Thank you all for the kind reviews, and I really like that you are invested in guessing about what the hint might have been.
The answer for you below, and then some. Someone actually did guess right, congrats!
Just, enjoy your lunch break!
She didn't think she was going to be able to sleep, let alone actually rest. Truly, Gillian realised she had fallen asleep only when she woke up, disoriented and with a stiff neck, her face down on Cal's desk.
The first coherent thought going through her mind was that she wanted to go back to sleep. In her sleep, Cal was with her instead of tied down to something waiting for another round of torture. While she was sleeping, there was no video to rewatch or theories to chase. In her dreams, they were having a laugh about something silly while eating Chinese food out of takeaway boxes.
But as she slowly came back to her senses, those happy thoughts were replaced by the sheer panic of not knowing for how long she had been asleep and what might have happened in the meantime. When she looked up, absently massaging her neck, she was immediately reassured by Loker and Torres, the first one dozing off and the second watching the recording of the last call without sound on. If they were there, she figured, nothing irreparable had happened yet. Then again…
"Where's Reynolds?" She immediately panicked that the absence of the agent might mean she had been ditched from some important action.
"He's in the lab. He's rewatching this with his team," the young woman explained, then felt like she had to add more. "I was trying to see if something else came up without sound. It's…distracting."
Foster thought distracting didn't even come close to describing it, but appreciated Torres' effort to be delicate about it. She also appreciated that she had come back, to make herself useful rather than anything else, and for that she was gladly going to avoid discussing her earlier departure. Besides, taking away the powerful impact of the audio might have helped them focus on other aspects of the images and possible clues lying within them.
"Found anything?"
Torres shook her head no, looking down and away in a way that didn't require further explanations. Gillian nodded to herself then and came closer, once more standing in front of the giant size screen. She was about to take the remote from Torres and carry on with her when Reynolds entered the room, and something in the way he rushed in and overall looked at them made her think she wasn't probably going to use it for the time being.
"What is it?" She asked, and Reynolds didn't find it strange at all that she had noticed something was up.
"We were able to identify the outgoing signal he's using to spy on us," the agent announced, rushing to add what was going to make it a good news only instead of an amazing one even though they could see it on his face already. "It's given us a good idea of where it's coming from, but it's still too complicated."
"So what can you do?" Gillian asked immediately. "To narrow it down? There must be something-"
"We're putting some plans together." It was puzzling to him that after what she had seen and been through Foster was losing her self-control at the first sign of good news. "We're using a software to apply the same criteria we discussed to possible locations in that new areas we identified."
"And then? If we find one we like how are we going to get there without Warton-"
"One thing at the time, ok?" He tried to slow her down, suddenly missing when she used to be overly calm and collected. "I'm not gonna lie, even when we do find the exact location we're gonna have to be real careful in getting there. My main goal here is to get Lightman back alive."
"How big of an area are we talking about here?" Loker jumped in, although what he really wanted to ask was how they could help to make it smaller.
"It's not a matter of size, not only at least," Niko explained as she came into the room, a laptop in her hands, which she set on Cal's desk before turning the screen so they could all see. "It's roughly a 15 mile radius, which is not too bad. The problem is that we've identified three possible locations matching our criteria, and because they all match our criteria approaching them without being detected might be complicated."
The FBI specialist typed something on her laptop and a map came up on the screen, three dots blinking inside their own red circle. The other people in the room all came forward crowding the space in front of the small screen and she looked at Reynolds, then glancing at the huge screen occupying an entire wall as to silently ask if they couldn't just move the image there. The agent in charge shook his head slightly, stating that wasn't an option, so she sighed and tried to go on as best as she could.
"They are all outside densely inhabited areas, which would make it hard for us to approach with resources without being detected and giving ourselves away." And give Warton a heads-up that the cavalry is coming so he can kill Cal, Gillian added to herself, reading in between the lines of what the agent was not saying. "One of them is an abandoned property with acres of nothing around, we'd be-"
Click.
Somewhere in a remote part of her brain, something clicked.
It was passing and brief, so much so that on a superficial level Gillian didn't even realise it had happened.
"What are you saying, that we wouldn't be able to get there without making a mess?" Loker whined then.
"No, once we identify the exact spot we will be able to come up with a detailed plan to approach and avoid any…" Reynolds looked for a different word but couldn't find any, "mess. But we need to rule it out. If we could get just something else to go on and rule out one of the places-"
"You mean another call?" Torres said, lowering her voice and glancing over at Foster, who looked like she was spaced out from the conversation.
"It might help." Niko had to confirm. "Now we know the signal it might be easier to track it down more accurately."
"I'm not sure we should be wishing for something like that," Loker muttered as he glanced back at the silent images of Cal being shocked back to life, him too noticing the female boss' strange demeanour.
She was watching the video playing in silence, although it seemed more like she was looking right through it and at something else that she started feeling within her grasp. Without sounds, the way Cal was verbally going after Warton looked even more grotesque, nearly ridiculous: a man tied to a bed, barking at another who could kill him any time he pleased, as if it could make any difference. She was watching and ignoring the conversation going on behind her, even though the four people were conversing animatedly and getting a little heated in their arguments.
Because she heard a click, like a switch being flipped in her head, a switch connected to a bulb whose light was still struggling to come alive.
Gillian came closer and used the remote to adjust the colours and contrast on the screen, for the first time looking at anything she could see but Cal.
"Foster, c'mon. Enough with what." Reynolds suddenly approached her, trying to take the remote away from her. "You don't need to keep doing this, we've got a good lead now-"
"No." She didn't shout, but close enough, pulling away from him with a decisive step.
