“How many is ‘quite a few’?” Abby asked.

“About seventy thousand across all platforms, mostly on Instagram. And lately she’s posting about her family life. There are a lot of posts about Nathan. And there’s a lot of information there.”

Abby felt queasy. “How personal does it get?”

“Enough so that the kidnappers would have a very good idea about Nathan’s hobbies, the things he likes, and so on. Just from scanning her Instagram posts, I can tell you Nathan likes swimming and drawing, that his birthday is in June, that he loves Star Wars.” Will shrugged. “That kind of thing.”

“Was there enough in Gabrielle’s posts to give the kidnappers an idea what time Nathan comes home from school?” Carver asked.

“I don’t know,” Will answered. “I didn’t have time to go over all of them; there are a lot. And that doesn’t include Instagram stories, which are removed from the feed after twenty-four hours, or any post Gabrielle herself removed. I’ll be able to see those if Gabrielle gives me her password.”

“Regarding the kidnappers, we should tell Ms. Fletcher to ask for proof of life,” Marshall said. “We need to know Nathan Fletcher isn’t dead.”

“You’re right,” Abby agreed. “We’re already working on—”

“Eden Fletcher should have demanded proof of life from the kidnappers.” Marshall raised his voice. “We’ve done it before. We can get some details from her regarding Nathan. Then we formulate a few questions she can ask the kidnappers. What’s Nathan’s favorite color. What does he want to be when he grows up. Things like that.”

“The kidnappers can find these things from Gabrielle Fletcher’s Instagram page,” Agent Kelly pointed out.

“We can scan that Instagram account, verify that we use information that wasn’t exposed on social media,” Barnes said.

Abby and Will exchanged frustrated looks.

“That’s a good idea,” Griffin said. “So—”

“I agree that we need to get proof of life,” Abby said. “But that’s not the same as asking the kidnappers for proof of life.”

“The kidnappers won’t give us anything we didn’t ask for,” Marshall said. “They’re not exactly the giving type. That’s why we ask proof-of-life questions. It’s the easiest way to get what we want.”

“The problem is that proof-of-life questions do more harm than good,” Abby said. “Suppose Nathan is alive. The kidnappers ask him those questions, give us the answers. Now they feel like we owe them something. Tit for tat, right?”

“It’s in their best interest to prove he’s alive,” Marshall said. “They want the ransom.”

“Like I said before, we don’t know what they want. And even if it’s in their best interest, they’ll still feel like they gave us something. Not to mention they’ll probably realize that those proof-of-life questions were not Ms. Fletcher’s idea. It’s a telltale sign of police intervention. Now the kidnappers are edgy because they know the police are involved. And they feel like we owe them something. And to make things worse, Nathan could say his favorite color is green, but his mother might think it was blue, so we don’t even know if he’s alive.”

“Then what do you propose?” Marshall asked sharply. “That we continue blindly, not even knowing if it’s a kidnapping case or a murder?”

“I think you made a good point, and we need proof of life,” Abby said, not mentioning she’d already discussed it with Eden the night before. “But we’ll tell Eden to use open-ended questions like, ‘How can I pay the ransom if I don’t know if Nathan is alive?’”

“How does that help us?”

“It makes the kidnappers do our work for us. Maybe they’ll offer to let Nathan talk with his mother on the phone, or they send us a video. It’ll force them to spend time thinking about this problem, which is great because we’re trying to buy time. And they’ll think about it from Ms. Fletcher’s point of view, which is also useful, because we want them to see her as a person. And when they finally do give us proof of life, they won’t feel like they did us a favor, because we never actually asked for proof of life; it was their idea.”

“Okay,” Griffin said. “Let’s do that.”

Abby leaned back in her chair. Yes, she thought. Let’s.

CHAPTER 19

For some reason, long meetings always put Abby in a carnivorous mood. It was a primal reaction to sitting in a room with a group of people—usually men. Perhaps her reptilian brain thought of the meeting room as a cave, and the men were therefore her tribe. And they were about to hunt mammoths.

Or maybe after listening to a bunch of administrators talk, she just wanted to bite into something and draw blood.

Whatever the reason, after the meeting finally ended, she and Will went to Pauline’s Burgers. Just the mention of burgers made her mouth water.

The smell was the first thing that welcomed her as she stepped through the door. It hugged her like a loving friend, whispering about the wondrous food she was about to consume. They sat at one of their usual tables—the tables that let them sit across from each other while neither sat with their back to the door. Cop mannerisms.