Page 28

The forest was growing darker by the minute, shadows lengthening between the trees like fingers pulling in the night. The autumn wind rustled through the canopy overhead, carrying with it the musty scent of decomposing leaves and damp earth. Rachel stood at the hood of Wheeler's truck, studying the paper map spread out before them. Wheeler had gone to the glove compartment of his truck to retrieve it when he’d ended his phone call. There was a slight sliver of daylight remaining, but it was too dark to see by, so Wheeler had also produced a Maglite from his truck as well. They looked over the map by its white glare.

"Look at this pattern," Wheeler said, taking a pen out of the breast pocket of his shirt. He circled each location where they'd found the suicide pods, including the one just a few feet beside them. The sound of his pen scratching against the paper was eerie in the approaching night. "Here, here, and here."

Novak leaned in closer, his breath visible in the cooling air. "That's roughly fifty miles across," he said, measuring with his fingers. "At least he's keeping it contained."

“Makes sense, I suppose,” Rachel said. “All this wilderness…it’s a gold mine of hiding spots if you know the area well.”

“And apparently, this guy does,” Wheeler says. “These old roads he’s using…some are logging roads that haven’t been touched by a tire in ten years or more.”

“Maybe he’s a hunter?” Novak suggested. “Deer hunters would know these old dirt roads, right?”

“Maybe,” Wheeler said. “We can—”

His phone chirped, interrupting him. The screen illuminated his face in the growing darkness. "It's Ed," he announced, answering the call and tapping the speaker icon. "Damn, Ed... that was less than twenty minutes."

"Keep that in mind when I ask you to put in a good word for me with the captain," Ed's voice crackled through the speaker, tired but satisfied. "You're not going to believe what I found."

Rachel's pulse quickened. "What did you get?"

"These pods are all networked. All of them. Bradley's got them running on some kind of proprietary software system. From what I can tell, it's primarily for location tracking and status monitoring."

Novak straightened up. "Status monitoring?"

"Yeah," Ed continued. "He can see if they're operational, on standby, or if there's been any kind of malfunction. Saves him the trouble of having to check on them all the time. It's sophisticated stuff – definitely not amateur hour."

Rachel's mind raced through the implications. Bradley wasn't just placing death machines in the wilderness; he was maintaining them, monitoring them. It was actually brilliant. Rather than drop one pod off for each murder, he had likely hidden them all away at once and left them there…waiting to be powered up from a remote location.

"Can you see where the other pods are located from that network?" she asked, trying to keep the urgency out of her voice.

There was a pause on the line, filled only by the sound of Ed's typing. "I've got a location on one more pod. Just one."

"Just one?" Rachel exchanged glances with Novak. Based on all they knew, there was supposed to be two more…if the list they’d found had indeed been victims. "You're sure?"

"Positive. It's off a logging road east of State Road 133. Sending the coordinates now."

Rachel's eyes found State Road 133 on Wheeler's map. They were close – which was to be expected, given that Bradley was apparently keeping his spree contained to a fifty-mile radius.

Wheeler's phone chimed with the incoming coordinates. Novak immediately pulled out his own phone, fingers flying over the screen and inputting them. "Twenty-six miles away," he announced. "We could be there in thirty minutes, maybe less."

“Maybe more when you consider the state of these damned roads,” Wheeler said. He folded up his map and looked over to the pod. "Take my truck," he said, tossing the keys to Novak. "I'll stay here and secure this pod until backup arrives."

“You’re sure?” Rachel said.

“Yeah. And I’ll reach out right away if Bradley shows up intending to use this one.”

It did make sense to split up; Rachel knew this, but she also hated the idea of being confined to another vehicle, bumping along more back roads while they had no idea where Christopher Bradley was—or Jennifer Parker, for that matter.

She and climbed into the truck as Wheeler made his way over to the pod. Rachel noticed that his hand was resting in his holstered service weapon at his hip.

The sky had turned a deep purple, the last remnants of daylight eaten by the night. Novak worked to back the truck up a bit at an angle, whipping it back around to head out the way they’d come in. He handled the truck with practiced ease, but she could sense his tension in the way his he was leaning forward, his chest nearly pressed into the steering wheel.

“I think we’ve got the bastard,” Novak said. “Either at this pod or the one we’re headed to…we’ve got him.”

“There were five names on the list,” she pointed out. “Which makes me think there should be a fifth pod. Maybe…maybe he already used it long ago…long before we even knew there was a case. Maybe he’s used it and taken it offline.”

“Maybe,” Novak said. “Or maybe it malfunctioned somehow. Maybe he was unable to use it.”

Rachel nodded. It was a good point, and one that she latched on to, hoping it was true.

The truck's headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the dirt road ahead. The road seemed to unspool from the earth and was then bordered by the darkness of the trees and the night. To Rachel's surprise, though, the paved road appeared faster than she'd imagined. And when Novak turned the truck onto the asphalt, he gunned the engine, heading east. Now, off of the bumps of the dirt road, he seemed to relax a bit.

Rachel began guiding him through a series of multiple turn-offs, all of which were on paved surfaces. The map showed her that after just a few more, they would be on State Road 133, and they'd have a straight stretch for quite a while.

The truck's radio crackled to life. It made Rachel jump a bit because she hadn’t even noticed the typical police band radio bolted to the underside of the truck’s dashboard. Wheeler's voice cut through a brief hiss of static. "Gift, Novak, you copy?"

Rachel grabbed the handheld mic and pushed the Send button. "We copy," Rachel responded. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing’s wrong. Just wanted you know that the backup unit just arrived at my location," Wheeler said, his voice tight with tension. "But you need to know something. Ed just called again. He's been going through more of Bradley's network data. These pods? They're not just being monitored. They're collecting data. Recording everything."

Rachel felt her blood run cold. "Recording what, exactly?"

"Everything. Video, audio, vital signs – right up until the moment of death. Bradley's not just killing these people. He's studying them. Watching them die."

Rachel closed her eyes, fighting back a wave of nausea. When she opened them again, she could not decide if she was heartbroken for the victims or simply pissed off. Somewhere deep inside her heart, she was starting to understand that her six months or so of avoiding death with experimental treatments and endless rest had changed something inside of her. Now, when dealing with the deaths of victims, it was far harder to separate the end of their lives from the duties of her job. Something like this—what Christopher Bradley was doing to these victims—felt personal to her. It felt like she was being mocked. But she also knew that this case was not about her or the things she’d been through. She cheapened the lives of the victims if she placed herself in the center of the killer’s efforts. All in all, it did one thing: it cemented and even empowered her already burning need to bring this bastard down.