point, Jason was ready for anything.
"He went to college at Baylor. I've found a few pictures of him from back in those days. One was from a party. Guess who was also in the picture?"
"Help me out here, man," Jason begged.
"Dreadknot's sister," Knock said. "Eden. Real name is Janna Meyer. She was a freshman at Baylor when he was a senior. She wasn't attacked for years, though - like three. The picture I have is two years after Dez's assault. A year before she was drugged and raped." Knock paused to suck in a breath. "Cyn, you told us to go deep. Zoe did. She, um..." He paused again. "Eden was drugged with the same thing Dez was given at F5 back when Silk released. A few months apart, and Arturo was in town at that time. The man fucking lived in Plano!"
"Where the IP address led," Jason mumbled. "The reason I was looking at Void when I should've been looking at Arturo. Fuck!"
"But we don't have any proof he did it," Knock pointed out. "I can give you stuff to say he could've, but not that he did."
Jason paused, staring at his lap. "I need to talk to Dread. Eden would know."
"She might not," Knock countered. "Even if Dez remembers everything, it's possible that Eden blocked it all out, or she was too drugged to see anything. Cyn, this might be a dead end."
"Still worth chasing," he decided. "Keep going, Knock. I need to figure out who the other three unnamed people are. Black Snake, Orange Tiger, and Blue Whale. I need something that ties them to the rest of the group. Work backwards. See who the assholes we did catch knew online. Look into the games they played. Fucking hack their old IRS statements."
"Or you could request those for us," Knock countered. "Man, we'll do it, but hacking the IRS? We kinda have a way in already. It's called the FBI."
"Right. I'll have Bradley get those records to you." And Jason ended the call without even saying bye.
His mind was going. On autopilot, he sent a text to Bradley for the tax info, including all attachments. The downside was that those guys had probably used the short forms, so their credit card records wouldn't be included. Something had to work. So he sent another message, letting Bradley know what he really needed.
That got him a reply that the Section Chief could handle it. Jason snarled at his phone. He wanted his people to do it, but whatever. So long as it got done. After all, they had analysts waiting for a little work, and this would be a shit-ton of it. So he told Bradley to find out the original nine's ties to each other online. He didn't care how.
When that was done, he scrolled through his phone for one more contact. This was a call he didn't want to make, but he knew he had to. Chris Meyer had a boring listing, like all of his gamer friends. Nothing that would make his supervisors wonder about the names he'd stored - if they ever bothered to look. But pressing the call button made Jason's stomach clench and his blood run cold.
"Hello!" A man answered.
"Dread?" Jason asked. "It's Cynister."
"Hey, man!" Dread sounded thrilled to hear from him. "I'm not going to be in Columbus, but I'm going to F5. Myst says I can't miss the biggest show of the year. I mean, technically I'm on paternity leave, but my sponsors are thrilled about it."
"Yeah," Jason said. "Sadly, I'm not calling about that. Are you sitting down? Can you be?"
"Shit," Dread breathed. "Ok, I am now. What's going on?"
"Your sister," Jason said.
But Dread cut him off. "She's not gaming, man. She's not coming back. She's not as bad as Dez, but she has panic attacks in crowds."
"No," Jason groaned. "Dread, her name just came up in my investigation. I think she was targeted by KoG."
"Yeah..." Dread let out a sigh. "I've kinda always thought the same. I mean, after the fact, sure, but when they went after Riley?"
"I need you to find out if she recognizes a man named Arturo Ganza. He's a game journalist. We have reason to believe they went to college together, but there's more."
"She doesn't want to talk about it," Dread warned.
"She doesn't have to," Jason assured him. "Just let her know that the FBI is after this guy. He drugged Destiny Pierce with the exact same thing she was given that night. I don't