It was obvious these men were trying to lighten the grim mood that had settled over everyone in the room, but hard to do that when a woman was being tortured online for paid entertainment and it was Yael’s job to find the torturer.

She went back to her data, painfully aware of the man at her side but concentrating on the inflow of information despite the distraction. She didn’t like being on anyone’s radar. She liked to be unobtrusive and forgettable. And she absolutely hated guns. Ironic, considering she now worked for a security firm.

His black-clad knee briefly brushed hers as he shifted position but he didn’t seem to do it on purpose. There was a lot of him and not a lot of space underneath her table. A quick glance at his face showed her he wasn’t paying her any attention. His focus was glued to the screen and he looked as if he wanted to crawl inside her monitor and throttle the sick bastard responsible for all of this.

If only it was that simple. Except…if it were, she wouldn’t feel so safe, so removed from real-life consequences when she was online—a sentiment this Evi1Geni-us guy probably related to in spades.

Evi1Geni-us relied on his ability to cloak his identity while committing his heinous crimes. Anya was depending on all of them to get past his defenses and expose him—to save her, and then lock up her attacker where he couldn’t hurt anyone else ever again.

It didn’t take Evi1Geni-us long to strip Anya completely naked. The woman was bleeding from where the shears had occasionally snipped her flesh.

Yael’s stomach rolled. She couldn’t imagine enduring Anya’s fate.

The HRT operator shifted again, clearly uncomfortable with what was happening onscreen.

Join the club.

“What happened to your arm?” she murmured, unable to stop herself even as she kept one eye firmly on the code.

He held it up. “Snapped my ulna and radius helping someone down some stairs. Boss wouldn’t pass me for active duty even though I’m as good with my right hand as I am with my left.”

“You’re the breacher, Livingstone. You can’t handle the breacher if you have a broken arm,” the HRT team leader replied with practiced patience.

“I could have used the shotgun and no one would have known the difference,” he assured her with a quirked brow and cocky grin.

Maybe it was a defense mechanism or maybe that innate confidence was why he was an HRT operator. The banter lightened the mood for all of two seconds before the next poll went up.

Option 2: Hot Candle Wax. A) Eyes, B) Nipples, C) Mouth.

Yael’s stomach gave a hard lurch.

“Shit,” the man beside her said between clenched teeth.

Alex looked across the desk, clearly reading the appalled expression on her face. “Don’t watch.”