"Gillian-"
"Shut up Ben."
The three words were said with an overall polite tone, but the people in the room were still shocked. Even more so because Gillian didn't seem to realise what she had just said. Reynolds had been and still was very understanding of her situation, but being told to shut up while he was onto something was hard to take, especially from someone like her who always chose diplomacy over confrontation. And frankly, he didn't know how much more of that self-torture she was committed to he could take.
But before he could say something, as politely as he could, she showed him and everyone else why it was better to let her be.
All of a sudden she paused the video and ran closer to the screen, then away from it in a frantic manner to get to the switch and kill all the lights in the room. There was still some coming from the windows but it was dark enough to improve some of the details of the image, in particular the one her brain and eyes had focused on. Then, at the end of the silent and confusing series of actions, she grabbed one of the markers and circled something on Cal's left leg, before stepping back to admire her work.
"What?" Loker asked, voicing everybody's question. "What's that?"
Click.
A second switch went on, joining the first one in some sort of electric circuit and getting the light bulb one step closer to come to life
Then Niko stepped forward, somewhat enthralled by the little red circle and the mysterious object trapped within it. After a few seconds, the woman went back to her laptop and pulled up the same video, freezing on a similar frame and zooming on the same detail.
"Is that…hair? Blond hair?" Reynolds guessed out loud, squinting his eyes to try and make out what that was.
"No," Niko explained. "I think it's-"
"Straw," Gillian jumped in. "Threads of loose straw."
And click. The switch flickered again and the bulb inside her head went on, casting a revealing light in the corner of her brain where crucial information had been hiding.
"Oh my God Cal!" She nearly shouted then, fumbling with the remote in her hands to find the unmute button. "You didn't!"
Despite what she said, she really hoped he had indeed done what she thought he had done.
The audio came back on and pushed the fast forward button, but then she stopped and pressed play. She didn't remember exactly where it was, if it was there at all and not just a figment of her imagination, so she had to play the whole thing as it was to avoid the risk of missing it. The people around her didn't speak, didn't ask for any explanation: they could tell she was like a hunter on a trail, and had seen enough of that behaviour to trust it would take somewhere.
In the video, Cal had started to nag Warton and provoke him, bringing up his dead brother and the humiliating comparison. He was noting how Ward had still been hailed as a hero because in a way the truth about his death was of too big magnitude to be told and then he-
What will you have left once this is over? A place that smells like shit and dead animals? The satisfaction of avening a brother you didn't even like?
Stop, rewind, play.
A place that smells like shit and dead animals.
God bless you, Cal! She celebrated to herself. You really did do it.
"Listen," she said to all of them, going back to that one sentence again. Then she pressed play and watched the others, waiting to see the epiphany coming to their face.
"What-"
"Son of a bitch!" Reynolds burst out, sounding almost triumphant, but then he had to look at Foster for confirmation. "Is that what I think it is?"
"I hope so," she nodded, then rolled her eyes at the clueless expressions of her two employees. "Listen to what he says. A place that smells like shit and dead animals."
For Loker and Torres it was incredibly strange to hear Foster using that kind of language, but that wasn't the point: the point was that they were starting to feel dumb as rocks for failing to see what she meant.
"Horse shit?" Niko asked then, mostly talking to herself. Her brain was getting there, but first she had to come to terms with the fact that a man who had been tortured for nearly an entire day might have found a way, not to mention the presence of mind, to communicate directly with them.
"He was giving us a clue," Gillian stated, briefly glancing at Cal's image with a smile of admiration and gratitude. "We know he knows we're watching, he must have tried to tell us something."
"What are the places you have identified?" Torres asked, ready to make the connection. "Why would you jump straight to horse shit?"
"Well, one is an abandoned riding school."
The revelation brought a heavy silence to the room, a silence that despite the depth was meant to acknowledge something positive. That could be it, the major breakthrough they needed to get to Lightman…and it was absolutely bonkers that he had been the one providing it of his own initiative.
"What else do you have?" Foster asked, speaking absently as her eyes wandered around Cal's face as if she could thank him for the tip.
"Foster, this must be it-"
"What else?" She insisted, knowing they were too close to make mistakes and think they had it.
"Uh, one is a shopping centre in an industrial area, closed down last year. The other one is an abandoned glue factory but listen it must be-"
"The glue factory." Foster cut her off, her face suddenly beaming with the most certain of epiphany. "That's it, this is where they are."
""How can you be sure? The smell, the straw…it would make more sense-"
"Dead animals." She was growing restless, frankly too tired and stressed to keep playing nice while they kept putting a damper on her discoveries. "Cal said dead animals. He was getting killed and brought back to life, yet somehow he found it in him to antagonise Warton just so that he could a message to us." She replayed the sentence, her eyes never faltering as she stared at Reynolds daring him to question her again. "This message. Trust me, he knew exactly what he saying and he chose his words very carefully."
For me, she thought but didn't say out loud. He said it to me, he knew I was listening, he knew I would understand.
It was a comforting thought, even sweet in a way, one that had no business going through her mind when she stopped thinking at what cost that message had gotten to her. One that wasn't going to account for much if they were going to be too late to make good use of that message.
Things seems to be finally going in the right direction, the tides are turning!
Now, wouldn't this be a great chapter to take the total count of reviews up to 100? I might even share a sneak peak of the next story with the person who snatches the 100th review
EDIT: right, I will do it. A sneak peak of the next story EXCLUSIVELY for the person snatching the 100th review if it comes for this chapter