of anonymity that would implicate them all, and yet at the same time none of them, just like online handles.
But Soul_Reaper had been there. Jason knew the man hadn't been one of the five arrested simply because he hadn't stopped posting. No, he couldn't rule out the fact that the name was shared by multiple people, but the verbiage used was too distinct. Anonymous had different users make their posts and videos. The phraseology changed each time. Soul_Reaper, though? That was clearly one man.
In the end, Jason found nine different descriptions. Nine people, just like she'd said. The problem was that they were rarely all there at the same time. The first three days had been it. At that time, the whole group had arrived, organized, and then they'd all entered the room where she was held. Dez had heard everything, though. Her fear-fueled panic made every sound in the building crystal clear in her head.
So, nine people. Three days they were all there, then two left. On the fifth day, another vanished. Near the end of the week, three more left and two of those first three came back. The pattern continued like that for fourteen of the sixteen days Dez had been held. She'd been fed convenience-store food - which might be a lead but probably wasn't. Things like Slim Jims and chips. They'd given her water and Gatorade to drink. She'd had a bucket to relieve herself in after she'd been stripped. Before that, she'd had to ask, and they hadn't given her any privacy.
Those were all the things she didn't want others to know. The whole time they'd had her, she'd been degraded and treated like an animal. She'd been injured - and badly - but they only cared because of what it meant for them. On day eleven, the group had debated killing her. The only reason they hadn't was because a few of them had been missing, so they couldn't all agree.
At some point, Zara and Rhaven left the apartment. Braden peeked his head in a bit after that and said he was headed to the warehouse for a few hours. Jason kept going. He found the five guys who'd been arrested, matching their descriptions to the pictures in the arrest records. But that was when he noticed something else. Of those five, four had been killed in prison. He immediately grabbed his phone and called Bradley.
"Agent Matthews," Bradley answered.
"I think I've got something," Jason said, leaning into his chair to stretch his back. "Nine men assaulted Dez. Five were arrested. We know Arturo Ganza was involved and not arrested, so that's six of them identified."
"Ok?" Bradley asked.
"Here's the thing," Jason said. "Of the five in prison, only one man is still alive. I'm sending you what I have on him, as well as a file you do not want to listen to."
"But I have to," Bradley realized. "What is it, Jason?"
"It's Dez's description of events." He pushed out a heavy sigh. "Trust me, you'll understand why she doesn't touch people when you're done. I need everything you can get on him. This man has some idea of who else was there, and one of them was Soul Reaper."
"Are you sure?" Bradley asked. "For all you know, he was watching it on a webcam or something."
"No, because they were making decisions as a group," Jason explained. "I think this happened before they had real leadership. The nuances of that blog post, the one describing what they'd do to her?"
"But that wasn't made by Soul Reaper," Bradley pointed out. "It was made by an anonymous user. It could've been Arturo!"
Jason hadn't thought of that. This was the problem with working in the dark. Too many people had been involved, and the internet had kept them all anonymous. So once he was off the phone with Bradley, he went back to Dez's blog, hoping to see what information had been left lying around. Not like it was the first time, though. He'd combed through everything a few times already.
Which led him back to Arturo. The man had been questioned in Dez's kidnapping because his car had been spotted in the area. According to him, he'd been in Austin to interview for a developer position with BioWare, although no one had followed up on that. Evidently, he'd also had an alibi for most of the time Dez had been held.
Parking receipts and toll tag records showed that Arturo had made a trip to Colorado. Why? According to