Page 38 of Her Last Confession

"Ed?” Wheeler said. “You at the station?”

“Sure am.”

“Good. I've got Agents Gift and Novak with me. We had some questions about that pod you and Scotty have been looking at."

“Eh, I’ll do my best. There’s still some stuff I’m not sure about on this death machine.” Ed's voice crackled through the speaker, distorted by the poor reception.

"Is there any chance these pods can be controlled remotely?" Wheeler asked.

There was a short laugh on the other end. "Funny you should ask. We accidentally figured out they can be. There's a digital switch that would allow for remote operation. Damn clever design, actually, though I doubt this is what the original engineers had in mind."

Rachel straightened, her mind racing. "Wait a second. If it can be controlled remotely, it has to be on some kind of network, right? If there are more pods out there, could we track them through the one you have?" The possibility made her heart race. Finally, a way to get ahead of Bradley instead of always playing catch-up.

There was another of those snappy laughs from the other line before Ed said: "Holy shit." His voice crackled with excitement. "That's... that's brilliant, actually. Theoretically, weshouldbe able to trace the network connections. It'd be like working backwards through the pod’s communication protocols, but..." He paused, and Rachel could practically hear him thinking through the problem. "I mean, I guess it’s possible. Give me an hour?"

"Make it thirty minutes," Wheeler said. “Thanks, Ed.” He then ended the call, turning back to Rachel and Novak with a slight smile. "I'm going to call for another unit, just in case we do manage to find more than one of these things. Maybe they can bring you two a replacement vehicle while they're at it."

Rachel leaned against a tree, her mind working through possibilities. They were close—she could feel it. Bradley was out there somewhere, maybe even aware that they were on to him by now. But for the first time since this case began, she felt like they might actually be one step ahead of him.

The forest had grown quieter around them, as if nature itself was holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next. A crow called in the distance, the sound almost like laughter. Rachel checked her watch, not sure why, exactly. The darkening sky and the calling of crickets in the distance told her all she needed to know.

She looked over at Novak and saw the same mixture of tension and anticipation in his stance that she felt herself. Wheeler was on his phone, calling in backup, his voice a low murmur in the background. All they could do now was wait and hope that when Bradley made his move, they'd be ready.

The pod hummed softly behind them, patient as a spider in its web, waiting for its next victim. And Rachel did her best to ignore just how calm and inviting the machine sounded.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

The forest was growing darker by the minute, shadows lengthening between the trees like fingers pulling in the night. The autumn wind rustled through the canopy overhead, carrying with it the musty scent of decomposing leaves and damp earth. Rachel stood at the hood of Wheeler's truck, studying the paper map spread out before them. Wheeler had gone to the glove compartment of his truck to retrieve it when he’d ended his phone call. There was a slight sliver of daylight remaining, but it was too dark to see by, so Wheeler had also produced a Maglite from his truck as well. They looked over the map by its white glare.

"Look at this pattern," Wheeler said, taking a pen out of the breast pocket of his shirt. He circled each location where they'd found the suicide pods, including the one just a few feet beside them. The sound of his pen scratching against the paper was eerie in the approaching night. "Here, here, and here."

Novak leaned in closer, his breath visible in the cooling air. "That's roughly fifty miles across," he said, measuring with his fingers. "At least he's keeping it contained."

“Makes sense, I suppose,” Rachel said. “All this wilderness…it’s a gold mine of hiding spots if you know the area well.”

“And apparently, this guy does,” Wheeler says. “These old roads he’s using…some are logging roads that haven’t been touched by a tire in ten years or more.”

“Maybe he’s a hunter?” Novak suggested. “Deer hunters would know these old dirt roads, right?”

“Maybe,” Wheeler said. “We can—”

His phone chirped, interrupting him. The screen illuminated his face in the growing darkness. "It's Ed," he announced,answering the call and tapping the speaker icon. "Damn, Ed... that was less than twenty minutes."

"Keep that in mind when I ask you to put in a good word for me with the captain," Ed's voice crackled through the speaker, tired but satisfied. "You're not going to believe what I found."

Rachel's pulse quickened. "What did you get?"

"These podsareall networked. All of them. Bradley's got them running on some kind of proprietary software system. From what I can tell, it's primarily for location tracking and status monitoring."

Novak straightened up. "Status monitoring?"

"Yeah," Ed continued. "He can see if they're operational, on standby, or if there's been any kind of malfunction. Saves him the trouble of having to check on them all the time. It's sophisticated stuff – definitely not amateur hour."

Rachel's mind raced through the implications. Bradley wasn't just placing death machines in the wilderness; he was maintaining them, monitoring them. It was actually brilliant. Rather than drop one pod off for each murder, he had likely hidden them all away at once and left them there…waiting to be powered up from a remote location.

"Can you see where the other pods are located from that network?" she asked, trying to keep the urgency out of her voice.

There was a pause on the line, filled only by the sound of Ed's typing. "I've got a location on one more pod. Just one."

---