Evi1Geni-us flaunted his dirty work via the dark web. Every three months, Evi1Geni-us kidnapped someone—random or targeted they weren’t sure yet—and auctioned off their method of torture and death to the highest bidders.

Choose Your Own Murder Adventure.

Yael’s colleague and best friend Laura Bay was tracking the cryptocurrency—or trying to as it was in multiple currencies being routed through more than one crypto exchange.

“I’ve got something,” said Alex Parker.

All heads swung in his direction. Her boss’s specialty was cellular communications although he was scary good at almost everything. Yael loved her boss. She also loved his smart, gorgeous wife, and their cute-as-a-button baby daughter.

“In Houston?” Ashley Chen was the most aesthetically perfect person Yael had ever encountered in real life. Chen was also crazy good with computers, which proved the world really wasn’t fair.

Yael had once been considered exceptional when working with code and tracking people over the internet. Nowadays, with the new crew she hung out with, she figured she was slightly above average—but the crowd she hung out with now were exceptional.

Yael side-eyed the scrolling code on her screen even as she watched Alex nod in response to Chen’s question.

“About twenty minutes northwest of here.” Alex checked a map.

The intensity in the room cranked up another notch even as a swell of relief crashed over them all. Sweat started to form on Yael’s back. She swallowed to loosen her dry throat and turned her attention back to the information zipping down one panel on her screen. The task force hadn’t been one hundred percent certain Evi1Geni-us was still stateside, let alone in Houston. Based on past “events” the FBI behavioral analysts figured the auction would likely go down in the vicinity of where the victim had been kidnapped—at a storage location, empty property, or unused warehouse nearby. Unfortunately, in this part of Texas, at this time year, that didn’t exactly narrow things down.

They hadn’t even been positive Anya Baker had been taken by Evi1Geni-us or that she was the intended victim for today’s macabre online auction until the bastard had turned the camera on ten minutes ago. Alex Parker had had a strong enough hunch that they’d all flown down here the moment the monster had posted an auction was imminent approximately an hour after Anya had disappeared.

The task force had spent New Year’s Eve setting up this Command Center before crashing at a nearby hotel for a few hours’ sleep. Anya’s kidnap fitted the killer’s MO even though they hadn’t figured out exactly how the asshole chose his victims. That was one of the reasons it had taken so long to get even this close to the sicko.