Page 24 of Burning Truth

Addie’s heart raced, the weight of those words settling heavily in her chest. She felt like she’d been thrown onto this crazy rollercoaster, and it was battering her mind and body. Suddenly, all the past interactions on social media took on a darker undertone. The playful engagement, the likes, the tags—it was all part of a twisted game she had unknowingly entered. “I was just trying to connect, to do my job,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “Does that make me a target?”

“No,” Severn corrected softly, his brows knitting together in concern. “This isn’t your fault, Addie. You did nothing wrong.”

“Severn’s right,” Gabbie chimed in, fingers still flying across the keyboard. “You can’t control how people react. But we can control how we respond.”

“And we’re responding with force,” Parker said.

Addie took a deep breath, trying to steady the trembling in her fingers. “Okay, let’s find this guy. What’s our next step?”

Gabbie paused to exchange glances with Severn before answering, “We’ll need to contact the ISP and stake our claim. If we can get their cooperation, we can track this user back to an address or at least a vicinity.”

Severn nodded, and the intensity in his gaze focused entirely on Addie. “You have to promise to stay close to me. I don’t want you alone at any point while we’re tracing this. We’ll be in and out at the station only as needed. Understand?”

Her heart swelled at his insistence; even amidst the chaos, he was making sure she understood that she would be protected. “I promise.”

With that resolve set, Gabbie’s fingers resumed their frenzied pace. Within moments, she was on the phone with someone at the internet service provider, talking in low, urgent tones thatfaded into background noise for Addie. It was really sinking in that someone, somewhere, was watching; that in the shadows lurked a threat that had already crossed the line into her life.

“Okay, they’re willing to help,” Gabbie stated suddenly, pulling attention back to her. “They gave me a contact for someone within their security department who can expedite our request. But it goes through proper channels, and it might take some time.”

Time. That dreadful word weighed heavy in the space between them. “We don’t have time,” Severn said, his voice assertive. “We need to move faster. We need to anticipate his next move.”

“So, let’s guide his next move,” Parker said said, stepping toward Gabbie’s desk. “How do we plant a trail for him?”

Addie felt a tinge of adrenaline surging through her; there was urgency to this entire situation, and she could feel her heart hammering. “What if we went after him ourselves? I mean, if we know he’s tracking my posts, we could bait him. We already kind of talked about this.”

Gabbie shook her head. “It’s risky, Addie. He’s already killed three people. We don’t know how he’ll react if he feels cornered. Your safety comes first.”

“Sometimes it takes risks to catch a predator,” Severn countered, contemplating the idea. “But it has to be done carefully. Play things off as normal.”

“Not just normal, what we posted yesterday. Invite him to think that everything is fine. There’s a food truck festival this weekend. Another team is covering it, but I say we go to the festival and ham it up,” Addie said, her pulse quickening at the prospect. “I’ll technically be off duty, so we’ll make it a point to hang on each other. Put on a show.”

Severn and Gabbie exchanged glances. “If we pull this off, it could give us a route to flush him out,” Gabbie conceded, asemblance of eager enthusiasm creeping into her tone. “There are a lot of cameras in that area.”

“Well let’s plan it out, then,” Parker said.

Severn leaned closer to Addie, looking her in the eye. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Taking a deep breath, she nodded. “I feel like he’s getting pissed. If Gabbie can track him or his phone, I feel like we can do something to draw him out.”

Together, they began to outline a strategy. They would post on her socials that she would be at the food truck festival on the Scioto Mile and Bicentennial Park. That would give him notice of where she would be. And they would start posting her having fun. Them having fun. Plenty of PDA.

Severn shifted at that, and she gave him a look. “Are you okay being on display like that?”

He gave her a slightly rakish smile. “I’ll survive.”

The fun in that look made her heart thump in her chest. Yes, they were doing this for a reason, but she had to admit, she was looking forward to being close to him again.

Gabbie logged into some kind of program that had CCTV of the entire downtown.

“I don’t think I want to know how you’re doing this, Gab,” Parker said. “I’m heading back to my office for plausible deniability.”

Gabbie laughed. “That’s probably best,” she murmured.

They concocted a virtual mouse trap, and as Addie suggested ideas alongside theirs, she felt a new sense of surety that they were doing the right thing.

Severn called Detective Johnson on speaker phone and let her know what they were planning. She promised to send several undercover detectives, as well as keep two teams on standby if they needed backup.

It nagged at her, though, that they were running the risk of someone being hurt. Possibly many someones. They needed to catch this asshole.

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