Bobby POV

The clock was ticking.

Normally I wouldn't be too worried because I do some of my best work under pressure.

But at the moment, we've been dancing with Riley for more than an hour and we were nowhere.

Time was running out, and as unfair as it may seem, it would still mean the difference between Alex looking like a genius, or looking completely incompetent.

"We've got guys going through your computer right now. What do you think they'll find?"

"They won't find shit. If they're as dumb as you two, I doubt they'll figure out how to turn the fucking thing on."

"Oh, we turned it on," Mike said, angling around so that he was coming at Riley from the other side. "And guess what we found."

"Seriously? You guys couldn't find your dicks with both hands and a magnifying glass, so there's no way in hell you even got past my password."

"You mean fuckinggenius07?" I said casually, enjoying the dismay that fell over his face when he heard the word.

"Yeah, it's anything but fucking genius to actually write down your password, moron," Mike added.

He'd borne the brunt of the taunting from Riley, so I wasn't going to discourage him for getting some shots in. Besides, it was the competitiveness of the whole situation that was ultimately going to be Riley's downfall.

He wants to prove to us how smart and innocent he is, but he'd step in it soon enough.

"Yeah, so what?" Riley retorted childishly. "So you wanna look at my cached porn files and my blog notes? Have at it."

"Oh, we did," Mike said and then he leaned over and put his hands flat on the table. "We went through every file, and I've got to tell you Riley. You're a disturbing little fuck."

"My partner's right," I said. "I think you're the kind of guy who gets off on murder."

"I write about it. That's it," he insisted.

"And your writing suddenly got better after you killed Brianna. Nothing quite like having real life experience to back up the words, right?"

"I didn't kill anybody."

"And you didn't type out the instructions for how to keep the victim from being identified, either, did you? The knife…the acid…the hammer…"

"I Googled it, dumbass. And when I found it, I printed it out."

"As reference material."

"Right."

"Then why can't we find that search in your browser history?"

"Because you're a couple of stupid fucking cops."

"Yeah, okay, sure. But why can't our tech guys find it?"

"Maybe they're fucking idiots, too."

"No, see…they're not. You want to know what they found?"

Up to this point, I've been mostly telling the truth.

But now it was time to lie.

And I really had to sell it because so far, we didn't have much else to go on.

"Why don't you stop playing fucking games and just lay your lame ass cards on the table," he said as he hopped up from his chair.

We were definitely making him nervous, which only boosted my confidence about the lie I was going to tell because he's expecting us to have more, so when I throw something out there, it just might stick.

"You need to sit down," Mike said, putting a heavy hand on Riley's shoulder.

"Dude, don't fucking touch me," he replied, jerking away from the contact. "I don't know where the fuck your hands have been! Especially if you were cruising the porn on my laptop cos…"

"Sit down, Riley!" I shouted as I slammed my hand down on the table, interrupting his juvenile tirade.

He startled at my display and then instantly sat.

"Get him the fuck out of here," Riley said, gesturing towards Mike.

"Newsflash, tough guy. You're not the boss in here," Mike said.

Before he could say anything more, maybe suggest that the boss was watching or something, I pointed at Logan and said, "That's right. He's the boss, and what he says goes. So keep it up and we won't just put you in lock-up tonight, but we'll get your sorry ass transferred to Rikers."

"I think they'd like you there," Mike added with a grin. "Pretty boy like you who likes to talk dirty…you'll be the belle of the ball."

Riley remained quiet, which was an improvement from his previous belligerent attitude, so now we were able to get back down to business because like I said…the clock's ticking.

"You posted that how-to in a forum, one you linked in a blog, and you offered a million dollars to someone else to do the same thing, to commit murder. What was the criteria?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. Do I look like I have a million dollars to spare?"

"So you don't have an account in Bermuda."

"With a million dollars in it?"

"With ten dollars in it."

He faltered slightly, but then he shook his head.

"No way, man."

"Okay, so let's talk about the forum post. It went up the day after Brianna was murdered."

"Man, I didn't even know she was murdered."

"That's right. Because she went to Florida. To visit her mom?"

"That's what she told me."

"Her mom lives in Iowa."

"How…well…maybe she was meeting her in Florida or something. Hell, maybe she was meeting another guy. Yeah, that's probably it. She was stepping out on me, and the other dude ended up killing her."

"And then you wrote about it. Fairly accurately, I might add."

"I'm telling you…look up my shit, man. I just make this stuff up, and try to instigate discussions. You know, open the door so that people talk about what they'd do and how they'd do it…it's for a book."

"A book."

"It's a compilation of my blogs and the forums, and it's all about murder, because that's what people like, right? They want to read the most gruesome stuff so that then they can thank their lucky stars that it wasn't them who got axed or strangled or mutilated…you know what I'm saying?"

Sadly, I do know what he's saying, and the fact that some of his attitude is gone, and that the F-word was nowhere to be found in his last half-dozen sentences has me more than a little worried.

Are we wrong?

Is he really just an innocent bystander?

Weird, definitely, but could he seriously be innocent?

I cast Logan a glance and saw that he was staring hard at Riley, and I have no doubt that the same uncertainties were rolling through his mind.

Did we really tell Alex to risk everything on this guy?

