The Civic pulled beyond an open parking space at the far end of the ramp, and Christie backed into the empty spot. He saw the car’s headlights go dark as she turned off the engine. A few more seconds passed, and then he saw Christie Parke appear, purse over her shoulder, her phone in her hand. She made the long walk from one end of the ramp to the other, getting closer to the camera.

Frost waited. He knew what was going to happen; he just didn’t know when. He wished he could tell her, Don’t pay attention to your phone. Pay attention to your surroundings. And walk down the middle of the aisle, not the side. But she didn’t. She was preoccupied, her head down. She approached one of the concrete support columns, and that was when he grabbed her. It didn’t even take five seconds. An arm reached out, took hold of her neck, and pulled her out of view. There was no sound on the camera, but Frost doubted that she even had time to scream.

He kept watching. Christie never appeared again. Neither did her attacker. He watched another car arrive and park, and then one more, and then he saw the headlights of Christie’s Civic go on again. The car pulled out. It was too dark and too far to see who was behind the wheel, and the angle of the camera was too sharp to see inside as the car drove closer. Then it was gone.

“I guess he was waiting for somebody to come along,” Arne said.

No, he was waiting for her, Frost thought. He’d been studying Christie Parke. He knew where she parked and when she usually arrived. Frost wondered if he’d hacked her phone to keep an eye on her calendar. A meeting in Santa Rosa meant she’d be driving. There was nothing spontaneous about this abduction; it had been planned for weeks. The same was probably true of Monica Farr and Brynn Lansing. And the fact that it had happened to Christie and Brynn so close together meant that this man was now playing his game on a fast schedule.

Frost didn’t think he was done.

“I’m going to give you specs for a file upload site,” he told Arne. “I need you to transfer all of the camera video files for Friday morning, starting at five o’clock. Can you do that?”

“Sure thing. You trying to spot when the guy got here, huh? Thing is, he may not have parked in the ramp. He could have walked in at our pedestrian entrance off California. We don’t have cameras in the stairwell.”