"You can go ahead. But I have one condition," he added, looking sternly at Cami and Connor.

  "What is it?" Connor asked.

  "That you don't make this public knowledge," Marius said. "This is a new tech company in a competitive market, and we need to keep our reputation clean. If I've got a killer among my staff, the kind of psychopath who would do this, it's damned bad luck, and I hope you find them. But what I don't want is my entire company dragged through the dirt and a media feeding frenzy." His voice was firm.

  Connor nodded. "We'll keep it under wraps and as discreet as possible," he said. "We'll interview key people, but we might be able to do a lot of work behind the scenes, without speaking to anyone, if you'll allow us access to some of the records."

  "You can view the records, but I want you under supervision at all times," he said, and this time, Cami saw Marius glance at her once more. "I'm guessing this young lady might be your tech expert. I don't want her logging into our systems unsupervised."

  "I won't do that," Cami said hastily, but Marius gave her a level stare. "You won't do that because I'm going to make sure all your online actions are tracked. Our tracking software is state of the art, we're in the process of taking it to market, and we're very pleased with its performance so far. This will be a good opportunity to test it out. We have excellent fail safes in place for people who try to bypass it. I'm not saying you'd do anything intentionally wrong, but we need to protect our property."

  Again, his glance fell on Cami. She'd been pinpointed, that was for sure.

  "I'd like to start by screening your managers to get an idea of who's who in the company," Connor said.

  As Cami had thought, he went straight for the people angle.

  She hoped that she'd be able to delve straight into the archives, but Connor said firmly, "You're going to work with me for now, Cami. If we pick up on anything irregular, that's when you can start the online checking."

  Cami felt irritated that she wasn't being allowed to go her own way, but she guessed Connor had a point. There were a lot of employees in this business, and she couldn't go blindly exploring the systems without some guidelines as to who they should focus on.

  "Good idea," she said, causing Connor to nod approvingly.

  "You can use this boardroom. There’s a test computer right here that will give you some access into whatever you need.” Marius indicated the sleek, silver screen and keyboard on the opposite desk.

  Was he being too nice? Too open? Cami felt a sudden flare of suspicion, but then reasoned to herself that if there was a killer in his company, she guessed this CEO wanted him or her rooted out, and fast. He was keen to get the work done, and he knew that by cooperating, he could ensure that the FBI also came to the party by keeping things as low profile as possible.

  "Can we speak to your HR manager first?" Connor asked.

  "That’s Maria Rossi, and I'll send her through to you now. Just do this fast, get it done, and let me know the results, please." Marius turned and walked out.

  Cami opened her laptop and jotted a few notes on her screen, hoping that she'd be prepared for this important interview. After all, HR knew everything about everyone. HR was the most terrifying and feared section of any company.

  And the woman who walked in a minute later looked as if she was fully living up to this reputation.

  Maria Rossi had dark hair tied back in a French braid. She had a brisk expression and piercing, dark eyes. She was wearing a gray power suit and a red blouse, and her nails were immaculately manicured.

  She sat down opposite Cami and Connor and opened her own laptop. "Marius said I must answer all your questions. There may be some confidentiality stumbling blocks, but I'll cooperate with you as best as I can," she said. "As you know, our software is the best in the market. It's highly sophisticated, and it allows us to search through millions of images in a matter of seconds. It's what's used by law enforcement as well as by many companies for security purposes. So, for that reason, we’re going to need to put a level of security and management in place on your transactions. Technological espionage is real."

  Now, she was also looking suspiciously at Cami. She tried not to feel personally attacked. In this company, they’d clearly seen her immediately for the IT whiz kid she was.

  “The main management team?” Connor asked. “Is their whereabouts accounted for on Monday, yesterday, or today?”

  “The main management team and the CEO were all in a conference the whole of yesterday. It started at eight and wrapped up at around two p.m. That includes the CEO, COO, the head of security, the head of marketing, and the IT team, as well as myself.”

  That ruled the company heads out, but it left many others.

  "Okay. In that case, we're looking for anyone who's had erratic work performance the past few days or who's taken leave from work. The person we're looking for would have needed to be in Boston at the murder sites at about eight a.m. this morning and about ten a.m. yesterday morning, and then again on Monday, probably at around eight a.m."

  As Connor spoke, Maria's fingers were tapping her keyboard as she input the days and times. "Our team here mostly works flexible hours. Some people start early, some finish late. Some will work twelve hours one day and take a half day the next," she said. "But I'm going to look for absences that run across all those days first."

  Cami waited, feeling expectant. So much rested on what would happen now. Would there be someone who had taken the week off unexpectedly to commit these terrible crimes?

  "There are a few people who have not been into work this week." Narrowing her eyes, Maria stared at the list, muttering to herself. "There's a reason for him being away. He's just had an operation. And there's a reason for these three people. He's out of state on his honeymoon, he's working in our LA office this week, and she's in New York this week. The others ..." She tapped her pen on the desk. "The others, you can look into."

