Kiss Me, Kill Me

Savvy predators could erase and delete the data within the temp file, but Kirsten wasn’t a predator. Yet, based on the extent of the log Lucy was creating, Kirsten didn’t appear to be a victim, either. The videos could be innocuous, friends chatting face-to-face over the computer screen. Lucy wanted to believe that, but her mind kept going back to the generic room that Kirsten’s webcam would show behind her.

It took her an hour to log all the temp files, and then she created a graphical representation of the data. It was clear that the video chats all originated from the same host. Most of the chats were between ten and twenty minutes, with a few longer than half an hour. Most of them had taken place between four and six in the afternoon, with about 20 percent at night. The afterschool hours were when sexual predators did most of their work-when kids were home without parents and could freely chat on the computer.

Lucy frowned. Kirsten was seventeen, a high school senior. There was no way of knowing whether she was chatting with the same person or different people, because the temp file logged only Kirsten’s computer and the server that hosted the chats.

Kirsten might very well have a boyfriend, and maybe they talked nearly every day over webcam. If that were the case, then she most likely ran off to meet him.

Had she been meeting with the same person the past weekends she had disappeared? Had she gone off with someone voluntarily, or was she being held against her will?

Was Kirsten already dead?

Because no matter how careful you thought you were being, whenever you met an online friend in person, you put yourself at risk. Especially in the world in which Kirsten was playing around.

Lucy consciously focused on the task at hand. She wanted to shake sense into Kirsten, but more, she wanted to find and protect her, to shield her from the depravity she’d probably already seen and experienced.

“You can’t save the world,” Lucy said aloud. Her brother Dillon constantly reminded her that she took things too personally, that she wanted to help everyone, and some people didn’t want help.

Lucy put her charts aside and went through the other files. She saw the empty.mov files that Sean had mentioned, and realized they were time stamped to correlate to the chat log files. That was odd, because there shouldn’t be two files created with one exchange. But there was definitely no data in them, and no way to re-create the images.

One file stood out because it was in a completely different directory. She downloaded an undelete program to Kirsten’s computer, then ran it, watching the computer screen as files were re-created. Many were corrupted or unable to be rebuilt-a common problem if they’d been deleted long ago. Some of those could be recoverable by law enforcement-the FBI had a state-of-the-art recovery process that could re-create more than 90 percent of deleted files, unless the person went to extraordinary lengths to permanently delete the data through a multistep process.

While she waited for her program to finish the laborious process, she wrote up a report for Sean with her ideas as to what the data meant. She was about to send it off when she saw a.mov file undelete. She opened it.

The webcam footage was clearly of Kirsten’s room. Kirsten and a male teen were naked on her bed, his mouth on one of her breasts, her hands holding his head.

Lucy stared, stunned. Why was she surprised? Maybe because she had thought that the generic room was for sex chats only-but an amateur sex video was simply one more step down the same dark path.

And while Kirsten and her young companion were definitely amateurs, both teenagers knew the webcam was on, as they moved and adjusted their positions to make sure it caught all the action. It appeared consensual, the two intentionally creating an amateur sex video; Lucy couldn’t pretend that Kirsten didn’t know.

She couldn’t watch anymore. Her hands were shaking when she clicked stop, and she got up and paced, her legs weak; she would have puked if she had anything in her stomach.

“What have you been doing, Kirsten?” she whispered to no one.

She couldn’t stop shaking. Her fears of being watched by unknown people crawled under her skin like microscopic worms, making the hair rise on the back of her neck. But she wasn’t being watched. And this wasn’t rape; this wasn’t a hidden camera. These were two teenagers voluntarily having sex for the world to see.

Lucy became angry, not at herself, but at Kirsten and her boyfriend. What possessed them to do such a thing? Did they even consider the consequences? That once that video was out, it was in cyberspace forever?

They could have recorded it just for themselves.

Lucy sat back down and considered how to approach searching for this video online. She didn’t want to search the known amateur sex sites-she knew what would happen to her if she went too deep into that world. Verbal chats she could manage because they were just words, but images brought back her nightmares, and with everything that had happened in the last five weeks it was all she could do to keep those memories at bay. She knew herself well enough to know that going to the sex sites would be the tipping point.

Yet what kind of FBI agent would she be if she couldn’t conquer that fear? Because she would likely have to conduct just this sort of investigation if she were assigned to cybercrimes, which was her expertise and her dream job. She had to either find a way to defeat the nightmares and make sure they never returned or learn to live with them.

They’d gone away before; they would go away again. She had to believe this.

Taking another gulp of water as if to fuel her courage, Lucy scrolled through Kirsten’s browsing history, which she knew should have a log of all uploads. Though Kirsten’s history was set to erase every time she logged off, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be re-created. Such a log would be the best bet to find out where if anywhere Kirsten had uploaded the video, rather than randomly scanning known amateur sex sites.

It took Lucy only fifteen minutes to re-create Kristen’s browsing history and find a promising site called Party Girl.

Lucy clicked the link. Party Girl was a social networking site obviously aimed at men interested in online sex. The ads alone promoted live sex cams, sexting, and pornographic videos. Repugnant to Lucy, who knew too much of what went on behind the scenes, but all legal-at least on the surface.

Both men and women-ostensibly all over eighteen-had profile pages where they could post their personal videos and photographs. There were links to group chats, private chats, webcam chats, and more.

Kirsten had a profile on the Party Girl site, but not under her own name. Her browser led to the Web page of Ashleigh, though Ashleigh’s pictures were clearly Kirsten’s. They were revealing, but not pornographic. Ashleigh’s Web profile indicated that she was “into” meeting men online and stated that she was nineteen. Lucy would have to create a membership on the site to access further private information on Ashleigh.

She debated her options. Sean could hack Kirsten’s Party Girl password, but it would take time. If Lucy registered, she could find out now what exactly Kirsten had posted on the Internet. Lucy’s computer had extensive firewalls-not only because of her own personal security concerns, but also because Kate taught cybercrime at Quantico. They probably had the best-protected computers outside of the FBI offices.

Creating a profile cost nothing, though if Lucy wanted to view videos or post anything she’d be required to pay a monthly or annual fee. She opted for the free profile and created a false identity, similar to many she’d created in the past while working for WCF. She didn’t post a picture, and a pop-up told her that to receive the full benefits of social interaction on Party Girl, posting photographs and videos was encouraged. She exited the pop-up and continued with the brief questionnaire.

She became “Amber,” a blond nineteen-year-old college student from the East Coast who was interested in friends and relationships. As soon as Lucy received the confirmation email, she logged on.

The site was everything she’d feared. Not only had Kirsten posted part of the video of her having sex, it was clear that she was popular. Ashleigh’s page had thousands of hits since going live eight months ago.

Lucy viewed her own page. She had a private Party Girl email and the option of having personal messages go to that “blind” email or her personal email. She opted for personal, because she’d created it just for this site and wanted to know if anyone contacted her without having to log onto Party Girl every day.

There was also an option to activate “selling,” which she almost clicked, then went back to Kirsten’s site and scoured it. Sure enough, she had videos that could be purchased individually, or viewed for free-with a paid