Connor showed his badge. “FBI. We need to ask you some questions.”

  “Me?” Gavin looked surprised. “What’s this about?”

  “It’s in connection with a case.”

  “A case?” He stared at them, frowning. At least he wasn’t slamming the door in their face. But he still seemed wary.

  “Can we come in?” Connor asked.

  Gavin hesitated for a moment before nodding and stepping back to let them in. Cami couldn’t help but notice the way his eyes flicked over her as she passed him, taking in her appearance with a strangely intimate stare, as if he was analyzing her vulnerabilities, just as if she was a profile on a dating site. She felt a sudden chill, wondering if he knew why they were really there, and had his strategy already in mind.

  Inside, the house was neat and tidy, with a minimalist decor that seemed to match Gavin’s reserved demeanor. This was not the kind of person who liked to make his home feel like a home. The table in the hall was bare of everything. They entered a sparsely furnished living room, with a large-screen TV and a sleek black couch. Cami took note of the stark, modern furnishings and the large computer setup on the desk. This was definitely a tech person’s house.

  “What are you here for?” Gavin asked.

  “We’re here because you’re a member on a local dating app,” Connor said. “Two women you interacted with have been murdered. We need to know when you last spoke to them, and also a few other pieces of information.”

  “Murdered?” Gavin’s voice was loud and shocked. Falsely so? It didn’t seem like real surprise, Cami thought.

  “Katie Minnett and Gracie Foster,” Connor said. “You remember the names?”

  Gavin’s face paled slightly as he nodded. “Yes, I remember them. I spoke to them a few times, but I never actually met them in person.”

  Cami found that hard to believe. Gavin had matched with both women on a dating app, who lived close by to him, and yet he hadn’t been interested enough to meet them in person? It didn’t make sense. Unless the only reason for connecting with them was that he planned to stalk them.

  “When was the last time you spoke to them?” Connor asked.

  Gavin paused, clearly thinking. “I never really spoke to them outside of the app. We messaged a few times on the app, and that was it. Katie and I were planning on meeting up, but then she stopped replying to my messages. I assumed she lost interest. I never tried to contact either of them again.”

  Cami wasn’t convinced by what he said. He was fidgeting now, and looking down. She was sure Connor thought his body language was a red flag, but how were they going to prove he was lying?

  There didn’t seem a way to find that proof. At least, not until she looked down at her phone.

  She’d gotten in! Her program had worked. Her theory that programmers were not cybersecurity specialists, and had more casual attitudes, had proved to be correct. She felt a thrill of excitement that her app had managed to bypass the fairly basic security that he had in place. Now, she had a route through to his computer. What could she find there? She didn’t see the dating app on his laptop. Would there be anything in his emails?

  Unobtrusively, hoping that Connor would keep him talking, she scrolled through the emails, wondering if there was anything to find.

  There were reams of work-related emails, so many that she began wondering if this was a total waste of time, because she didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. It seemed like all Gavin used his computer for was work.

  Although, what was this folder here? This sub-folder? Perhaps this was where he kept his private emails.

  Cami clicked on it and went inside.

  Immediately, her eyes widened. Gavin was lying. The emails proved it.

  Time to drop the bombshell and see what happened.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I never really had anything to do with those two women,” Gavin Brandon repeated to Connor, but now Cami felt as if every lying word was hammering the nails deeper into his coffin.

  “Actually, you did,” she said, deciding to interrupt him there and then.

  He swung around and this time, she saw the aggression in his face, visible for the first time, carefully concealed until now.

  “What do you mean?” he asked in threatening tones.

  “You know, don’t you? That you’ve been sending them messages with explicit content? Invitations and then threats?” she said, feeling a flare of pride, because her software had worked better than she’d thought it would. And faster, too.

  “How do you know that?” He made a grab for her phone but she twisted away, and a moment later, somehow, Connor was standing beside Gavin and holding his arm firmly. He’d moved so fast that she hadn’t even seen him until he was there. He’d clearly been prepared for Gavin to try to grab the phone.

  “I did some research as we spoke,” she said cagily. “It’s true, isn’t it? You were emailing both Katie and Gracie repeatedly. You continued doing that for weeks after they stopped replying. And you were depicting some pretty dark fantasies.”

  Gavin’s face contorted, and Cami could see the fear in his eyes. She had him trapped. He hadn’t thought anyone would know about that secret email folder that her digging had produced. Now it was clear that she knew, although she hadn’t said how. But the knowledge was enough. Maybe he assumed she’d accessed the victims’ emails and got the information from there. She could do that if she needed to. The messages would probably be long deleted, but now that she knew about them, she could track them down, find fragments of them, and piece together enough to provide proof from that side.

  “You’re lying,” he said, but his voice was wobbly as he fell into a chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It seems you were obsessed with both women and that you were fantasizing about hurting them and humiliating them. I think Gracie must have blocked you, and I see here that Kate threatened you with legal action. Then you backed off. But maybe you didn’t. Maybe you found another way to get to them.”

