chapter six

Smothering the snarl back, I canceled the alarm and clicked on the Zoom link. Five other people were on the call as we waited for the rest of the department to show up. Not everyone worked in the office anymore, so weekly Zoom calls became necessary. I continued coming into the office because it beat staying home in my empty apartment.

I wouldn’t mind the meetings so much because I rarely had to talk, but I hated keeping my camera on. I hated smothering my expressions as I watched them waste my time with petty office bullshit. Of course, we didn’t discuss the happenings of each investigation in this call, which would be helpful. My supervisor, Maria Evans, would rather talk about things that could, as cliché as it was, be sent in a fucking email. So every week, we had to sit in front of our computers, pretending to be interested when we all had better things to do.

A breath escaped from my clenched teeth as I reached for my now-cooling cup of coffee with one hand and smoothed down my tie with the other. Taking a sip, I held back a grimace at the lackluster coffee they provided in the break room before closing my eyes to gather myself and sitting the cup back on the coaster on my desk before turning on my camera.

By now, most of the department was on, and I didn’t think Maria could wait any longer as her eyes were lit up while the rest of her expression stayed neutral. She would be an awful interrogator, which was probably why she was shuffled from department to department and able to climb up to a supervisor level before being thrust upon us, where agents got the least amount of personal interaction with investigations. The only interaction we had was gathering intel from the subject’s own technology to give the appropriate department the fuel they needed to continue the investigation. Therefore, they gave us the unofficial nickname The Watchers, but in reality, we’re pencil pushers and data entry workers to the rest of the world. There would be a public outcry if they knew how much surveillance was actually conducted.

“Now that everyone is on. Let’s get started!” Maria exclaimed, straightening her spine as if it would make her seem more important.

I drowned out the rest of the meeting, not really giving a shit, and anxiously glanced at the pile of work I had sitting on my desk. I didn’t dare grab about it, knowing that if Maria caught me not staring at my screen, she would call attention to it, and I didn’t care to be the center of attention today. The only thing that caught my attention was the round of applause everyone gave someone named Mindy for getting a promotion after investigating and catching a serial rapist who liked to keep his trophies on his computer as videos.

Investigations like that were one in one in a million. More often or not, we caught people with sick fantasies, true crime addicts, or even writers of the dark fantasy or horror genres. Some of them had some fucking fantasies, but at least they stayed there. Once they started inching the line, it became more work for me. But when they were full-fledged criminals, that was when things got exciting around here. It was also exciting to see them in their element when they thought no one was watching them. I liked that the best. I’d only seen that twice before, but never to the magnitude that Mindy had. That lucky bitch.

When we were finally let out of the meeting, I jumped headfirst into the pile of new cases. Opening the first file, my fingers glided across the name Vanessa Lynch. Making a note of it in my digital notebook on my tablet, I flipped over the paper and pulled up the screenshots of her most recent search history, which was the trigger for alerting our department.

Table saw for sale.

Crock-Pot for sale.

How to extract gelatin from bones.

Rapid blood typing kit for sale.

Plastic tubs for sale.

Usually, for something like this, it was typically an author, or they were just using animals. Our department was alerted because all of these search results could potentially indicate a murder, and someone had searched them all within twenty-four hours.

I pulled up the social media accounts attached to her profile to check for any violent behavior. Her gorgeous green eyes and fiery copper hair captivated me immediately.In my line of work, the most dangerous were those that hid behind a pretty face, and she was beauty personified.

“What’s going on in your head, baby?”

Finding her email was as easy since no one hid that detail anymore. Then, I ran a program to hack her password. Once I found that information, I logged into her email account, and the only things filling her inbox were class information, SomeFans emails, and shop orders. Analyzing an email from a classmate, I noticed that she was as dangerous as I predicted from her interest in chemistry, which suggested she was as intelligent as she was beautiful.

Moving on to the order confirmation emails, I realized it was orders for her shop and not anything she bought. From a quick search, I knew she was selling soap. Selling soap meant that she could have another dangerous ingredient—lye. Lye could dissolve a body within hours when heated, and my interest in her spiked even higher.

“Are you what I think you are, sweetheart?”

I licked my bottom lip, and I could feel the sweat starting to soak my undershirt. Figures the potential serial killer that I found mere minutes ago and that I’d prayed for weeks for was one that I would love to sink my dick into.

I looked towards the door of my boss’s office. Either way, I would still have to investigate her more because this was nothing that could pin her down to any crime. In fact, it wasn’t even enough suspicion to ring the alert bell even further. No, I still had time to enjoy learning all of her secrets. And I would enjoy every single second.

“Bring it on, baby. Bring it on.”