Page 32 of Once Silenced

“Pranks can escalate,” Riley mused, her voice low.“Keep digging.There might be a pattern we’re not seeing.”She knew all too well how the seeds of violence could sprout from seemingly innocuous soil.

As she drove, she considered the Cipher Society’s antics as Ann Marie reported them to her.

“One time they hacked into the city’s traffic control system in Richmond,” Ann Marie said, scrolling through a list of offenses.“They turned all the traffic lights green at once.Caused quite a chaos, but no one was seriously injured.”

“Anything else?”

“There was another incident at Hanover University,” she added after a moment.“They replaced all the digital class schedules with cryptic mathematical formulas.It took days for the IT department to correct everything.”

Riley frowned, her mind working over these seemingly juvenile acts.They were disruptive, yes, but there was an undercurrent of intelligence and calculation to them as well.Not unlike a series of murders marked by algebra quizzes.

As they neared Basingstoke, Riley felt a familiar knot forming in her stomach—the anticipation and dread that always accompanied her arrival at a crime scene.She glanced over at Ann Marie, who was now reading aloud from an article about Cipher Society’s most notorious hack—a breach of the Virginia Educators for Excellence in Mathematics website where they’d posted their manifesto decrying mainstream education.

As the road unfurled before them, Ann Marie’s voice again broke the rhythm of the tires against the asphalt.“Do you think the Cipher Society could be...evolving?Like, maybe they’ve moved on from pranks to something more sinister?”

The idea wasn’t implausible.People changed, and so did their motives.What started as a game could turn deadly with the right—or wrong—push.Riley knew this from experience, had seen innocence twist into malice under life’s relentless pressure.But was the Cipher Society capable of such a transformation?Had their disdain for societal norms ever curdled into a murderous rage?

“Keep an eye out for any behavioral shifts in their past activities,” Riley instructed.She needed facts, patterns to piece together, not just hunches.A killer’s mind was like a dark room, and she was feeling along the walls for a switch.

When signs welcoming them to Basingstoke loomed ahead, Riley felt her focus shifting in anticipation of the new scene.The college town was stirring to life, students and faculty alike moving through the streets, cheerfully and with purpose.

Riley navigated the vehicle through the heart of the town, noting the quaint charm of the main street.It was almost too picturesque, a veneer of normalcy that she knew was hiding at least one horror lurking behind one of these doors.

“Turn here,” Ann Marie said, breaking Riley’s reverie.She pointed to a leafy side street that led away from the bustle of the town center.

Following her directions, Riley turned the car onto the quieter residential street.The houses here were well-kept, gardens manicured with care—the type of community that would be untouched by suspicion until now.Riley almost pulled over when she saw a house marked off with police tape.

“That’s not it yet,” Ann Marie said.“It’s a little farther on.”

Riley then remembered Meredith telling them that the victim had been walking toward his neighbor’s house when he disappeared.The house they had just reached must be where he’d lived.They continued past a row of trees to the address they were actually looking for, the neat numbers affixed to the mailbox outside.

A police car was parked on the street, but Riley didn’t see any of the investigators right away.Yellow crime scene tape fluttered across this front yard just like the one they had just passed.

“Here we are,” she murmured, killing the engine.Her hands rested momentarily on the wheel, steeling herself.She glanced at Ann Marie, who was already gathering her gear, her youthful face set with determination.Together, they stepped out of the car.

“Agent Paige,” came a voice, clipped and precise, pulling her gaze toward the source.

Riley turned to see Agent Putnam standing framed by an open doorway at the front of a garage.His suit, as always, appeared immaculate, the lines sharp enough to cut through the day’s tension.

“The crime scene is in there,” he announced, motioning to the interior with a jerk of his thumb.Indeed, the sliding door of the garage remained closed, while the side entrance hung open, an unspoken invitation to the new arrivals.

Riley’s eyes briefly met Ann Marie’s, conveying both anticipation and trepidation.

Riley and her partner walked past him toward the open door of the garage.She had not been present at the previous two murder scenes of this case, and each detail recounted to her had been like assembling a puzzle in the dark.But she was here, now, and maybe—just maybe—the pieces could reveal themselves under her own scrutiny.

The slight scent of oil from the garage mingled with the fragrance of freshly mown grass from the neighboring yards.It was in this kind of contrast that reality set in; behind the everyday suburban facade, violence had intruded.

As Ann Marie followed Putnam’s lead inside, Riley lingered a moment longer, allowing herself to absorb the atmosphere.Here was an opportunity, a chance to tap into that uncanny ability she possessed – to try and feel what the perpetrator might have felt, to think as they had thought.

She knew better than to expect clarity or revelation on command; her ‘gift’ did not operate like the flick of a switch.And this crime scene was sure to be claustrophobic and full of distractions.Yet, each detail, each visualization combined with ordinary sensory input, was a potential key to unlocking the psyche of a killer.

As she followed Ann Marie’s steps toward the darkness of the garage, Riley cleared her mind—hoping for, bracing for, the rush of intuition, the sense of connection with a killer’s mind that had made her such a formidable BAU agent.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When Riley walked into the dimly lit garage, she was aware that Putnam was watching her closely.She joined Ann Marie, who stood appraising the crime scene.

A car sat in one bay, innocuous and dusty, as if it had been forgotten there.But it was the adjacent space that drew Riley’s focus—the meticulously cordoned-off area where a folding chair stood draped with crime scene tape that fluttered slightly in the breeze from outside.

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