Business? I thought I was investigating a murder. Silly me. “I understand. We all have to live by our convictions.” And know their price. I’m sickened by the idea that all it took was a dollar sign marked across the face of Chloe’s photograph.

Reynolds realizes how his sudden cooperation looks and tries to backtrack. “I stand by what I said before. But if someone else owns the site, then they can do with it what they please. It’s a property rights thing, really.” He’s trying to rationalize his flip.

“Understood. Again, we appreciate your help.” I don’t want to debate him. We got what we need. We get the data and the asshole gets his blood money. Part of me wants the check to bounce. But that’s not Damian’s style.

That’s the other thing I have to worry about. Damian knows he just did me a huge favor. He’s bought himself some slack.

It compromises me.

First the lead on the site, now this. He’s making me more indebted to him. Given his history, that puts me in a difficult situation. He wants my attention more than anything. Now he knows he has it. There are also things I withheld from Ailes about my relationship with him that could make me look very bad.

The only way for me to deal with the complication is to talk it over with Ailes and take it up to the assistant director. I’ve disclosed everything I’ve needed to in the past. Within a narrow definition. But I need to make sure I look beyond clean on this. Any omission can become a noose around your neck. It will be painful to explain how he fooled me. There’s no other choice.

Reynolds picks up a shoebox off his desk. “Hey, do you remember how I told you guys that the system purges user-uploaded photographs after twenty-four hours?”

“Yes?” We’d hoped he was lying and there was a log of them because that would make the search a lot faster. If the Warlock used the website, then he uploaded photos of his victims. If we can find those photos and tie them to a specific IP address, that could tell us who’s next. Most sites get rid of the data because they don’t want to be held accountable if someone uploads a naked picture of their girlfriend or worse.

Reynolds nods toward the box. “It seems, uh, it seems there was a glitch in the system . . . Turns out that one of our hard drives was caching all the photos. I was going to manually wipe them and destroy the data. There’s some, uh, racy stuff in there. But it has over a million uploads inside that it didn’t erase because of the glitch.”

Yes, a “glitch.” I don’t ask him if the glitch has anything to do with the box of tissues next to the hand sanitizer by his monitor. “Thank you, Liam.” I take the box from him. There are three hard drives inside. Looks like a lot of glitches.