“Nathan!”

The voice was closer. Nathan glanced at the hallway. The man was crawling, his face a mask of pure hatred, teeth clenched in pain. He dragged himself along the floor, grunting, muttering.

Nathan grabbed the chair, pulling it to the door. He climbed up, clutching the top dead bolt, twisting it. He heard the man behind him moving faster, didn’t look, turned the dead bolt as hard as he could.

It moved, clicking.

He got off the chair and yanked the door open, and a gust of cold air filled the room.

A grip on his ankle. The man’s fingers tightening. Nathan screamed in panic. Stomped the fingers with his other foot as if stomping a cockroach. The man let go with a visceral scream of pain.

Nathan fled into the darkness, leaving the screams behind him.

CHAPTER 25

Carver had called Abby and told her to get to the incident room in the 115th Precinct. When she arrived at the station, she didn’t even need to ask for instructions. She followed her ears.

The incident room was a large room with two large tables, crisscrossed with cables and phones. It was full of people bustling around, talking on their cell phones, or writing on the four whiteboards that lined the walls. Carver stood by one of the whiteboards, next to which a large map of New York was taped to the wall. At the far end of the room, the top of Griffin’s head, bald and even shinier than usual, was visible. Will sat by the table, face glued to his laptop’s screen. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, but there was something else there. The hint of a satisfied smile.

“You found something?” Abby asked hopefully, walking over.

“This is Gabrielle’s Instagram profile.” Will gestured at his screen. “She opened it two and a half years ago. As far as I can tell from the engagements on the early posts, she had a few hundred followers, no more. Then she and her friends decided to go on a road trip. Gabrielle posted images of herself in various locations with the hashtag whereAmI. And people had to guess. She would send a prize to whoever got it right. Like a signed postcard or something.”

“Uh-huh,” Abby said, trying to curb her impatience. Information was negotiator oxygen. There was no knowing what was relevant and what wasn’t. And Will, who’d been a detective in the Computer Crimes Squad for six years, had a talent for extracting endless information from online data.

“So she got maybe a few more hundred followers from that stunt, but then she posted this picture.” Will switched windows, displaying an image in full screen. Abby exhaled slowly.

It was some sort of forest or marsh; it was hard to figure out the details. Thick mist curled between the tree branches and the foliage, a blanket of white. And in the center, Gabrielle standing, arms arched above her head, apparently nude. Except the mist hid her body just enough that you couldn’t be 100 percent sure she was nude. Maybe she was wearing a body suit or a skimpy bathing suit. It was unclear, and obviously, that was the point of the image. And the caption simply read, #whereAmI. Abby had to hand it to her—the image was gorgeous.

“This image went viral,” Will said. “Within a day, Gabrielle’s Instagram account exploded. A reporter from the New Yorker Chronicle was working on a story about influencers, and he tagged along for the road trip. His article made her profile even more popular. By the end of that road trip, she had over fifty thousand followers. She did two more road trips with the same friends and got to seventy thousand followers. A lot of female followers who love her—but a lot of men too.”

“I’d imagine,” Abby muttered.

“I’ve been going over Gabrielle’s followers. First of all, she blocked seventy-three of them in the last eighteen months. Fifty-seven men, sixteen women. I’ve made a list of those—”

“Why did she block them?”

“Rude comments, dick pics, trolls, who knows? We’ll have to ask her. Then I ran a Python script—”

“A what?”

“Python? It’s a programming language. So I ran a script to make a list of all the followers who comment or like Gabrielle’s posts. I have two lists. One is the superfans, right? Those who comment and like almost everything. And the others who never actually respond to her posts, which is maybe also weird? Like stalker-ish? I don’t know. Let me show you.” He turned to the laptop and began typing.

Abby waited. After a few seconds she said, “You know, a python can eat an entire antelope.”

“Really?” Will asked.

“It unhinges its jaw so it can swallow the antelope whole.”

“That’s amazing.” Will’s tone did not, in fact, reflect any shred of amazement. He hit the “Enter” key, and an Excel spreadsheet opened on-screen. “See? These are the five hundred most-engaged fans that Gabrielle has. Now check out number one hundred twelve.” He scrolled down to someone called Karlad345 and tapped the link next to the name. An Instagram page opened. The profile picture was of a man about twenty-eight with a full black beard and a high brow, leaning against a tree.

“He looks like the guy in the sketch that Eden described,” Abby said.

“Check out his followers and following.”

Abby glanced at the stats. Karlad followed seven people. He had no followers.

“So he’s not very active on Instagram,” Abby said.

“Like I said, he’s the one-hundred-twelfth-most-active fan Gabrielle has. He’s on Instagram every day. Commenting all the time. But his Instagram profile is almost solely about Gabrielle.”