I turned in his direction and saw that the door to the basement was open. Calvin appeared and locked his gaze onto Joe. “You’re the man who convinced Thomas Kewley to kill himself.”

“There isn’t time for that now,” I said to Calvin. I pointed to the computer screen where Sasha had pulled out a length of duct tape and was starting to wrap it around her neck to seal off the bottom of the bag. “We have to stop her.”

++++

Sasha was still holding her breath when she finished with the tape.

She tore off the end and dropped the roll.

++++

“The person who paid to watch,” I shouted to Joe, “tell him to stop her.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

I unpocketed my phone and hit redial to reach Angela at Cyber.

“Where is this online?” I asked Joe.

He said nothing, but the woman who was seated nearby said, “It’s being run through a Krazle account.”

“Give it to me.”

I repeated what she told me to Angela, then added urgently, “We need to trace this now. Sasha wasn’t suicidal. Someone’s coercing her to do this. Find her. Stop this.”

“I’m on it.”

The noseless man made for the door, shoving Calvin aside as he fled. He limped heavily on his left leg, just as the man I’d chased into the subway station had done.

“No one else leaves this room.” I pointed to the men. “Get on your knees. Calvin, call for backup.”

“Right.”

On the screen’s counter, the number of viewers continued to grow.

++++

Although on one level she’d known it all along, now the seriousness of her situation overwhelmed Sasha in a gut-punch realization—she was going to die, or she was going to be responsible for Bill Greer dying.

As she slipped her left hand into its zip-tie loop, she prayed that Greer would be saved and that God would accept her soul even if she truly did end her own life by her own hand.

Your life for his.

Don’t give up. Don’t give in.

It was getting harder and harder to hold her breath.

A few more seconds and that would be it, then she would have to let out her air and try for more.

She tugged her left arm to the side, tightening the zip-tie around her wrist.

++++

Angela got back on the line with me. “I’ve got nothing,” she said, taut desperation in her voice. I suspected she was seeing what I was seeing. “It’ll take too long to trace.”

I said to the woman at the keyboard, “If there’s anything you can do for that woman, you need to do it now. She’s not killing herself because she wants to. Someone is making this happen. Can you help her?”

She was quiet.

“Please.”