Chapter 2 - TWELVE HOURS BEFORE MORNING
At Northwestern Memorial Hospital, a burn specialist cleaned and dressed injuries I could barely look at.
There were old scars too.
The doctor noticed them.
So did Detective Maria Chen.
She did not ask why I had stayed.
I appreciated that more than she knew.
Instead she asked, “How long has Ryan been recording you?”
“Almost two years.”
“With your consent?”
“Sometimes he made me say yes on camera.”
Chen looked up.
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No.”
Emma sat on the other side of the room with both hands wrapped around cold coffee.
She looked like she had aged five years since entering the basement.
A cybercrime detective arrived just after 2:00 a.m. Ryan’s phone had been seized powered on. Investigators were afraid switching it off might trigger whatever automated system he had described.
They found an application running silently in the background.
Every fifteen minutes, Ryan’s phone authenticated with a remote server.
If the server failed to receive several consecutive check-ins, an automated job appeared designed to release encrypted files to multiple distribution accounts.
“How long?” I asked.
The detective hesitated.
“Based on the script we can see? Somewhere between eight and twelve hours.”
Emma swore softly.
The detective continued.
“We’re keeping the phone online in isolation while our team images it. We don’t touch the payment account yet.”
Ryan had built himself a digital hostage.
Not to save his life.
To save his money.
At 3:10 a.m., another woman arrived.
Ryan’s mother.
Linda Cole walked into the waiting room wearing a camel coat over pajamas, her gray-blonde hair hastily tied behind her head.
She saw Emma first.
Then me.
Her face hardened.
“What did you do to my son?”
Emma stood.
I stopped her.
Linda looked at my bandaged legs.
For one second, something like shock appeared.
Then she said, “Whatever happened down there, Ryan has always had unusual relationships. You participated in those videos.”
Detective Chen turned slowly.
“What videos?”
Linda went pale.
Nobody had told her about them.
Not the police.
Not me.
Not Emma.
Ryan had been arrested less than two hours earlier.
Chen asked again.
“What videos, Mrs. Cole?”
Linda stared at the floor.
“I assumed.”
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That was the first mistake Ryan’s family made after his arrest.
And it was the first reason Detective Chen stopped treating Linda like a frightened mother and started treating her like someone who might know exactly what her son had been doing.