  Gavin’s gaze darted back and forth between Connor and Cami, and Cami could see his panic growing with each passing moment. He looked like a cornered animal, and Cami knew that he was capable of doing something drastic if he felt like his back was against the wall.

  “Did you back off?” Connor asked sharply.

  For a moment, the air seemed to smolder as if it was about to ignite, and Cami tensed. She saw something in Gavin, something disturbing. She worried that he was going to try something violent, that he was going to leap up from that seat opposite Connor and try to strangle him, or that he was going to attack her.

  The intent was there. Visible. Tangible. She could see it in the movement of his eyes, the way his legs braced against the floor. And the way that Connor subtly shifted his weight, ready to react instantly to anything this man might do.

  And then, with a visible effort, Gavin bunched his fists, digging them into the chair cushion. He shifted his feet on the floor. He took a deep breath. It felt like curls of smoke were wisping into the air.

  She knew for sure that this man had a violent side. The emails had proved it. But now, he was exerting self-control.

  They had caught Gavin in a lie, but they had also seen a glimpse of his inner demons. Cami wondered how many other women had been on the receiving end of his twisted fantasies.

  Gavin stared at Cami, then glanced at Connor, and then he let out a deep sigh.

  “Okay, you got me,” he said, his voice low. “I took it further than I should have. But I never would have hurt them. It was all just a fantasy. I let my fantasies out that way and I admit I lost control for a while.”

  Cami wasn’t convinced. She had seen the dark depths of his imagination in those emails. She knew he had crossed a line, and the fact that he had kept his violent fantasies hidden away in a secret folder only confirmed it.

  Connor leaned forward, his eyes narrowing as he studied Gavin.

  “You’ve been in contact with both victims. And now they’re both dead. We need some answers from you about your whereabouts at the time of the crimes. Talk me through your movements last night.”

  “Last night?” Gavin looked wary.

  “From about six p.m. onward,” Connor said.

  “I was here. At home.”

  Connor stared at him. “Alone?”

  “Alone,” Gavin said. Now his jaw was clenching. He looked scared.

  “Anyone able to account for your time?”

  “I was working,” he said. “Look, I know this seems bad for me. You probably think I’m some kind of psycho. I swear I’m not, although I can see how it might look that way. But really—just because I sent a few damned emails?” His voice rose incredulously. But Connor stayed calm.

  “Can you account for your time? Were you communicating with anyone?”

  Only now did Cami see his tightly bunched fists start to relax.

  “I guess I can do that. I had a big project that I was working on all night. For a client in Korea. We were communicating the whole night, testing it out. I’ve got the message thread, and I’ve got all the tests we did.” He stared at Cami. “If you know IT, you’ll be able to follow the track.”

  “Show me,” she said.

  “Here. Take a look.”

  He got up and strode over to the state-of-the-art laptop on the dining room table.

  “Wait a minute.” Connor held up his hand. “Cami, you look at that record. Mr. Brandon, we’re going for a walk.”

  “Where?” Apprehension was now visible in Gavin’s eyes.

  “You’re going to show me around your house,” Connor said. “Come with me. I want to see what’s in here, what you’ve got in your rooms.”

  In this neighborhood, with its hodgepodge of apartment buildings, warehouses, and dilapidated homes, it might be easy to keep someone imprisoned if you had a soundproof room. This didn’t seem like the kind of area where people would hear, or would ask questions if they did. So she guessed Connor was going to check for any hiding places, and in the meantime, she needed to confirm that Gavin really had been programming all night.

  She hadn’t known what to expect, but as she sat down at the laptop and started going through the message thread, she saw that he wasn’t lying. The messages went back and forth for hours, with Gavin sending code and the client responding with feedback. They had run a few tests and fixed a few bugs. It was clear from the thread that Gavin had been working hard on the project from about five p.m. until about two a.m. There hadn’t been a window of time where he could have gone out and dumped a body. Not with what she was seeing here. There hadn’t been twenty minutes to spare. And she double-checked the IP address that the messages had been sent from.

  It was this one. He hadn’t gone elsewhere with his laptop, but had in fact been working here.

  Footsteps sounded behind her. Connor was returning, with Gavin walking behind him. Connor’s face was inscrutable but he gave Cami a quick nod that told her the house was cleared, and he’d found no soundproofed rooms or subterranean hiding places.

  “I’m happy with what I see here,” Cami said.

  “You’d better not have messed up my coding,” Gavin said, the threatening note now simmering in his voice again as his confidence returned.

  “I didn’t touch your coding,” Cami retorted. “Why would I do that?”

  “We’ll leave now,” Connor said loudly, seeing that tensions were still running high and a tech-related argument was about to break out. “But I must warn you, Mr. Brandon, you’re treading a fine line here. You could have gotten into big trouble from sending those emails. Cross that line again, and things could go badly for you.”

  Gavin stared at him, clearly not appreciating the advice.

  “You’ve cleared me. I’ll live my own life, thank you,” he said defiantly, and Connor shrugged.

  “Your choice,” he said.

