She noticed Wade watching her and jerked her thumb at him. “He took me through it three more times while you and Breck were busy.” She waved Kent’s concern away. “I’m getting numb to it.”
Which had probably been part of Wade’s plan. Inoculate her through repeated exposure while data mining her subconscious for every minuscule detail about her abduction.
“I’ve been thinking about the unsub’s odd word choice too,” Wade said. “You know who bestows things on people?”
“A king?” Breck said. She had just returned from the register at the far end of the room.
“An organization?” Kent offered.
Nina responded with the first thing that occurred to her. “A god.”
Wade lifted his beer in mock salute. “Exactly.”
Nina’s fingertips brushed her bare throat. “The god’s eye necklace. He kept it all those years. What does that mean? Does he think he’s a god?”
“Don’t have enough info to be certain,” Wade said. “He definitely wants to exercise ultimate power and control. His comments to the media today indicated as much.”
“Predators are all about control,” Kent said. “Part of their personality entertains grandiose notions of superiority, but another part has to dominate everyone around them in order to cover deep-seated feelings of inadequacy.”
“That’s a total contradiction,” Nina said.
“One of many reasons they’re not what you’d call well-adjusted folks.” Kent picked up a pretzel and examined it. “I believe the technical term is loony.”
“Some have childhoods involving parental abuse.” Wade’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “With this guy’s personality, I would suspect a father or father figure.”
“You dig through their skulls, and I dig through their hard drives,” Breck said. “I like my job better.”
“Speaking of which.” Nina turned to her. “I saw you in a huddle with the Cyber team this afternoon. You guys make any progress?”
“I need another beer for this.” Breck refilled her mug. “Apparently, the unsub loved that comment from the news anchor—you know, the one about how he’s as much of a cipher as the clues he leaves?” When they nodded, she curled her lip. “Now he’s calling himself the Cipher.”
“Plays into his ego,” Wade said. “He’s beyond understanding. A mystery.”
“Mystery.” Breck let out a derisive snort. “He’s nuttier than a squirrel turd.” She took a swig. “He set up social media accounts with an image of an ancient cipher scroll. It’s like he’s branding himself.”
“Which means he intends to keep this going,” Nina said.
“He’s getting a ton of followers,” Breck said. “Mostly they troll him, but there are also a few fans.”
Nina almost choked on her beer. “Fans?”
“He posted an image of the clue on his Facebook page and challenged people to solve it.” Breck took another sip. “Got a bunch of likes. In fact, people are forming teams and competing to see who can crack the code first. There’s a group from MIT that claims to have come up with several possible answers.”
Wade shook his head. “So now he’s got all kinds of people playing his game. Talking about him.”
“Can’t we subpoena the social media platforms to turn over his information?” Nina asked.
“We’ve already filed emergency subpoenas,” Breck said. “They’ll give us the data, but I’m not optimistic. He seems fairly tech savvy. No way he used his real name to set up his profile, and he probably found a way to hide his IP and location too.”
Kent cursed. “Then let’s shut him down.”
“No.” Wade’s voice was surprisingly sharp. “Every scrap of information we get about him, everything he posts, gives us a clearer picture of who he is.”
“He’s getting the public to interfere in our investigation,” Kent said. “What if someone solves that clue before we do? Our Crypto team is still working on it.”
“The last messages were aimed at Guerrera,” Wade said. “The next one will probably be more of the same. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.”
The table grew quiet. They were clearly waiting for her to weigh in. She had been the subject of the Cipher’s previous messages and the target of his threats. How did she feel about thousands, perhaps millions, of people playing a game with a man who wanted her dead?
She downed the rest of her beer. “If it will help catch him, I vote to leave the sites up and active.”
“This will continue to put more public attention on you,” Kent said. “And on the Bureau too.”
She understood the underlying message. Depending on how the case went, it might not go down well at the executive level. From its inception in the days of J. Edgar, all agents held one rule sacrosanct.
Don’t embarrass the Bureau.
Would that include having her name and her new nickname splashed all over the internet?
“We’ll need to present a united front to Buxton,” Breck said, obviously thinking along the same lines. “I gave him a quick briefing before he left the office. We’re keeping everything as it is until we hear back about the subpoenas, then he plans to shut the Cipher’s social media profiles down if we don’t have any investigative leads to follow. We’ve got everything in place to pull the plug, but I convinced him to wait. I agree with Wade, but for different reasons. The longer the Cipher interacts, the better chance we have of untangling whatever safeguards he’s installed to hide in cyberspace.”
Kent ran his finger around the rim of his mug. “I don’t like it, but I’m a team player. We’ll go to Buxton together tomorrow.” He leveled his deep-blue eyes on Nina’s. “This unsub has already hurt you so much. It feels like we’re giving him a lot of rope hoping he’ll hang himself. Too much rope, if you ask me.”
She gave him a slow nod of understanding. The Cipher was dangerous, and they had chosen to deliberately allow him access to a worldwide audience he desperately craved. Would it be worth the risk to give him extra rope, or would he take the slack and use it against them? More than anyone else alive, she knew what the monster could do with a length of rope.
Chapter 12
After precious little sleep, Nina’s morning routine was interrupted by the unexpected appearance of her next-door neighbor’s foster daughter. Nina opened her apartment door to find Bianca just outside, clutching a massive gray cat.
“I think you broke the internet,” Bianca said by way of greeting.
She turned a bleary-eyed gaze on the girl. “That cat’s starting to get a little too comfortable around here.”
“Seriously, you’ve got to see this,” Bianca said, pointedly ignoring the hint. She marched inside with the big tom draped over one shoulder and her cell phone in her free hand. “You’re blowing up every platform, and you’re at the top of every search engine.”
A teenage social media addict, Bianca spouted a rapid-fire stream of updates on the status of the growing public fascination with the killer, his secret codes, and the Warrior Girl, as Nina was coming to be known.