”

“Because the people monitoring her were inept. In this case, it would work.”

Foster interrupted them. “Tell me more about the bait idea.”

Zoe nodded. “Well, we need to create—” Her phone rang again. Harry. She sighed. “Hang on—this might be important.”

She answered the call. “Harry? You’re awake early on Sunday mor—”

“I got another email.” Harry’s voice was edgy, tense. Completely unlike the annoying man she knew.

She frowned. “What does it—”

“It just says, ‘Maybe this will make you think.’ And there’s a link. A third video.”

Foster’s phone rang, making Zoe jump. He answered. “Foster. Slow down, what?”

“What video?” Zoe asked Harry urgently.

“A third girl. I’m sending you the link now.” He hung up.

Her phone blipped with the video link. She clicked it, and the familiar website layout appeared on-screen. Schrodinger. “Experiment Number Three.”

And then the video started. A girl in a tight space, her mouth gagged, yelling hysterically.

“Dispatch just got a phone call from the mother of a girl named Juliet Beach,” Foster said. “She couldn’t get Juliet on the phone this morning, so she went to her home and saw a spatter of blood in the—” He paused and stared at Zoe, her phone in hand.

She showed him the phone’s screen. “Just got it from Harry, the journalist.”

Lyons was already tapping on her own phone. After a second, she showed them the screen—Juliet Beach’s Instagram page. “It’s her. Last post from yesterday evening. She went to celebrate her birthday.”

“Then this is recent,” Foster said. “Maybe even live.”

They all crowded around Zoe’s phone, staring for a few seconds.

“Why is she gagged?” Lyons said. “The first girls weren’t gagged.”

“Because now that the killer’s methods are public, the victims know they’re being filmed. He doesn’t want the victim to say anything that might help us,” Zoe said.

“What’s that in the corner there?” Foster asked. “It looks like a box.”

Zoe saw what he pointed at. A small metallic box with a green inscription and a very familiar-looking icon.

Skull and bones denoting poison.

The map in the situation room seemed huge, the possible locations for the victim endless. Zoe surveyed it helplessly.

“I need that GPR out there as fast as possible,” Foster shouted into his phone. “Every minute counts!”

The GPR probably wouldn’t help anyway; they all knew that. If the victim was buried in Tulia soil, there would be too much clay for the radar to work.

Foster instructed dispatch to get hold of all the K-9 rescue dogs in the area and to ask for help from the Abilene and Midland police forces as well.

“State police too!” Foster told her, phone still to his ear. “I want every damn dog here looking for that girl.”

Tatum talked to Shelton, outlining the email to Harry, the website, the cellular feed, Juliet’s Instagram feed visitors. A plethora of digital footprints that could potentially lead them to the girl. Or not.

The three-phone conversation intermingled into a shouting match, and Zoe found it hard to concentrate. Where could the girl be?

“That box with the girl.” Foster was by her side, talking quietly. “It’s acid, right? Just like the physicist said. The bastard’s third experiment has acid.”

Zoe bit her lower lip. “It’s . . . possible. But I think it’s unlikely.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s not what turns him on. He clearly enjoys burying women alive, letting them suffocate to death. Exposing her to acid would be too far from his preference. It would require a higher engineering ability than what he’s demonstrated so far.”

“So . . . what is it?”

“It’s a prop,” Zoe said, trying to feel certain. “That’s all.”

“Are you—”

“The feed stopped,” Tatum suddenly said. “The girl’s gone.”

“Already?” Foster rushed to the screen. “It’s barely been fifteen minutes.”

But Tatum was right. The girl was gone, replaced by a black screen.

He sat in the basement, a small smile on his lips, watching the girl as she struggled, tears running down her face. She was the best so far. He’d chosen well. The one thing he couldn’t tell beforehand when picking his victims was how they’d react in the box. It was hardly something people posted on their profile. But she was perfect. The screams, the struggles, the helpless wide eyes.

The gag and the bound hands turned out to be an improvement as well. He’d never contemplated using them before, but it definitely made the struggles more . . . desperate.

“You really need some time to think,” he whispered to the girl on the screen.

The toggle button underneath the video was marked offline. He hesitated. Long enough?

Let’s give them a few more seconds.

He drank from his glass of water, hummed a catchy tune he’d heard on the radio a few days ago.

Okay. Long enough.

He clicked the toggle button. Online.

“It’s back!” Lyons shouted.

The girl was back on-screen.

“He seems to be having technical problems,” Foster said. He was on the phone again with dispatch, coordinating the patrol vehicles on the way to Juliet’s home, to her mother’s home, to talk to the friends she’d met with the night before.