Chapter 20

20

Colin couldn’t stop pacing. Stop beating himself up over his last conversation with Brooklyn, when he’d spoken harshly to her. Did she think he wouldn’t support her, and his words somehow encouraged her to leave? He couldn’t live with himself if anything happened to her. Not only from knowing he’d been harsh, but because he really did care for her and couldn’t imagine not getting a chance to get to know her.

A pounding on the condo door had him racing to fling it open. “Nick. Good. Please tell me you can help.”

“I don’t know.” Nick, wearing a scowl and carrying his laptop, rushed past Colin. “But I aim to try.”

“You’ll need to do the best work you’ve ever done.” Colin trailed after him.

He went straight to the dining table and opened his computer. “We first need to determine if she’s left the building. I called Pete on the way up. He hasn’t seen her, and she didn’t exit through the lobby.”

“But you have security camera feeds that you can look at for other exits, right?” Reid asked as he joined them at the table.

“Pulling them up now.” Nick’s fingers flew over the keys, the clicking sound grating on Colin. “We have three exits. Front door. Parking garage. And one rear door.”

“No matter which exit she took,” Colin said, “your doors are tied to fingerprints for entrance and exit. Her prints wouldn’t match your database, so how could she leave and not have set off an alarm?”

“Good question.” Nick paused typing and looked up. “We haven’t changed over the garage to a print reader yet. It’s still a number keypad. She might’ve gotten the code somehow.”

“But how?”

Nick tilted his head and tapped a finger on the table. “She could’ve watched Blake when he let you in.”

Was that what she’d done? “But that would mean she was planning to leave before she even got the news from Tarver.”

“Not likely then. So maybe she hacked our database and copied a keycode.”

“Your system is locked down tight, right?” Dev asked. “Wouldn’t you know if she did that?”

Nick frowned. “Normally I would, but she’s a super hacker and knows how to hide her trail. Still, I think I would’ve gotten an alert. But when she toured my lab after dinner and used one of the lab computers, she could’ve gotten the garage keycode without kicking off an alarm.”

“So check that door first then.” Colin moved behind Nick to look at the screen. Reid and Dev joined him, there to support him.

If there was a way to find Brooklyn, these guys would help him. He should take comfort from that, but his brain kept shouting if there was a way, and his nerves were too fried to even begin to feel a hint of comfort.

Pray. Yeah, pray. Please. Please, let her be okay and let us find her. And if she’s afraid right now, give her comfort.

As Nick brought up the computer feed for that camera, Colin waited for some comfort of his own to come, but it didn’t. Was he not trusting God to have Brooklyn’s back? Were his old issues blocking it? His inability to trust at all. Was he just going through the motions of trusting but not really believing it?

“I’ll fast forward until I see some action or reach the current time.” Nick clicked the arrow. Time flew by, but movement made Nick stop at the timestamp about an hour earlier. Brooklyn appeared in the hallway and approached the door.

“No. Oh, no.” Colin’s heart fell. “She really did leave.”

She peered up at the camera and mouthed the words, “Sorry. My family.”

“She knew we would see this.” Colin’s throat closed, and he could barely speak the words.

He watched as she tapped in a code, and the door opened. She slipped outside and disappeared into the lot.

“Switching camera feed to the parking entrance.” Nick’s voice was choked with the same emotions threatening to swamp Colin.

The feed filled the screen. Nick moved it ahead at two times the speed, then slowed when she appeared on screen, leaving the garage on foot.

“Going to the parking lot feed,” Nick announced.

The third camera came online. She exited the lot on foot and then moved out of camera range.

Colin couldn’t move. Brooklyn was out there. On foot. Alone. Maybe unarmed. Vulnerable.

“Run them again to see if we can tell if she’s carrying,” Colin demanded.

“You do that, Nick. I’ll go to her bedroom to see if I can find her Glock.” Dev bolted from the space, dodging the long leather sofa on the way toward the other end of the room.

Nick opened each window, and they moved through the feed in slow motion, Nick enlarging her waist so they could look for the telltale bulge of her gun through the denim shirt she wore over a T-shirt.

