Nina’s mind raced through different possible outcomes. “That’s not a bad idea.” She paced across the room, thinking. “I’d have to convince Buxton first. He’s bound to think direct interaction will introduce another variable we can’t control.”
She considered enlisting Wade’s support and dismissed the idea. He seemed to be recalibrating his opinion of her during their after-hours discussion, but she sensed he was withholding final judgment.
“I say better you than the randos online,” Bianca said. “They’re making fun of him, calling him a freak or a moron. He gets pissed and snipes back at them.” She shook her head. “Stupid on all sides.”
Breck had mentioned the trolls. They must be getting to him. She considered what would happen if he got a direct message from the FBI. Would he engage? Would he repost for the world to see? A loud gasp drew her attention back to Bianca, who was looking down at her cell phone.
“They cracked the code.” Her eyes glinted as she glanced at Nina. “The MIT team. They figured out the message and posted the answer.”
Nina rushed to her side. “What does it say? How did they solve it?”
Bianca scrolled down with her finger. “They divided the numbers thirty-two, eighteen, ten, and thirty-six by two to get sixteen, nine, five, and eighteen. Swapping those numbers for letters of the alphabet, that spells P-I-E-R. The numbers were followed by the letters F and R. They figured the letters represented six and eighteen. Using the same logic, they divided those numbers by two, coming up with C and I. If you do the reverse of the first part of the message and exchange the letters for numbers, that makes three and nine. Put it all together, you get Pier Thirty-Nine.”
Nina crossed the room to retrieve her phone from the coffee table. “I wonder if the analysts solved it too. Where did those MIT students post the answer?”
“They put it on the Cipher’s Twitter feed in response to one of his tweets.” Bianca’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh no, oh no, no, no.”
“What?” Nina backtracked to peer over Bianca’s trembling shoulder.
“The Cipher posted a picture after their message,” Bianca said between her fingers.
Nina reached forward to tap the image, expanding it. The tiny screen showed a girl’s body floating facedown in murky water, blonde hair rippling out like a golden fan. A caption below the picture read TOO LATE, WARRIOR GIRL.
Nina’s phone buzzed in her hand. In a state of shock, she reflexively lifted it to her ear. “Agent Guerrera.”
Wade’s words came out in a terse baritone. “Pack a bag. We’re heading to San Francisco.”
Chapter 13
Nina turned her back to the crowd clustered behind the yellow tape. She felt the unsub watching her, his presence almost palpable through the heavy air redolent with the musk of nearby sea lions basking in the sun.
“We should be at the morgue where the body is,” Wade said. “I can get a lot more insight from observing what he did with the victim than I can getting gawked at by a gaggle of tourists.”
She felt raw and exposed after recounting her story with Wade in front of the team yesterday. A six-hour commercial flight crammed together in the back of the plane hadn’t helped. There had been no time alone with her new partner to establish the parameters of their working relationship in the field, and now a vague sense of tension permeated their interactions.
She was supposed to be there to offer her insight into the Cipher’s actions. Instead, she felt like one of many tools at Wade’s disposal. A useful resource. But she was more than that. She was a federal agent. He had his way of investigating and she had hers. He had clearly taken in everything he needed to see at the scene, but she hadn’t finished her assessment yet.
“I’m sure one of the San Francisco field office agents would be happy to take you to the ME’s office,” she said to him. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
His mouth flattened into a thin line. “All I’m saying is we’ve spent enough time here.”
“I’m a field agent.” Without the slightest concern that anyone might overhear, she planted herself directly in front of him and swept her arm out in a wide arc that encompassed the bay and the pier. “As in, out in the damn field.”
“You know that’s bullshit, Guerrera. BAU agents go out on cases too. I went to the scene in DC if you recall. We’re done here. If something else comes up, we can get info about it from the SFPD without continuing to make a spectacle of ourselves and feed the unsub’s ego.”
He might be the senior agent, but he could make mistakes like anyone else. “You missed the necklace and the spray paint on the dumpster in Georgetown. I don’t want to overlook anything here.” Point made, she turned away and strode to the edge of the pier where the blue-green water gently lapped against the sun-bleached planks.
The girl’s body had been tied to one of the chains holding the cluster of floating platforms loosely together. Nina surveyed the thick guano-strewn boards that formed an island in the San Francisco Bay. She couldn’t see an easy way to get to the pier itself, which was detached from the slips holding boats nearby to preserve a haven for the massive sunbathing sea lions. How had the Cipher done it?
She pivoted and walked back past Wade to the SFPD lieutenant who’d briefed her when she arrived twenty minutes earlier. “Lieutenant Spangler, what time did you say the victim was found?”
“About five this morning.”
“None of the tourist shops or restaurants were open then?”
He shook his balding head. “The only people in the area were boaters preparing to go out later and some of the folks who sell food in the open-air market on Fisherman’s Wharf. They set up their stands early.” He shooed a persistent seagull away with a wave of his hand. “We’re canvassing, but I doubt we’ll come up with anything. Our best bet is the boaters.”
“Is that how he would have had to get to the floating docks?” she asked. “There’s no direct access from the pier.”
“This is the most photographed pier in the country. It’s on a constant video feed. He must have known that.” Spangler jerked his chin at a row of yachts docked at a nearby wharf. “We figure he must’ve taken a dinghy from a slip and ferried that poor girl over here while it was still dark.” He hooked a thumb over his duty belt. “He’d have to be nuts to swim her over, what with the current and the sea lions and all.”
She followed his gaze. “Is the water always this choppy?”
“Pretty much.”
She thanked the lieutenant and strolled slowly back, scanning the docks, the crowd lining the pier, and the slip. What had he been thinking? Why had he chosen such a public place? Risked exposure? Unfortunately, the man who probably had the best chance of reading the Cipher’s intentions was standing a few yards away with his hands on his hips, glowering at her.
Undeterred by the resentment evident in his tense posture, she approached Wade with her next question. “In the photograph the unsub posted, the victim looked blonde. The report has her at about five eight. Way taller than me.”
Wade looked down at her. “From what we’ve been told, she’s nothing like you physically. That’s why I want to get a look at her in person and hear what they’ve dug up about her background. She must have something else in common with you. Whatever that point of convergence is will tell us a lot about him.”