Her eyes got a little bigger. “You know stuff about the darknet?”
Tor—The Onion Router—was an open-source web browser that kept its users anonymous and was the only way to access the darknet. Jenna used it regularly and knew more about the dark web than Emily probably ever would.
“Yeah, a little. Keep going.”
Emily hunched down a little. “It just gets weirder from there. Rather than going straight onto Tor, I was…compelled, like you said, to hack into a nearby hidden server and send the messages through that. I know that doesn’t make any sense.”
It made more sense than she knew. “Do you remember anything about the message itself?”
“Not most of it. All I remember is some sort of countdown. Sixty-eight hours.”
Just short of three days. Whatever Joaquin was planning was happening then.
“I need to get back to my own computer to figure out what this all means.” Jenna was saying it to Mark and Ian more than Emily.
“Do you really think it means something?” Emily asked.
“Definitely.”
Mark’s voice came into Jenna’s ear. “I know you want to go, but see if she remembers anything before the clothing store. She was held for over two days.”
He was right, and while Emily was comfortable talking to Jenna, she should take advantage of it with more questions, no matter how much she wanted to get back to her workstation and see if she could make more sense of the situation with this new intel.
“Can you tell me anything more about what happened before you got to the clothing store?”
“Yeah, but that’s weird too.”
Jenna smiled at her. “Weird doesn’t necessarily mean incorrect.”
“After I was taken, I woke up in a room that… Well, it looked kind of like a dentist’s office. I was in the chair, and I couldn’t move.” Emily’s voice dropped to a whisper, and Jenna reached over and squeezed her hand. “I had an IV in, but I could see they had drawn blood. The vials were on the counter next to me.”
“I’m sure that was scary.”
“There were three or four doctors, and they were all arguing. But I was scared and they’d drugged me, so I didn’t understand what they were talking about.” She dropped her head. “I was crying. Begging them to let me go.”
How many times had Jenna begged to be let go when she’d been taken? Most people liked to think they would be strong—would never beg their captors for anything. Would keep their pride and dignity, no matter what.
Only someone who’d lived through the hell of real captivity understood that pride and dignity were often the first to fall.
“I would’ve begged too,” Jenna told her. “I would’ve promised anything to get myself out. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“They didn’t let me go. They just kept arguing with each other.”
“Do you remember anything at all they were arguing about?”
“No. It was stuff I didn’t understand. Something about the deadline for the sale and me being crispy and ink on my fingers.” She shook her head. “But I didn’t have any ink on my fingers. I checked.”
They were losing her—now she really was starting not to make sense. But it was understandable. She’d already been through so much. “Emily, I think it’s probably best for you to get some sleep. I know everything is confused in your head, but you’ve done an amazing job explaining it all as best you can.”
“Jenna,” Mark said, “show her the picture of Joaquin. See if she recognizes him.”
Jenna took out her phone and flipped it around to show the picture of Joaquin taken by a Zodiac agent last year at someone’s wedding. “We’ll try to get a sketch artist here to see if you can remember the features of any of the doctors. But do you happen to recognize this man?”
As soon as Emily saw the picture of Joaquin, she wrapped her arms around her head and began sobbing. Jenna jumped up, nearly knocking her chair over. She hadn’t been prepared for that reaction.
Had Joaquin put some other blocker into the compound that would cause a reaction in any robot who tried to talk about him?
She put her phone away and reached out to try to soothe Emily. “Shh. It’s gone. His picture is gone. I’m sorry. Is your head hurting again? Are you in pain?”