  "What are the names?" Connor asked.

  "Sonja Derrick is the vice head of our IT security team. She hasn't been in. Then the other two are Adam Anderson, our marketing manager, and Sarah Thompson, who's Adam's PA."

  Cami felt a surge of excitement. They had their first suspects. Now, she could get to work. Here were three names they could focus on.

  "We'll need to look into each of them," Connor said. "Any others?"

  "No others who have been off work since Monday. I can pass on the contact details for those three," Maria said, sounding more reluctant this time.

  Meanwhile, Cami was already logging into social media. She had three people to investigate, and she couldn't wait to make a start. She got three different browser tabs open to speed things up and then went on a search of the three possibilities.

  At a quick glance, she knew immediately who her strongest suspect was.

  Without a doubt, it was Adam Anderson. Already, Cami could see that his interaction was highly suspicious.

  Incriminating, even, she thought, with a flare of excitement.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  "Look here," Cami said to Connor, feeling keen to explore this new lead. "Adam Anderson seems to have a grudge against pretty females. He's one of those types. He's posted negative, angry comments about 'women with looks and no brains.’ He seems to be very resentful of them. I'm sure it's all a bit of fantasy, but it's still pretty incriminating."

  "What else do you have on these people?" Connor asked. "Three employees will take a lot of checking. We need to prioritize. Get the most likely one first and then the others. Who’s the next one, do you think?"

  Cami nodded. "We should look into Sonja Derrick, who works in IT security," she said. "She may have had access to sensitive data that could be linked to the murders. We should track her activities and see if there's anything suspicious."

  Could she narrow down any of these employees by checking their online interactions? Adam was definitely ringing alarm bells the loudest with those comments, so she looked at him first.

  She sighed in disappointment as she looked further into Adam's social media.

  "He checked into the local doctor's rooms at exactly the time yesterday's murder was committed," she said, sounding disappointed. "And then he checked into the local drugstore. I see here that he canceled a music practice last night saying he was sick."

  Those could all be a carefully created alibi, but Cami didn't think so. His check-ins were live, and the days of absence from work and the cancelation of the social engagements pointed to genuine illness.

  "It seems like he has the flu," Cami said, nosing around further. She'd managed to get into a chat board that he was on—Musos in Passion.

  "Sorry, dudes," he'd written. "I'm out for the count. My throat's killing me."

  "Can I come around and drop off some meds?" someone else had responded.

  "Yeah, please. I'm home all day. Just call first because I'm in bed and I need to get downstairs to unlock the door."

  That had been yesterday.

  "I think he's genuinely sick," Cami said. "Yes, he's commented in an insulting way on 'beautiful women' but I don't think he did this. I don't think he could have, looking at his interactions and check-ins."

  "Okay. We're going to put him on the 'non-urgent' list," Connor said. "I'll ask the local police department to go around there and confirm his whereabouts, but it doesn't sound like he's our guy. How about the others?"

  Cami glanced at his own screen. Connor had the police database open and was cross-checking these three suspects with the police records to see if any of them had any arrests or any backgrounds of run-ins with the law.

  "I'm looking up Sonja Derrick now," Cami said.

  Sonja Derrick's profile was more hidden. It took Cami a few more minutes of digging to find out about her.

  "She's a member of a forum called 'Women in Business,’" she said. "She's been actively participating in discussions on gender equality. She's also mentioned in a few posts about her work in IT security, and she's a member of the American Cyber Security Association." Cami read further, glad to have gotten into a place where she could learn more. This forum was a wealth of information. "She's a single mother of two. She's definitely strong on equality and pushes for women’s rights in the workplace."

  "It's not sounding like she's our person," Connor said.

  Cami narrowed her eyes. "Oh, wait. I'm seeing something else here. She went skiing this weekend on a dry slope, and she sprained her ankle badly. She's at home, resting it, taking anti-inflammatories, and putting ice packs on it. Apparently, she can't walk at all. I see here her direct boss has actually sent her a 'get well soon' message and given her some work to do from home on this social media page. But obviously, HR hasn't received the doctor's letter yet."

  "Okay. That's also not a prospect," Connor said. "I've got nothing so far on the criminal records side, either. Looks like both of them are clean."

  There was only one left. Sarah Thompson. Now, Cami was pinning all her hopes on this innocuously smiling blonde, whose profile showed her cuddled up to a golden Labrador and a little blond boy. Not exactly an auspicious start, she thought with a sigh. This wasn't shouting out 'serial killer' to her, although she knew that murderers could hide anywhere.

  Seeing Sarah was a mother, Cami looked into that first. She found a mom's group on social media, and there, she found the possible reason for her non-appearance at work.

  "Uh oh," she told Connor. "It looks as if Sarah's boy is in the hospital. He was bitten by a dog who got into a fight with their Labrador at the park and had to have an operation on his leg. Poor little guy. Seems she's been by his bedside ever since."

