10. Kay

A cheeky grin that grew into a real smile, the one she'd grown so fond of. I prematurely Ta-Da'ed. The light of someone who saw possibility in everything. I couldn't have done it without my lovely assistant.

But a shadow crept in and the smile faltered, fell away. The sparkling eyes dulled and the skin grayed like years were flying by. The life and joy bled out until there was only sadness, haunting and eternal. Why? Why, Kay—

She jerked awake, knocking her coffee cup off the edge of the desk. "Shit."

"Hold on." Mike was already there with wadded tissue, wiping the floor. He looked up. "I guess I don't need to ask if you got any real rest."

Kay shook her head. "I…uh…I was dreaming."

"Not good then."

"No. I haven't dreamed of him in a while – not like this. In the beginning…." She rubbed her eyes.

"Yeah," Mike nodded, tossing the coffee-soaked tissue and empty cup in the wastebasket and moving back to his desk.

In the beginning he had come to her dreams almost every night, begging her to find him. To save him. From what? Her mind had filled in every blank with a different horror. Cameron locked in a bleak place, chained and beaten and violated, his bright smile extinguished forever. Spirited so far away he would never be found. Dead or dying, alone and afraid and just wanting to go home, and she'd wake sobbing into her pillow, drag herself from bed and get back to the search.

But then, as the exhaustion of those early frenzied days settled into her bones, as weeks became months with not a single lead and the hopes around her visibly dimmed, her dreams started to fade like they were tired too, her mind settling into the reality of his absence. And their cases – their current cases – kept coming. New crimes and victims that they worked without their Master of Deception, back to the reality of dogged investigation. New cases that pushed the old one to a side of her desk, then a corner, then a single sad file in the organizer tucked behind her monitor, there to be taken out from time to time and flipped through, yielding nothing.

Then one glorious night he was grinning at her. He had a thrill-seeking museum docent handcuffed in the trunk of his car. (It wasn't as bad as it sounded.) He was bouncing, excited. She woke buoyed, remembered, and cried again. Now she smoothed back her hair and mustered a smile for Mike. "I still dream about him sometimes, but it's like the good memories crowded out the nightmares."

"It happens that way. If you're lucky."

"Did I move on too fast, Mike? Did I stop pushing this investigation because it hurt and I knew he was most likely dead, and…leave him?" She tasted salt in the back of her throat.

"No," Mike said, firmly. "You moved on when you had to." He stabbed a finger at the file. "Look in there. Nothing but our notes and one dead end after another. We did everything, Kay, and we would have kept doing it if any of it had brought us a damned lead!" His voice softened. "We all loved him; we all would have moved heaven and earth to find him."

Kay nodded and took a deep breath. Somewhere out there was the monster (or monsters) that had taken him, uploaded his picture and set the timer, taken the bids…. Sold Cameron into a fate it hurt to even imagine. Somewhere was the money trail that led to the monster who'd bought him. But nearly a year had passed with nothing. If they hadn't seen that video, the case would have stayed cold and dead—

She blinked. "So why upload the video?"

Mike shook his head. "What do you mean?

"It's been almost a year." Kay clicked on the file to play it once more. Even muted it was melodramatic, photos drifting in slow motion before fading away.

"What are you looking for?" Mike asked, leaning in.

"I don't know. What I do know is we had nothing for months and suddenly the case is warm again." Cameron's photo faded in and she studied it.

Perching on the edge of his desk, Mike surveyed the ceiling tiles. "Maybe he's bored."

"The hacker?"

"Yeah. What if he's playing with us, getting us to run around in circles?"

Kay grimaced. "I wouldn't put it past any hacker to toy with us, but he's not seeing us run around in circles so what does he get out of it?" She glanced over the bullpen, where agents reviewed old security footage and interview notes. On the glass wall, Cameron's photo had gone back up. Déjà vu gripped her. She turned to Mike. "Or maybe it isn't about us."

As if on cue her phone buzzed. Jordan. She tapped the screen. "Jordan, you're on speaker – Mike's here."

We've got a money trail.

….

Data filled the laptop screen. It was indecipherable to her, but Kay saw only confident knowledge in Ivy's dark eyes. "So you can't trace it all the way?

"No," Ivy answered with a brief shake of her head. "Cryptocurrency transactions can be difficult to trace, and that's the payment method of choice on the Dark Web." She pointed to lines of code, her voice taking on the practiced tone of a teacher. "Bìtcoin was supposed to guarantee anonymity because you don't provide personal information to make a transaction. Rather than being connected to your real-world identity, your Bìtcoin is connected to your pseudonym – your online identity. All transactions are stored permanently in the blockchain, which means they can be traced back to that identity. And if any part of that identity is ever linked to your real-world self…."

"Then the transactions are also linked to you."

"Right. Even if you try to cover your trail by using different addresses for different transactions, investigators can track a single transaction that moves coin to or from multiple addresses at once, so they can establish that those addresses are in the same Bìtcoin "wallet" and so belong to the same user. Then they just have to link one of the addresses to you, which isn't all that hard."

Jordan looked around the group as they processed the technical jargon. "The point is," he explained, "Bìtcoin can be traced. In this case, we've been able to trace it most of the way because…."

"What?" Kay pressed. Seeing a flash of distress on his face she softened her tone. "It's alright, Jordan. Just tell us."

Ivy stepped in. "We were able to trace accounts used both for the sale itself and for…transport of the merchandise to the buyer."

"Merchandise?" Gunter's voice was suddenly loud and hard, drowning out Dina's stifled sob. He stepped toward Ivy, fists balled at his sides. "Merchandise? That boy was-"

"Gunter!" Jordan interrupted sharply, hands raised appeasingly as he edged between them. "I know. But it makes it easier to-to talk about this. We have to keep our heads. We have to."

"We do," Kay agreed. The nausea was back like a wave but she pushed it down and gestured toward the laptop. "So you tracked the transport?"

Ivy nodded and faced Kay. "Yes. That's one place where connections can be made. When things have to be physically moved, then you're dealing with a much more visible part of the transaction. In this case, the seller hired a courier to move your friend. The charge for that transaction involved transportation time and gas."

Kay perked up. "So they drove him somewhere."

"Yes. And then the courier received payment and checked that payment was received, either prior to or right after making the delivery – probably just prior."

Mike squinted at her. "So…."

"So, the courier used a Tor browser when he confirmed receipt of payment. Tor is supposed to anonymize users by randomly directing traffic through multiple relays, but Tor traffic can be traced through analysis of traffic patterns."

"Basically," Jordan offered, "we found similar traffic patterns at different points in the Tor network, indicating that those points were sending the same information. We were able to connect the points back to an IP address – an internet café in Upstate New York."

….

To be continued

Note: Thanks again for reading! To those who have messaged me story ideas, I'm on it.

Apologies for taking a bit longer with this update…I had to do research. In hindsight, I'm thinking I might have reason to be concerned. After my research, I now have a pretty interesting google search history. There's "how do I access the dark web?" and "can authorities trace dark web bìtcoin transactions?" Along with the ever-popular "where can I find a human trafficking site?"

So if I suddenly go silent, you'll know I've been picked up. (I swear, officer, I was just researching a story! But, while I have you and your (cute) partner here, could you do me a favour and sign this petition to renew the ABC show Deception?) J

Anyway, I'll hopefully be updating again tomorrow. I still have to go do my nightly feedback to the networks, letting them know that TV just isn't magic enough.

Cheers,

Bunny