Page 39 of Watch Me

Reagan waited in the waiting room at the station while I went to get an update. She said she was going to call her daughter and let her know she was going to be staying at my place for a few days. I wasn’t necessarily suspicious of Maddison, but I wasn’t sure shewasn’tinvolved either. Reagan was going to try to find out if she’d told anyone where Reagan lived. Maddison knew no one in Chicago that we knew of since her grandparents moved to Florida when they retired, but she was coming to visit for Thanksgiving, and she might have told someone her holiday plans at a bar or something. You never know who totrust.

When I got to my desk, Shawn was already at his. “Hey,” Igreeted.

“You look like you didn’t sleep.”

“Can you blame me?” I leaned on the edge of my desk that facedhis.

“Nope. I take it Reagan is at your place?”

“She’s staying at my place, yeah, but she’s in the lobby right now waiting for me so I can take her to class.”

Shawn nodded. “I’d do the same thing.”

“What’d you find out?”

“Nothing much. Went to Judy’s and talked to the bartender Frank. He wouldn’t let me into the office without a warrant or Judy’s permission even though it was about Reagan.”

“You think he’s our guy?”

Shawn took a breath and shrugged. “I don’t know. He seemed cool and collected but didn’t want to get into trouble for anything.”

“And Judy? You couldn’t call her to come in?”

“Tried. Even went by her house, but she wasn’t home or answering her phone.”

My brows furrowed. “Do you think it could be her?”

“You know as well as I do that a woman probably wouldn’t stab someone that many times.”

I did know. Profiling would suggest it was a male perp given the number of stab wounds. Women typically used a gun or poison, though it wasn’t necessarily unheard of for a woman to stab someone. Just not that manytimes.

“Right. Mind going back to Judy’s and seeing if she’s there?”

“Yeah, I was already planning on it.”

“Thanks. Have you heard from Will?”

Shawn shook his head. “No. Let’s go see what he has.”

“Yeah.” We both stood and walked to the cyber unit where we found Will at his computer. “Hey.”

Will looked up. “Hey. I was just going to come find you. I ran scans on the vic’s computer from last night and your girlfriend’s. They both have the same malware program that Amy Kenny’s had.”

My body went taut. “Were you able to trace it?”

“No.” Will shook his head. “The computers have the same backdoor program that allows the routing back to IP addresses to be a chain. It’s not even a standard VPN used by a lot of hackers use and people wanting to protect their privacy. Whoever this is knows what he’s doing.”

“How would someone find out all of their IP addresses?” Iasked.

“Honestly, it isn’t all that hard. Just think about all the times you’ve connected to a free Wi-Fi at some hotel, restaurant, or coffee shop. Everyone seems to offer free Wi-Fi, but unfortunately, most of these networks are so unsecure that any hacker with a decent packet-sniffing program can steal information from anyone who connects to them without protection. In fact, that’s probably the easiest way, so that could be how our victims are being chosen.”

“Hackers aren’t usually murderers, are they?” Shawnprobed.

Will shrugged. “Usually they do it for financial gain.”

“Amy had nothing. She was in college,” I stated.Just likeReagan.

“Why would a pro hacker come out from his parents’ basement to kill?” Shawn asked.