  Cami read further, now anxious. "The Labrador’s okay if you want to know. And it looks as if the little boy will be too. He's healing well, but she's definitely been caught up in that. I didn't think she was the killer, and now, for sure, she wouldn't have had time."

  Connor nodded. "All three are clear on my side, with no previous trouble from the police."

  Their three defectors from work all had reasons. The only one that needed in person confirmation would get a visit from the local police which Connor was even now organizing. Cami felt disappointed. She'd been so sure that one of these would be the one they were seeking, but now they were all the way back to square one.

  She went through the list of employees again. There were a lot of them, and now that she was looking, with so much flexible time and unusual office hours in play, she was wondering how the company kept track of all their employees' ins and outs. How did they ensure they were, at least, still clocking in and out at the agreed time? Surely, there must be some way they were doing this.

  She glanced down at the business card that the HR manager had left.

  "Do you mind if I call her?" she asked Connor. "I have a question."

  "Sure," he said. "Go ahead. Ask away. If it can help us, ask anything." Staring at his own screen, he frowned in frustration.

  "Okay," Cami said, dialing the number. "I'm just going to ask her about how they track the employees' attendance."

  Maria picked up the phone in two rings. "How can I help?" she said briskly. "Make it quick, I'm in a meeting."

  Cami explained her question. "Tracking employee attendance. How's it done? How do you log their work hours?"

  The HR manager replied, "We use an in-house software solution to track all our employees' clock in and clock out times. It's all automated, linked up to their phones, which activates the entrance doors and access booms for all employees. It's been a great help for us. They can’t access the building without their phone. The phone automatically tracks that they’re there and then signs them out when they leave."

  That sounded very effective. Now, Cami needed to know who hadn’t been at work, because they would have been able to commit the murders.

  "Thanks. Can I access the records?"

  There was a pause. Once again, Cami sensed that Maria really didn't like this interference in her working day. She didn't want people poking and prodding around in her carefully regimented systems.

  "I guess you can," she said. "But I'm going to put a note on the system now that will generate a full report of where you've looked. Here are the login details."

  She read out the username and password.

  Cami thanked her for the information and hung up, feeling more hopeful. This was something they could work with.

  She wished she'd known about it earlier because now they could use this software to track when employees hadn't been in the building. If the gaps in their schedule matched up with the times of the murders, then they could be on the path of the killer.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  "I'm going to look at all the employees' login and logout times," Cami said. Now that she had a goal in mind, her fingers were flying over the keyboard as she accessed this data, knowing how super important it was going to be.

  She didn't even care that Maria was tracking her movements. Let her. She had no interest in stealing any of the code from here, although she wouldn't have minded analyzing it to see how it worked.

  But there wasn't time, and in any case, such a thing would get her into trouble. Now was not the time to seek trouble, but rather to seek suspects.

  "Okay, so let's look at where these victims all live in relation to the offices," Cami muttered, assessing the timing that it would have taken each person to get to the scene, carry out the kill, and get back to work. Of course, they might not have gone directly there and back, and probably hadn't, but what she wanted to do was to see the minimum time it would have taken.

  That way nobody would slip through the cracks.

  She lined up the times and mapped out the routes. It was a long process, and she practically felt her brain steaming as she worked out the parameters, but she felt a sense of satisfaction that she was doing this thoroughly.

  Finally, Cami had the set of parameters in place that told her when the killer would have needed to leave the office in order to commit the murders and get back again.

  "Okay," she muttered, feeling a sense of impatience that she hadn't been quicker. But she'd been double checking herself every step of the way. "I'm going to find you now, I'm going to!"

  She logged into the timekeeping software and set out the search to include each of the times of the three recent murders.

  Then she waited, not too long, for this well written software to do its job and throw out the results.

  Cami let out a deep breath as she saw a few names appear. Then a few more. And then a whole bunch more, right at the end.

  "Okay," she said. "We've got a list, Connor. Here are the people who weren't off work, but who could have done this by being out of the office."

  She was interested to see that the software followed her parameters and that the list of people started with the ones who were linked to the times most closely. Right at the bottom, she saw, were the ones whose attendance was far away from those times—the night shift workers, security, and cleaning staff.

  "So, starting from the top," she said, looking at the very first name, trying not to feel overwhelmed that there were now nearly thirty names on this list that would all need to be carefully checked.

  "Starting from the one who matches these times most closely," Connor said.

  "Correct," Cami said, staring down at this first new suspect. Jack Charter was his name.

  "Who's he, and what's his role?" Cami said to herself. She looked him up on her own laptop.

  Her eyes widened as she saw who this man was and took a look at his heavy, grim face. "He's one of the original software developers who worked on this facial recognition app," she said. "He seems to be freelancing for them on a part-time basis now, but his absences from work in the past few days match up so closely with the times of the kills. And I see he's been absent at other times last week, too, which would have allowed him time to research their movements, I guess."

  She felt as if this was starting to come together.