Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 102903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
“No, no.” I put a gentle hand on her wrist and guide her back to her chair. “We checked them yesterday, remember? There was nothing there.”
“Oh, right. Right.” She nods. “But what if they’ve come back since then?”
I shake my head. “We’ve had a patrol car out front. No chance.”
Her shoulders sink, her anxiety about the floorboards officially at ease. “Good, good. That was smart. Was that Gibbs’s idea?”
“Yep,” I agree. “It usually is, isn’t it?”
She laughs. “You’re so right. That gut of his always gets the good hunches.”
“It sure does.” I play with my food a little before taking another bite and then try out something personal, just to see how it goes over. “I had a job interview today.”
“Really?” my mom asks, swallowing her bite of spaghetti quickly and wiping her mouth. “Why? You’ll never find a better team than Jethro’s.”
“Yeah.” I laugh lightly. “You’re right. Leroy Jethro Gibbs is definitely the best naval special agent out there. I was just . . . wondering if I maybe wanted to go in a different direction.”
Sex work isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but you know . . . po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
My mom shakes her head. “You gotta stick it out where you are, Ziva. If you don’t, you and Tony will never figure out how good you are together, and the whole thing will fall apart. Okay?”
“Okay,” I agree. “You’re right.”
“Good. I’m glad we got that settled.”
Me too, Mom. Me too.
Now, if I can just get her settled back in front of NCIS for a little bit, maybe I can take a shower and we’ll really be in business.
As soon as she finishes her meal, I take both our dishes to the sink, where I rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. She heads back to the couch and pushes play on the remote, and before I know it, the theme song for NCIS is ringing out again.
Quickly, I double-check that there’s nothing lying around that could hurt her, then head into my en suite bathroom to hop in the shower and scrub the day away.
I’d give almost anything to have my mom’s memory back, but as far as my own goes, after my first shift at Call Me Anytime, I could stand to lose a thought or two.
4
Dominic
8:30 p.m.
“Is it just me, or does it feel like—if the same person is killing these girls—they’re getting smarter?” I question as I pull off the bypass and into a long, curvy driveway, having followed the car’s GPS to the address Shane put in before we left the station.
I don’t like to draw any conclusions without all the facts, but damn, the connections between the Gwen Bridges and Heather Turnwat cases are too glaring to deny.
Halfway into our drive here, Detective Wilkins called to update us that whoever booked the room Heather was murdered in at the Monarch used a dark web broker—someone who specializes in booking anonymous travel arrangements using untraceable accounts. A lot of times, these brokers will reserve hotel rooms using prepaid cards, stolen credit cards, or even hacked corporate accounts.
Our digital forensics experts are looking into it, but it’s difficult to trace the source after the transaction has been completed. It’s much easier for law enforcement to trace the source in real time, while the transaction is occurring. From what Wilkins said, they can already tell the broker used a disposable, encrypted device, along with Tor software to conceal their IP address, when booking the reservation.
“Tell me about it,” Shane says, resting his arm on the passenger door. “The Monarch’s general manager is being cooperative in letting us look at all of the security footage, but it doesn’t help that the same day the room was booked, they were hosting the Alabama football team and all of the parents for Vandy’s big Parents’ Weekend. Not to mention the Monarch’s track record of hosting high-profile and celebrity clients and the subsequent discreetness they like to use for their special little VIPs has their security cameras giving us footage I’d swear was filmed with a potato.”
Nashville’s laws in relation to hotels and security surveillance allow for unfortunate loopholes like these. From what Wilkins showed us earlier at the station, we have a lot of footage of the Monarch’s lobby and reception from the day of Heather’s death, but it’s grainy at best. And, for the most part, that’s on purpose.
“I have a feeling they’re going to be changing that practice very soon.”
“Yeah.” Shane snorts. “Nothing like a homicide to get a hotel to beef up their security.”
We’ve already put a few detectives in charge of interviewing hotel staff to see if we can get any details about the person who actually checked into the room, but with the quantity of reservations that day, the shoddy camera quality, and the number of people going in and out of the Monarch’s lobby, I’m not hopeful we’ll get any solid leads.