Horrifying didn’t begin to cover it.

Her fingers raced over the keyboard as she scanned the flow of information streaming onto her second screen. She was searching for the location of the computer currently playing a live feed of a young woman strapped to a stainless-steel gurney in a room with breeze-block walls and a cement floor.

The atmosphere in the Command Center was taut. The Joint Task Force had taken over a corner of the FBI’s Houston Field Office. The people assembled consisted of agents from cybercrimes, FBI headquarters, a large group from the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group including profilers, negotiators, and operators from the Hostage Rescue Team, agents from the local field office and the original detective who’d been hunting this killer since the first known murder in Georgia. It also included a small team of civilians, including herself and some of her colleagues from Cramer, Parker & Gray.

All the loaded weapons in the room made Yael nervous and she had to force herself to keep doing the job she was paid to do, the job that meant she belonged in this room, with these federal agents, chasing this monster.

Terror was visible in every strained line of the captive’s face and body.

Yael’s mouth became so dry it was difficult to swallow. Anya Baker was a brilliant young chemist who could have gone to school anywhere on a full ride. Instead, she’d chosen to live with her mom and dad and attend Rice University. This past summer Anya had interned with the FBI’s Houston office. She’d disappeared three nights ago after visiting a bar with friends.

Anya’s parents were worried sick. From what Alex Parker had told Yael, they had every reason to be.

Yael’s heart pounded and she knew she needed to dissociate herself from the fact it was a real woman on the screen, one who’d recently woken up, looking absolutely petrified, after being kidnapped by the freaking psychopath who went by the moniker Evi1Geni-us. Yael wiped her sweaty palms on her favorite black jeans. She couldn’t think about Anya Baker as a real person. If she did, she wouldn’t be able to focus on doing her job. Instead, she mentally shifted to gaming mode where she needed to win at all costs to take this bozo down.

Tim Theriault, a new hire at Cramer, Parker & Gray, pushed awkwardly through the heavy door with a tray of beverages from a local chain.

“Not in here,” a scary female Asian American FBI agent name of Ashley Chen told him tersely. “Put it in the break room.”

“But other people will take them…” The guy trailed off under Chen’s steely gaze.

“Do as Agent Chen says,” Alex told him without moving his eyes off his monitor. “Then get back in here and help Laura.”