"Riley," Jason muttered. "Yeah. If you ever hear him talking like that, telling a girl to get in the kitchen, or any of those other sexist jokes, let me know, ok? I'll change his mind real fast. Got enough of Riley's chat logs - and she won't mind me sharing them."
"Thank you," Bethany said softly, reaching over to rub his shoulder. "And don't worry about us. Kyle and I have plenty to keep us busy. You tell Bradley to keep going until you get these people. With the news focused on internet terrorism, this is a wave you'll need to ride. The politics and optics of it are on your side. Use it. Brad knows how to do that, and the more the FBI wants this to go away, the more support you'll get."
"I just have to figure out how to outthink this guy," Jason admitted. "He's good. The problem is that he's too good."
"Get in his head," she suggested. "Isn't that what they do for serial killers? Change it up and put yourself in his shoes. If you weren't worried about the law, and you could do anything you wanted, how would you get these sexist pigs to kill themselves? How would you terrorize them?"
"The problem is that I still don't know why he's doing this," Jason admitted. "We know he's after women, but not what he wants from them. To quit? But why? Without knowing what incited this, there's no way to predict where he's going with it. I mean, it seems like they're all over the place with who they attack and how hard they hit them. It doesn't follow any logical path of escalation."
"What if it's like that group, um..." Bethany pulled in a breath. "Anonymous? They don't have a leader, right?"
"Right?" He knew who she was talking about, but not where she was going with it.
"So what if you're chasing more than one person? What if Soul Reaper is the head of a group that has no leadership? Maybe they just lash out at women for their own reason? Could they be working together because they all hate women, but in different ways? Wouldn't that explain different levels of aggression?"
"And the resulting chaos keeps Soul Reaper shielded from me," Jason breathed. "Bethany, you're a genius! Frenzy tried to shoot Riley, and we know he's not Soul Reaper. We need to split this up and look at the hits orchestrated by the leader and all the ones that are simply tagged with Kings of Gaming!"
"Gives you something to do on the drive," Bethany said, turning him back toward the living room.
But Jason paused. "What made you think of that?"
Bradley's wife gave him a sad smile. "When I was working my way up the corporate ladder, I got the same thing. The guys didn't even know each other, but they all wanted to make sure that I knew 'a pretty little lady' wasn't going to take their job. There are always a few, Jason. Every woman knows this, and every man is blinded by the fact that he'd never act that way. When we try to complain, we're told that we're being too sensitive."
"And that dismissal covers their actions," he breathed, continuing on his way. "That's what we've been missing. It's not the actual threats I need to be looking for. It's the general and allowed complaints. The 'typical' assholes. Bradley!"
"Almost done," the man called from his bedroom.
"We need to work this case like arson," Jason called back. "He's lighting fires and watching them spread. Soul Reaper doesn't have a tie to all of these women. He doesn't have an overall goal like we've been thinking. He's using the mass hate to hide his real purpose, and it has to tie back to Dez. She was first, so she has to be the source."
Bradley stepped into the living room dragging his luggage behind him. "So we go back to the beginning."
"And we do it now," Jason said. "They're hitting Deviant again. That's why Soul Reaper made that post, because they're his target. The rest of this? Riley, Kate, Rhaven? They're just what got hit by the sparks. We need to find the source."
"And the accelerant," Bradley realized. "Call Dalton and get the first case files. It's got to be in there."
Jason grabbed his phone and dialed. Behind him, Bradley pulled his wife aside and kissed the woman slowly. Jason noticed, but he wouldn't gawk. Those two were the perfect example of how to make a