“Doesn’t look like she’s carrying,” Reid said. “Does she have an ankle holster? We didn’t look carefully for it.”

“No need.” Dev joined them, Brooklyn’s Glock dangling from his finger and a phone in his other hand. “Found it in the nightstand and the phone on top.”

If stress could make Colin’s heart quit beating, it would. Right now. Immediately. Brooklyn, the woman he’d come to care for far more than he’d known until now, was out there. Not only alone, but unarmed. She needed him, and he failed to be there. To see the signs that she would take off. If anything happened to her, he could never forgive himself.

“Okay, my next play is to check that phone and her laptop to see if she’s been communicating with anyone.” Nick held out his hand to Dev.

He plopped the phone in Nick’s palm. “Her laptop was on the nightstand too. I’ll go get it.”

Nick swiped the phone up. “Password-protected, just like I figured it would be.”

“Do you have any idea what password she might’ve used?” Colin asked.

Nick frowned. “I wish I did. But I’m sure some random bunch of characters that have no meaning. We’re all pretty careful like that with our phones. Don’t want anyone to be able to connect them to us.”

Colin got that. His was random too. Most IT professionals operated that way. “I assume you have a password cracking tool in your lab.”

Nick nodded. “Gonna take time though. It would be easier if I thought I could use a dictionary attack.”

Colin knew that wasn’t going to cut it. “It’s likely going to take a passport brute force guessing attack.”

“I’ll pretend I know what you two just said.” Reid gave a wry smile.

Colin understood it all just fine from his years at the FBI, but he didn’t like it.

“Doesn’t matter if you understand, just matters that you know if I fail at the dictionary attack and have to go to brute force guessing it will take longer. The same will be true of her laptop.”

The very reason Colin didn’t like it. “So that’s our only play, and we’ll just have to wait for you to accomplish that?”

“No,” Nick said. “One of my guys is still working in the lab, and I’ll have him handle the password cracking while I review the network to see if she left a footprint of any computer access.”

“Could she have even been on your network?” Colin asked. “I wouldn’t think with evidence information in your network files that you would allow an outsider to access it.”

Nick scowled at Colin. “I wouldn’t and don’t. The evidence network isn’t connected to any other network. But we have a condo and guest network and an administration one.”

“So you might be able to track her movements, like seeing if she accessed the internet for example,” Reid asked.

Colin knew the answer to that would be yes and wasn’t surprised when Nick nodded. But this lead, like looking at her phone and computer, were only leads if she used them and left breadcrumbs for them to find. But if she didn’t want to be found, she had the skills to make sure that she wasn’t. Her dodging the super hacker, Tarver, for three years was proof enough of that.

Luka had won. Got his way. Brooklyn couldn’t sleep. Not at all. She laid in the lumpy bed, wide awake for hours, imagining the fate that she would endure in the morning. She turned to her side and tucked her knees to her chest. Rocking. Rhythmic. Moans deep inside wanting to escape, but she wouldn’t let them out and let Luka have the satisfaction of hearing her deep-seated fear.

Was this God’s will for her? To be put in front of a wild animal and somehow find the faith like Daniel had exhibited in the lion’s den? Would she be saved? She doubted it unless she could have the faith to believe she would be saved. And honestly, she couldn’t dredge up that much faith right now. Maybe she would by morning, but the sun was already rising, casting a reddish glow in the window, and she doubted that Luka would leave her be for long.

And then there was Kane. Where was he, and when was she going to see him?

Didn’t matter. None of it did at the moment. All that mattered was that she found a way to get this debilitating fear under control so she could concentrate and figure out a way to escape.

She couldn’t lay around any longer. Not a moment. She got up and silently padded out to the living room. The wide glass patio door revealed the miraculous sunrise reflecting off the river.

God’s beauty. God’s creation. God’s evidence of His all-powerful being.

He could save her today. She could be saved.

She dropped to her knees and raised her face. Flung out her arms and prayed like she never prayed before.