Girl Who Is Hunted: An Ella Porter FBI Mystery Thriller Book 9 (Ella Porter FBI Mystery Thrillers) by Georgia Wagner

Author:Georgia Wagner [Wagner, Georgia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Ella Porter leaned against the break room counter, her fingers drumming a staccato rhythm on the faux marble surface. With each tap, her eyes flicked toward the door, willing it to open and bring news of an expelled attorney from their midst.

But for now, their suspect was still engaged with legal counsel.

And it wasn't like she thought he was the organizer behind all of this anyway. No... no, that credit went to Miles Cruise.

Beside her, Brenner Gunn stood rigid, his lips pressed into a line of frustration that pulled at the scar on his cheek. He stretched his hands—once weapons of precision, now stymied from action.

"Any minute now," Ella muttered, tapping faster.

"Minute feels like an hour today," Brenner agreed, his deep voice exasperated. He glanced down and pulled his sleeve back to reveal his wristwatch. The action also revealed the puckering of another scar, one that snaked up his arm—an unwanted tattoo of his past.

"Tick, tock..." Ella grumbled, her gaze locked on the screen of her laptop sitting on the counter. A buffering bar loitered there. It had been clogging up her screen for over fifteen minutes.

Finally, the file loaded.

"Shit, who knew AI would be this slow?” Brenner remarked. “I thought it was supposed to speed things up. Tell me again what this shit is?"

"It's a modular package for facial recognition," Ella explained. "It plugs into AI generated images and compares the database with the photo we feed it."

"So... what's in the database?"

"The internet," she said simply. "The AI scours the internet for faces. Anywhere. Everywhere. Not just faces, but any distinguishing mark."

"The computer can recognize that?"

She nodded. "Alright. Package is loaded."

The flicker of the computer screen cast an eerie glow over Ella’s eyes, giving them a greenish cast. Her gaze narrowed as she analyzed the cascading lines of code and surveillance images that flooded the AI program's interface. She hunched forward slightly, a lock of blonde hair flopping over her forehead. She was so absorbed, she left it untouched. Her fingers danced over the keyboard, commanding the software to cull global databases for Miles Cruise’s visage.

"Come on," she urged under her breath, "show up you slippery bastard."

Because the word command hadn’t worked, she now plugged in an image Miles Cruise. A clean cut, scowling face. A man who looked like a banker in another life. Well-groomed, but glaring out at the camera.

Again, the buffering completed, and no image matched.

"Shit," she said.

"AI isn't that smart I guess," Brenner said smugly, as if he’d somehow scored one for the human team.

She ignored his skepticism and initiated another search sequence. Again the search returned the same frustrating result: no hits. The man was a ghost.

"Nothing? Seriously?" Ella stepped away from the counter, crossed her arms and frowned, willing the screen to yield something, anything.

She considered the databases she had already parsed through - criminal records, international travel logs, social media footprints. She did not think she had missed a relevant search. It was as though Miles Cruise had vanished into thin air.

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