A tap on the glass had me fighting the feeling of nausea.

Because it wasn't just me and Logan.

Alex was feeling the change in the atmosphere, too.

"Don't go anywhere, Riley," I said as I headed for the door. "We're not anywhere near done."

As soon as we were out in the hall with the door closed behind us, Mike said, "I don't think we're that far from being done. His explanation makes sense, and what the hell happened to his attitude? It's like he turned it off with a switch."

I opened the door to the observation room and was surprised to find it filled with people. In addition to Alex, Liz and Stanley were there, along with Yuille and Wyatt.

Great.

Not only were we going to ruin her press conference, but we were doing it with an audience.

"Hang on," Alex said as she stepped towards the doorway. Logan and I paused, still in the hall, and she came out to join us. "It was getting crowded in there."

"And since you're going to chew us out, thanks for the discretion," Logan said.

"I'm not going to chew you out."

"Maybe you should," I said in frustration. I looked at my watch and then said, "You've got to be on camera in thirty minutes, and so far we don't have squat for you. When Holt sees that you postponed for nothing…"

"It's not nothing," she interrupted.

"We don't have concrete proof," Logan argued.

"But he did it," she said.

"Hell yeah, he did it," Mike fired back. Then he looked at me and said, "Right?"

"I would've bet money on it," I said. "But I also thought we'd break him by now. And he doesn't even have a lawyer in there with him. But we're guessing at evidence because Scott's not done yet. I'm sorry, Captain. I shouldn't have made promises that I can't keep."

"You didn't promise. In fact, you specifically told me it was a hunch. The decision was mine," she said firmly. "Now I know you don't believe in coincidences. There's no way he just happened to write about that murder the day after Brianna was killed."

"No," I agreed.

"So we just need to tie him to any one of the others. We need to let him know that we know. Once he sees it falling apart, he'll crumble."

"I don't know, Boss," Logan said. "He seems fragile, but he's holding up."

"Hey, the million dollars," I said suddenly.

"Yeah?"

"Brendan said that the access codes to the bank account would be text messaged to the winner, and the losers would get a message with information on the next go-round."

"Right. But we know there isn't any winner," Mike pointed out. "So he wouldn't have sent out any texts."

"But the contestants didn't know that," Alex said, holding my gaze as she nodded slowly, a half-smile forming on her face.

"Exactly. So they would've had to submit their cell numbers somehow."

"But there wasn't any documentation other than the photo upload," Logan said.

And then it hit me, and I felt a renewed surge of adrenaline.

"Hang on," I said as I took off down the hall, towards the conference room.

Of course, they didn't hang on. They both followed me until we were all standing around the table while I pulled out the data list of the contents of the Automator file.

"It's enough," I mumbled as I rifled through another folder and pulled out the sheet that listed Justin Delaney's cell number. "It's enough…come on…"

"What is it?" Alex asked.

"It's in the name of the jpeg," I stated.

"The cell?" she questioned, instantly on the same page with me.

"Random letters separate the ten digits of the cell number. I can't believe I didn't catch this before, because Delaney's number is in here four times."

"Separated by different, arbitrary letters," Mike reminded me, and I could hear the excitement building in him, too.

I enthusiastically reached in the box of evidence we'd removed from Riley's apartment until I found the bag containing his cell phone.

"The contest ended yesterday," I said as I powered on the phone. "He would've had to text the contestants to tell them they didn't win. Otherwise they might get suspicious. I'm betting he wouldn't risk having access to Automator, not when he had to know there was a possibility of others getting caught. If the site was shut down by the police, he'd still need the numbers."

"Uh huh. And even if we did find the site, he wouldn't be worried about us catching onto the title of the jpeg because we're too stupid," Mike added.

"Well, he was wrong about that one," Alex commented.

"Write down the other numbers associated with the pictures," I once the phone was on and I clicked on the text messaging icon. The area was blank, which was not unexpected, so then I quickly went to the contacts. "If we can find even one of them in here…"

But I didn't find one.

I found seven.

"Thirteen girls," Alex began. "We know Delaney killed four of them."

"Right, so those four count as one number, which means we should have ten numbers."

"Except two of them weren't uploaded," Mike said. "Janie Barbour, who killed her attacker before he could do it, and Melissa Nolan, whose killer got a case of conscience long enough for us to show up and arrest him."

"So that gets us down to eight. And we only have seven.

"And we know that what means," I said as I pulled out my own phone and dialed the number in the header of Brianna's photo.

I got an automated message, stating that the number was no longer in service.

Because of course, Riley wouldn't have needed his own information.

He would've only needed it to look the same as the others.

"Uh huh," Logan said with a nod. "It means we got him. I could kiss you right now, Bobby, but maybe I should leave that to the professional. You want me to leave the room?"

"No need," Alex said quickly. "But later…"

"Duly noted," I replied with a grin.

Because man, did this just change everything.

Now we were taking him down.

And Alex could go on the news and announce to the city that her detectives had brought in the dreaded FBK after only eleven days on the case, not only catching the twisted man responsible, but also thwarting a second wave of murders once it was time for the contest to start up again.

"Well, don't just stand there," Alex said, smiling at me as she tipped her head towards the door. "Go in for the kill."

TBC...