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“Well, that’s true. But I should have told you about him at some point, too. Frankly, we’ve both been holding back. We have to commit to not doing that going forward. We need to trust each other with everything from now on.”
“I promise.”
“So do I.”
“Are you willing to be my girlfriend again, if I make that promise and keep it forever?” As I ask the question, my heart is stampeding in my chest.
“I’m not only willing,” Hannah says, touching my cheek. “That’s all I want, Henny. I only want to be with you. It’s you or nobody for me. You’re my person—the birdhouse for the little blue birdie that is my soul. I love you more than words could ever say.”
Tears have filled my eyes. I can barely speak. Somehow, I manage to say, “I love you. You’re my soul’s birdhouse, too.”
We hug again, until we’re interrupted by a knock at the door. After we’ve told our unknown guest to enter, my badass FBI bestie, Deputy Director Leach, appears in the doorframe.
“Sorry to break this up,” she says. “But I’ve got some news to share—something I’m certain you’re both going to want to hear.”
My mouth is hanging open. I look at Hannah, and she’s equally flabbergasted. The Deputy Director has just dropped a bombshell on us. Namely, that it’s now clear, based on evidence collected today—specifically, horrific photos and videos stored by Greg Smith on several different hard drives—that Hannah’s kidnapper was far more than a run-of-the-mill romance scammer and identity thief. Yes, those were his main hustles. His day job, so to speak. But by night, he was a hunter. His prey? Sex workers. At least seven of them, the FBI believes, across three states—Washington, Texas, and California. Probably more.
According to Deputy Director Leach, a sample of Greg Smith’s DNA was immediately extracted from his dead body today and run through the national DNA database—CODIS. Lo and behold, they got a hit. A perfect match to unknown DNA taken off the recently recovered body of a sex worker who’d gone missing outside of Dallas this past year, only about fifteen minutes from where Greg Smith’s mother lives. A perusal of Greg’s burner phone revealed that number was the last to call the victim before she went missing. Presumably, she agreed to a meet-up with the person who’d called from that previously unidentified number and then was never seen or heard from again.
There were no other matches to Greg’s DNA in CODIS today, but the Deputy Director’s team knew there were quite a few other unsolved cases of missing sex workers with strikingly similar facts to the case in Texas. With no bodies recovered in those cases, there was no possibility of matching DNA in those cases to Greg’s. And so, they instead checked to see if the last incoming calls to any of those victims’ phones matched that same burner phone recovered today. Jackpot. They hit pay-dirt in a whopping six of those cases.
My FBI bestie says to Hannah and me, “Since Greg was the last person to contact all six of those missing women, the same way he was for the victim in Texas, we feel confident we’ve found our killer in those cases, too.”
“Jesus,” I whisper.
Hannah says, “Do you think he targeted sex workers because he thought nobody would miss them or look for them too hard? That’s what I heard on a podcast once.”
Deputy Director Leach nods. “Very likely. Remember when he was talking to Reed and he said, ‘I usually like keeping my boxes separate, but I’ll kill her if necessary’? We’re confident he was referring to the fact that he normally prefers killing sex workers—women he thinks nobody will look for.”
I look into Hannah’s wide eyes and squeeze her hand. I’m feeling sick to my stomach as I process the full magnitude of the danger she was in today.
Hannah says to the Deputy Director, “I thought his comment about boxes was weird at the time. But then again, he’d said a whole lot of weird and incoherent things, so I didn’t focus too much on that particular one.”
“When our team heard that,” Deputy Director Leach says, “we were pretty certain what kind of monster we were dealing with. I’m betting in the coming days we’ll find out he was involved in even more sex crimes. His type of offender usually starts with rape before escalating to murder. Perhaps he raped some women who didn’t feel comfortable coming forward at the time but who might be willing to do so once they find out he’s no longer a threat.”
I run my palm down my face and exhale loudly. “I can’t believe it was me who unleashed a monster like that onto Hannah.”
“How could you know?” Hannah says. “And don’t forget you’re also the one who heroically saved me from that monster.”
