A/N: And with chapter begins the action that will bring us to the end of this story as well, it also puts the last pieces in play for the man who is committing all the murders.
Enjoy!
Chapter 13: This Is Not A Test
"Do you think he's hiding something?" Steve asked as he pulled away from Buddy's house.
"I don't know," Danny answered with a sigh and a shake of his head. "If I were Buddy, I'd be more worried. Maybe it's time to check in at the real-estate agency." Danny added - thinking out loud - as he pressed his phone to his ear.
"You're going to call ahead and warn them?" Steve asked in shock. "Would you like to fill me in on your plan or am I just here to be your chauffeur?"
"One, I'm calling to have a protective detail put on Buddy, because I'm really not feeling like finding another body wrap up like a cocoon or if he is an accomplice and our murder comes around at least there will be someone here. And two, you drive my car against my will all the time, so don't complain about being my chauffeur. You are the one who has to drive all the time." Danny said and waved a finger in his partner's face.
5-0
Back in the office, with coffee cups in their hands, Kono and Chin had retreated to Danny's office while the two technicians worked through the problems they'd been given to solve.
"There isn't any rhyme or reason to this whole thing." Chin said as he stared at Danny's map.
"No, not now that we know about the case and why, but we're looking for a needing in a haystack who knows exactly where we're going to be. How is he doing it?"
Chin shrugged and sighed, "the next step is him coming after us, you now that right."
"Yeah, after seeing the last message, you know we're next but what does he have planned. There wasn't anything useful on those thumb drives, just article that Packwell wrote about us. Nasty ones. What could he be plotting? To pick each one of us off, one by one, when were alone or worse?"
"We've got to stick together now, more than ever, or risk being stamped out."
"We've got something," Toast stated as he knocked on the door and then popped his head in.
Kono and Chin followed Toast out into the bullpen and stopped as video footage from the bombing played before them.
"So every news agency on the island caught the explosion." Toast stated.
"From the forensics team we know that the bomb was a dirty bomb but the electronic trigger was more complicated than that." Eric explained.
"Yeah, we got that much," Chin stated and turned away from the monitor.
"We did a little 'digging'," Toast said and made air quotes with his fingers.
"I called around to some of the media outlets and asked for information on who tipped them off - it was a dead end. No one wants to play nice." Eric started again.
"So I pulled video that was confiscated by HPD yesterday, used IP addresses and cellular carriers and found my way into some back channels. It turns out that the GPS transmitters that are in your vehicles are all live right now. They are broadcasting your location at all times - which isn't supposed to happen until we activate the GPS through HPD. So someone has gotten into the computer system that way and they followed you around." Toast explained. "The GPS in the Camaro was tracked yesterday to the house, the call was made as an anonymous text message to the news hotlines all over the island, and the bomber used you to trigger the bomb when you went to shut down the computer - the failsafe, however, was programmed to the proximity of the Camaro to the crime scene. Had you not touched the computer the house would have exploded after you and all the rest of your back up had spend one hour in that house."
"You're saying we saved lived by being nosy?" Kono asked in shock.
Toast and Eric nodded together.
"How did you figure all this out?" Chin asked.
"We looked into Colin McKeller - his credit cards, history, profession - like Steve had asked and we found something very interesting - near and dear to our hearts. He does work maintenance, as Steve initially thought, but not regular maintenance. He worked for the company who installed and maintained the computer networks at the news paper and the television studio. He wired the news vans and maintained the technology on a regular basis. The same company wired HPD and this office space - but Toast maintains your system now." Eric explained. "McKeller was literally their tech-support on site, and off, this whole time."
"Well that explains Lauren LaBelle and Johnny Tao, but how did he get in with the photographer and the blogger?" Chin asked.
"Photos were used at the news paper and printed on site. All the printers are run by computers now a days and the bloggers super secret website was actually supported by the news paper and affiliated with the same company that hosts their website." Toast explained.
"You've hacked that as well, haven't you?" Kono asked.
Toast and Eric nodded again.
"So McKeller is our guy - one hundred percent. Where is he and what is his next move?" Chin asked.
"He's gone off the grid." Eric said with a sigh. "We used his DMV information to find his vehicles. HPD have gone out to look and found them with no viable evidence and abandoned. We are looking into company vans but McKeller hasn't worked for Media Tech in two months - the duration of his wife's illness. We're running him through every database and camera system on the island. He's on the no fly list. If he uses an ATM or is picked up on a traffic cam, we'll know about it, but for now, we have no idea where he is."
"Literally, we can't find him." Toast added to send the point home as the Hale's security system started to ring out it's emergency alarms.
"What's going on?" Eric asked in a near panic.
"It's not a fire," Chin stated as he listened for the specific alarm tones.
"It's a bomb evacuation." Kono stated and moved for the doors.
"Is this a test?" Toast asked.
"We would have been warned if it was." Chin stated.
"Then maybe we have found McKeller." Eric said and swallowed hard. "Or rather, he's found us."