  As they left, Cami decided that this visit had not been totally fruitless. They might have cleared Gavin, but she thought that he’d given them a window into the killer’s thinking. The way Gavin obsessively emailed the women, forcing them to be subjected to his dark, twisted fantasies, yet perceived himself as the innocent party, was a mindset that must be shared by the man they were hunting.

  But the hunt was futile so far, and this lead had fizzled out. And worse was to come.

  As they left Gavin’s house and approached the car, Connor’s phone rang.

  He picked up, his voice sharp.

  “Yes?” he said. “Yes, go on, put me through.” He paused, and then he gripped the phone tighter as he spoke the words Cami dreaded.

  “Another body? Where?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “You were a challenge! What a challenge you were!”

  Breathing hard, the killer forced the woman’s limp arm into the shirt sleeve.

  “You will wear this, even if I have to make you!”

  This last victim, the one he’d taken last night, had surprised him. He’d thought her spirit was broken. She’d been in tears, compliant, submitting to his will. But when he came back to taunt her one last time about the outfit she was wearing, before he came in and killed her, he realized that she’d gotten a whole lot more fighting spirit. In fact, she’d proved to be a wildcat.

  She’d stripped off the men’s clothing and replaced it with her own, and then she’d refused to put the men’s clothing back on. He needed her to! He had to kill the old him, the person he’d used to be.

  And he’d gotten angry with her. He’d become impatient, then furious. And then he had stormed into the room where he held her, deciding that he would murder her there and then. He had lost control, a control that he knew he held onto only by a thin thread, as he yelled and screamed and threatened.

  He had seen something in her eyes. Defiance, yes. But also a kind of resignation. She had known, as he did, that he was going to kill her regardless of whether or not she followed his twisted rules.

  And that had made him pause. For a moment, he had seen himself from her eyes. He had seen the monster he was, the kind of man who killed women and forced their bodies into clothing that didn’t belong to them.

  It had frightened him. And in that moment of vulnerability, the woman had struck, getting her hands around his throat.

  He coughed. His throat was damaged. He was still hoarse from the attack.

  He had managed to overpower her, but it had taken all his strength, and of course, he’d had to kill her. His rage, his anxiety, had reached a crescendo and he’d known there was no turning back. And now, as he forced her limp arm into the tattered sleeve of the men’s shirt, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of grudging respect for her. She had been a worthy adversary, but she had lost in the end.

  “What did you think would happen?” he gently mocked her. It was easy to do that now that she was dead, but it had been too soon. Why had he lost control for those crucial moments when she was alive? Why couldn’t he have had a better grip on himself?

  He deserved his hoarse throat and the scratches on his arms. Long sleeves would cover them. There was a nick on his face as well.

  “I had no choice but to kill you. You didn’t give me a choice.” The anger surged again, but this time, it was woven through with self-pity. He was sorry for himself, he realized. Sorry that he’d been hurt, and sorry that he’d been unable to give this victim as much time as he’d craved. He’d wanted to watch her suffering for longer. She’d robbed him of that pleasure, defied him in the end, but of course, the blame lay with him, too. He couldn’t deny it.

  “You lost your temper!” Now, as he carefully slipped her foot into one of the scuffed, steel-capped shoes, he realized there was only one person to blame, only one worthy target of his anger, and that was himself. He could get mad at himself and nobody else.

  He laced the shoe carefully, checking his watch, feeling worried about the time. It was already getting light, and this was a risk, but he had to take it. He didn’t want her body cluttering up his room any longer. He needed to go out and get a new victim and this time, he was going to do it right.

  “You always swore you wouldn’t be like your mother,” he chastised himself. Although he usually kept those memories tightly locked away, he found them surfacing now, as he remembered those horrific punishments. The pain he’d felt at her hands as a child and a young teenager. The humiliation he’d endured. Her broad, impassive face was etched in his mind, framed by brown curly hair, her eyes as bright and evil as those of the devil himself.

  All he was doing now was trying to work through his issues. He had promised himself that. Just a few women, maybe four or five of them, to make up for what he had endured, to set the balance right.

  He’d grown up in a tough, abusive household. His mother had favored his older sister, and he’d always been the one to receive the brunt of her punishments. He’d been the one who’d been forced to wear cast-off clothing, old garments, who’d gotten bullied at school for his tattered jeans and his shoes with holes in the soles. And of course, he’d suffered his mother’s worst punishment and humiliation also, while his older sister had never been touched. He’d been locked away, left for hours without food or water, beaten and taunted.

  Sometimes his sister had come past too. He’d known her breathing and heard it.

  That door had been locked from the outside at all times when he was in there. His sister had never lifted a finger to open it. She’d never tried to help him.

  He remembered fighting the latch, breaking his fingernails trying to get the window open, knowing it was too heavy and stiff and that she would have jammed it from the outside so he couldn’t escape. But trying anyway. Trying because he had no other choice and maybe, just maybe, he’d find a way out.

  And now he was making his victims do the same, healing himself slowly.

  “The only problem is that it’s going to be more of a process than I thought,” he muttered. “I don’t think four or five victims will be enough. My temper is still too bad. I don’t have a handle on it yet.”

 

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