Page 18 of Just Now

It had been the result of a tip-off that he’d gotten from a colleague two days ago. The chitchat at the water cooler was that Cami Lark was digging into something that wasn’t her business. That she’d been researching things within the FBI—and outside of it—that she shouldn’t have been.

Connor was tracing it back to find out who knew. He was disturbed by this. Ethan had been shot when trying to find out—something. Who knew what? And now the word was that Cami was onto something, too.

Connor was concerned for her, and worried about what she might uncover. He didn’t know what the hell was going on at the FBI, but he suspected that there was some kind of opposing agenda buried deep. An agenda followed by people who wouldn’t hesitate to kill.

He didn’t want Cami in danger, but so far, she was stubbornly refusing to tell him what she was doing.

He glanced at her as they got into the car.

Cami was looking straight ahead, her expression blank. Connor didn’t know what was going through her mind, but he hoped that she was streetwise enough to know when to back off. Damn it, she was a good kid. Whip-smart and brave, and he’d lost one of his good people just a few weeks ago. He didn’t want her to suffer Ethan’s fate, but wanted to keep her safe and out of trouble. Even though he’d already seen, multiple times, that she had a nose for trouble and wasn’t scared to dive into a potentially problematic situation.

And he was going to confront her about it before this case was over. But not now. This would be the wrong time, because they’d uncovered an important lead, and this was something they needed to take forward.

“So, the clothing,” he said. “Why is he forcing these women to wear old, cheap men’s clothing? Does it mean something to him? Why would he do that before he killed them? I’m wondering if there’s some kind of ritual humiliation involved, maybe a fetish that he has for doing such things, that he’s now taking further. And with that in mind, maybe they met beforehand? Maybe he connected with these women and wanted to take things further in that direction and they didn’t, or they backed off, and so he tracked them down again?”

“You mean, at a club?” Cami said. She was frowning. He could see she didn’t buy his theory that the women might have been part of an underground scene like that, or at least dabbled in it. But one thing that decades of being an investigator had taught him was that people could always surprise you. Always.

Never, ever rule out a theory, however wild, without checking. And that was what they were going to do now.

“At a club or on a website. We have to look at every possibility.”

They needed to head back to the police station where they’d been working earlier, where the phones were locked away in that tiny office. Heading there as fast as possible, he drove into the parking lot purposefully.

“Let’s hole up here for a while and check out the theories that might fit,” he said.

They headed inside. Connor showed his ID and the officer in the lobby gave them the key to their cubicle-sized room. It was quiet at this hour. That was good, Connor knew. Middle of the day, police needed to be out and about. Boots on the ground solved most crimes, in his experience. But right now, good old-fashioned research, possibly combined with some modern hacking, might make better headway in this.

Cami pulled out her laptop and began typing away, delving into the dark corners of the internet that she knew so well. Connor paced the room, his mind racing with possibilities.

“So, how about fetish sites?” he decided.

He moved over to his laptop, picking at the keyboard in a way that he knew amused Cami, or maybe frustrated her. At any rate, she was lightning fast, and before he’d even gotten the words out, her fingers were whirring.

He hadn’t even gotten as far as typing the whole word into his search bar before she nodded.

“I’ve got one here. It’s the main specialized site in the Boston area for fetishes, humiliation, BDSM, and so forth. There are a couple of tiny ones that I’m also seeing, but they’re more like exclusive private groups.”

“What does the main site tell you?” he asked.

“It’s got a few hundred subscribers that I can see,” Cami told him.

“Search for the two victims. Go back a few months if you need to. If they’re on there, even under a fake name, then they were into the scene and we can explore it further. If not, then we look elsewhere, try different sites. Maybe he was into that and they weren’t, but there might still be a dating link.”

Cami nodded. “I’m guessing they would have used fake names if they were on this site, particularly a lawyer. It seems like everyone uses a fake name here. It’s the norm. I’m going to do a specialized location search and also a facial recognition search within the site to see if I can pick anything up. I’ve got a program on my laptop that can help with that.”

Connor waited. He remembered that a couple of months ago he would have felt highly dubious about the process. Now he knew she could do it faster than anyone else, and that if something was there to be found, she’d find it.

But after a few focused minutes, she shook her head. “I’m not finding anything,” she said. “I don’t see any sign that they were on a site like this. I’ll double-check on their phones to be sure.”

“Okay. Let’s look at the normal dating sites then. Let’s go on the assumption that they weren’t into this but that he might have gotten into it or be somehow obsessed by it, and that he decided to suggest this to his dates. We must remember that somehow, he found out where both of them lived. So there has to be a connection to be made. Somehow, he got to know who they were, their addresses, and it’s significant that they lived alone. Dating sites would be a good source of single people. Generally, at least.”

Cami nodded and began to search through the city’s various dating sites and apps. It was a tedious process, but he knew that they had to be thorough in their search.He did the same also, knowing he’d be slower, but that he still had to try.

“I’m finding one here that they both used,” Cami said. She reached for the two phones. “Kate used it a couple of months ago. Gracie used it earlier this year. I can’t see from the site itself whether they matched up with the same person at all, but I think I might be able to do that on their phones.” As she started work, she glanced up at Connor again.

Connor felt his focus sharpen. He could see immediately that this was a strong lead, and he held his breath as Cami worked. Let there be someone in common, he pleaded with himself. Let there be someone in common.

After a few moments, Cami let out an excited gasp. “Got it,” she said. “I’ve checked their phones and accessed their messages on this site. They both matched with the same guy. Can you believe it?”

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