Three heavily armed, black-clad men hunched over their own monitors coordinating with the tactical units. Members of the Hostage Rescue Team were currently loaded into vehicles idling at two separate locations around the city. An Enhanced SWAT team made up a third group on the east side. She heard one of the three HRT guys in the room get on the radio to tell Echo unit to head northwest. They all knew Evi1Geni-us was tricky and he could be spoofing Alex in some way so the tactical units wanted to split up to cover as much ground as possible.

“First voting option is up,” Agent Chen said quietly.

Option 1: Removing the bitch’s clothes using, A) Knife, B) Scissors, C) Bare hands.

Immediately the votes started pouring in. Out of the corner of her eye Yael watched her boss’s mouth tighten.

The vultures who’d tuned in—at a cost of five thousand US dollars a feed, capped at one hundred feeds—got to vote on exactly how things went down from here. Each vote cost another thousand dollars. All attendees had to commit to a minimum of five votes per auction. The more votes someone made the more likely they were to receive an invitation to the next party. It was an exclusive club and demand far exceeded available slots.

What viewers might not appreciate was that anyone who watched a murder without reporting it was facing possible accessory charges. Anyone who paid to watch a murder was looking at definite accessory and possible accomplice charges.

“Scissors,” Alex told Chen who was sitting at her console with her mouse hovering over the vote buttons.

The way Alex said it made Yael’s stomach churn. He’d been chasing this guy for a long time and she didn’t want to imagine what happened to Anya if the watchers voted “knife.”

The feed from the crime scene was being shown on a large screen on the wall. Yael kept her eyes away from the images and concentrated instead on the software, which was coded in Python.

One of the Hostage Rescue Team operators sat heavily in the empty chair beside her. “What sort of psycho spends their New Year’s Day terrorizing women?” He sported a sling and plaster cast on his left arm and a lethal-looking gun in a thigh holster on his right.

Yael frowned and sent him a quick glance. He met her gaze with the greenest eyes she’d ever seen. He looked pissed.

“Maybe it’s not their New Year.” She fixed her attention back to the screen, determined to ignore the presence of this very large, armed male sitting so close by.

“Good point.” Ashley Chen gifted her a nod. “We need to send that observation to the profilers and see if it fits any other patterns of behavior.”