The man on screen—dressed completely in black except for the scary Scream mask—moved out of sight and a second camera came online, this one with a bird’s eye view of Anya Baker’s face. Evi1Geni-us walked over to a table and picked up a pair of tailor’s shears. He dramatically snipped them in front of the camera before very carefully starting to cut up the woman’s jeans leg from the bottom to the top.

Anya’s expression suggested she was screaming but there was no sound. There was never any sound on these videos, which lent the whole thing a surreal quality that was also stomach churning.

Yael tried to breathe slowly in and out, the way she’d been taught when dealing with stressful situations. Don’t look at the screen.

According to Alex, Evi1Geni-us had started selling the actual sound recordings as exclusive non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the dark web. Yael didn’t know which was worse—Evi1Geni-us for doing the crime, or the customers buying this shit. Only so many of the attendees could be law enforcement and she knew Alex had spent a lot of time and effort creating several shady personas to be in a position to receive multiple invitations.

“Getting some information off the blockchains. It’s a lot easier doing this in real time than trying to figure it out after the fact,” said Laura.

After the auctions, Evi1Geni-us transferred the money to hardware wallets that were then disconnected from the internet and put in “cold” storage, which basically made them untraceable until he decided to spend that money. Unfortunately, he could probably cash out in a crypto exchange before they even caught up with the fact he was online.

Identifying the people who were paying to watch however…much simpler.

Yael spotted something in the script, scrolled back up the screen, leaned forward and typed in a few more commands. “I found the proxy server he’s using.”

“Can you trace it?”

Yael glanced at the HRT guy who was now leaning forward in his chair with a look of fierce concentration on his face. She could smell the piney scent of his skin and a trace of something sweet and metallic that made her recoil when she realized what it was. Gun oil.

He caught her reaction and raised a brow.

Damn. He was handsome as hell and probably knew it.

“It’s probably better if you don’t speak.” Her voice was gruff.

Humor twinkled in his eyes. “You sound like all my ex-girlfriends.”

“And your boss.” The tall, blond HRT operator who seemed to be giving the orders quipped with a forced grin.

Rather than looking annoyed like most men she knew would, the operator sitting next to her gave her a slow smile, and then pressed his thumb and forefinger together and dragged them across his lips.