Cassidy’s phone began chirping. Soon after, Nigel’s phone joined in.

“Nige, I think I found her,” Cassidy said. Nigel jumped up and looked at his phone. The alerts from the Find Friends app that Jet and Cassidy had installed and configured paid off.

Cassidy held her phone out for Nigel to examine. After a few taps, he could verify that the location was correct.

“It looks like Jet is in Newfoundland, around the St. Pierre and Miquelon area.” Nigel said, frowning.

Natasha gave Nigel a cold look. “What do you mean? I thought she was working with you two.”

Nigel couldn’t say anything, and his voice modulator device had nothing to do with it. He hoped that Jet’s cell phone was in a spot where it could locate her more precisely. He was worried. It had been several days since she’d vanished on the night of his mother’s accident. And according to this app, she was far away in an unusual location.

He took out his laptop and connected his external antenna that allowed him to boost his weak Wi-Fi signal. Nigel examined the logs from the Find Friends app. The last US location reported was the Newport docks. After he secured his connection, he pulled his ShowALLD scan results from cameras at the Newport docks. A few short minutes later, he could see an image of the Newport harbor. Nigel reviewed the scan results from ShowALLD.

“There are three cameras in the Newport harbor. Two have vulnerable patch levels, and it appears that these cameras haven’t been updated in a long time,” Nigel said to no one in particular.

Nigel opened another terminal window. He was in the zone. He found the correct exploit and ran a Datasploit reverse shell, which gave him terminal access directly to the servers controlling the cameras. Several minutes later, Nigel was viewing camera footage minutes before Jet’s phone went offline. As Nigel reviewed the video footage, his blood went cold. Four men were carrying what appeared to be a wooden box; then they almost lost their footing. It was almost as if something heavy had shifted inside the box. A fifth man, dressed in a suit, was overlooking the transfer. After Nigel accessed another vulnerable camera, he was able to view the same footage from another angle. Some of the men appeared to be Middle Eastern. He showed the footage to Natasha and John.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I think I know who has her,” John Appleton said.

“Who?” Nigel and Cassidy asked almost in unison.

“I believe the Taker has her. If that is true, then she is probably long gone,” John said. “The Taker not only kidnaps his victims—he also methodically researches and matches them.”

“Matches them with whom?” Nigel asked.

“He keeps a detailed dossier of each person he profiles. His modus operandi in past cases suggests that he sells his victims to the highest bidder. Last year, we had to let him go due to the lack of direct evidence. He was in the Washington, DC, metro area when several kidnappings occurred there, but we couldn’t link any of the evidence to him.”

“What’s his name?” Natasha said.

“Seymour Willis.”

“We should probably perform our own investigation,” Natasha said grimly.

“I’m already on it,” Nigel said.

Nigel turned his laptop screen so Natasha and John could see it.

“I found nothing on the surface web, but I did get some photos online, so I ran a reverse image search of the driver’s license photo I found for Seymour,” Nigel said.

“What did you find?” Natasha said.

“A news story about his daughter’s death. The police ruled it an accident.”

“That was in the file, but we didn’t find that relevant to the kidnappings,” John said.

I wonder about that, Nigel thought.

“We know where she is, Agent Appleton,” Cassidy said, while looking at her phone.

“Where?” John asked.

“Her phone pinged in eastern Canada.”

“I have a friend in Interpol. Perhaps he can help,” John said.

“Can you enhance the driver’s license image?” Natasha asked.

Nigel tried rendering the image with higher-quality settings.

“This is the best I can do,” he said after a few minutes.

Natasha took a picture of his screen with her phone. “I’m sending this to Collective Systems,” she said. “Where the FBI fails, we deliver!”