Page 33 of Constant Risk
Tanner squeezed her shoulder.
“Do you mind playing it again, or will that disrupt what you’re doing?” Penelope asked her.
“No, I’ll play it again.” Bree sat down to work as the footage came back up on the screen.
“Okay,” Penelope said. “What can we see? Anything. Different, same.”
“The water is higher,” Tanner said. “By at least a couple of inches from the last footage we received.”
Everybody looked closer.
“He’s right,” Whitaker said. “But the water is still dripping at the same rate. Not gushing down like it was when we found Jean.”
Tanner rubbed his eyes, trying to make sense of this. The footage had to be from earlier in the day, prerecorded. They watched the footage again.
“Did we ever figure out if Jean is someone we should know?” Tanner asked. “Why Elliot was using a voice modulator and not ever showing her face?”
Penelope shook her head. “Nothing so far.”
“You guys,” Bree called out. “I’ve got something.”
As soon as Tanner saw her face—and the worry in those beautiful green eyes—he knew they were in trouble.
“What?”
Bree looked like she wasn’t going to be able to get the words out.
“Just say it,” Penelope told her. “Any information is better than not knowing what’s in front of us at all.”
Bree shook her head. “There’s bad news, and worse news. This footage is definitely not on a loop. It wasn’t something Elliot prerecorded to send out later.”
They all muttered curses.
Bree turned to Penelope. “Did the crime lab dismantle the camera that had been used to record at the crime scene?”
Penelope nodded. “Yes, in order to take it in as evidence it was removed from the wall. But there are plenty of pictures of exactly where it hung.”
“So since there was going to be no more footage being sent, I assume you sent your computer team home.”
Penelope nodded again. “Yes. They’d been working nearly forty-eight hours straight. It seemed pointless to keep them around when they had already done their part.”
“I understand,” Bree said. But she didn’t look happy about it.
“So what exactly is your worse news?” Penelope asked.
Bree typed on her keyboard for a few seconds.
“Nobody was here, but the program I uploaded that recorded all the screens captured everything we need. The program everyone was mad at.”
Tanner could see Penelope was getting frustrated with Bree for not getting to the point quicker. Bree tended to think that everyone wanted all the details like she always wanted the details.
“Just hit us with the bottom line, freckles.”
Bree’s green eyes flew to his. “It’s been nine hours since you rescued Jean Adams. But at the top of each hour since then there’s been another clip that was broadcasted.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Penelope asked.
“It means there’s another victim,” Bree said. “And her water is already past where Jean’s was.”
