She deliberately kept her tone brisk and playful, as if she had not been subjected to the worst public humiliation of her life a few hours earlier.
“Already done,” Bianca said, playing her part without missing a beat. “Saw your car outside. Came to check on you.”
“I don’t need a seventeen-year-old to make sure I’m okay.”
Bianca followed her into the kitchen. “Everyone in the building is talking about it.”
No point in pretending she didn’t understand. “I’ll bet they are.”
“It was all over campus too,” Bianca said. “People got freaked watching the video on their phones. Once my psych professor realized no one was paying attention in class, he decided to include it in today’s abnormal psychology lecture.”
Great. A professor at George Washington University had incorporated her into his curriculum. She pictured a lecture hall full of coeds scribbling notes as they analyzed the unsub’s mind, then decided it might be interesting to hear an academic’s take.
“What did he say?”
“Basically, he took an hour of our lives we will never get back to tell us the Cipher is a complete whack-a-doo.” Bianca shook her head. “Captain Obvious at the podium.”
She saw through the snark. Bianca was worried. She rested a hand on the girl’s slender shoulder. “We’ll get him, mi’ja.”
Bianca wasn’t the type to be comforted by platitudes. “Spoken like a true G-woman. The fan club would be proud.”
Nina narrowed her eyes. “Fan club?”
Bianca moved past her, opening the refrigerator door. “You know, a group of people who admire someone or what they do.”
“I know what a fan club is.” She walked to the fridge, reached an arm around Bianca, and slammed the door shut. “What aren’t you telling me, Bee?”
Bianca straightened. “Don’t use that interrogation crap on me. It won’t work.”
Nina continued to stare at her.
“And don’t look at me like that either.” Bianca rested a hand on her hip. “I know what you’re doing.”
Nina didn’t move. “Spill.”
Bianca studied her shoes. “Man, if they could see you now, half of them would drop you for the hot guy.”
“Wait, what hot guy?”
Bianca blew out a sigh redolent with all the frustration of a teenage genius forced to explain herself. Again. “Give me your laptop.”
Nina fetched the computer from the coffee table where she’d put it next to the living room sofa and placed it in Bianca’s outstretched hand.
“Look,” Bianca said, tapping on the keyboard. “Someone created a fan page and posted a roster for Team FBI.” She turned the laptop to face Nina. “People are voting for their favorite feebs.”
Appalled, Nina swiped her finger down the screen. Candid shots of raid-jacketed federal agents at various crime scenes scrolled by. “What the hell is this?”
“People got pictures of you and that old guy, Agent Wade, working the cases in DC, San Francisco, and Boston, so everyone knows you two are the lead investigators.”
“Old guy?”
“But in Boston, suddenly we get two other agents.” Bianca went on as if Nina hadn’t spoken. “A red-haired chick and a total hottie with a G.I. Joe haircut and glasses.”
“And you refer to them as Ginger and G-man Joe?”
“Not me,” Bianca said, overly innocent. “I didn’t come up with those nicknames.”
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Nina said. “Another ring added to the circus.”
Bianca tapped the screen. “No one knows who the tall black guy in the dark suit is either.”
“That would be Supervisory Special Agent Buxton. Our boss.”
“Got it.” Bianca handed her the computer and tugged a cell phone from her back pocket.
“Hold on. You’d better not be texting that out.”
“Me? No.”
Watching Bianca thumb-typing gave Nina a sneaking suspicion. “Who set up this FBI fan page?”
“No idea.”
Bianca’s tell. A reflexive knee-jerk denial with zero eye contact.
“It was you.” Nina jabbed a finger at her. “You and your friends.”
“Look, that psycho killer has a fan page,” Bianca said, full of attitude. “He gets a cool nickname. Everyone calls him the Cipher. The good guys should have all that too.”
She knew some serial killers attracted groupies but hadn’t heard about this new twist in the current investigation. “Where is the Cipher’s fan page?” She pushed the laptop back at Bianca. “Show me.”
Bianca stowed her phone away again and pulled up a website as Nina held the computer. Images of the clues and the videos popped up. She would refer the page to Cyber Crime. They might already be monitoring it, but she had to be sure.
She closed the laptop and looked at Bianca. “Some people are fascinated by violent criminals. Notorious murderers receive love letters and marriage proposals sent to them in prison by total strangers.”
“My psych professor called it hybristophilia.” Bianca curled her lip. “People with major issues who fall for psycho killers. I don’t get it.”
“Could you do me a favor and shut down your FBI fan page?”
Bianca went back to checking her cell phone, avoiding both Nina’s gaze and the question.
Nina crossed her arms. “Could you at least keep away from the investigation?”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, everyone on the planet is involved with this investigation. I thought you might appreciate it if someone did it for the right reasons.” Her voice broke. “I just can’t stand . . . what he did to you . . .”
Nina took a step toward her. “Bee, it’s okay, I—”
“It’s not okay,” Bianca said. “Nothing about this is okay. I don’t care what you say, there’s no way I’m going to stand by and let that asshole post more footage of him torturing you. Not if I can do something to help you guys find him.”
After a long silence, Nina laid the laptop on the kitchen table and sat down. Making a calculated decision about how much to share, she motioned for Bianca to sit in the chair across from her. “Our team is dissecting the video. We’ve already figured some things out that we didn’t know before. We’re going to stop him.”
“Before he carries out his promise to show more of that video?”
She swallowed the lump forming in her throat as she envisioned Bianca watching the next sixty seconds.
“Please leave it alone, Bee. I don’t want you looking at his feeds, reading his posts, or doing anything else that puts his poison in your head. Leave him to us. We’ll track him down.”
“You have a lot more faith in those feeb techies than I do.”
“They’re really good at what they do.”
“Yeah?” Bianca reached across the table to open the laptop. “Then how come they missed this?” She spun the screen to face her, tapped it several times, then angled it toward Nina. “I’m assuming you don’t know since you haven’t mentioned it.”