You Can't Run by Hope Davis (best way to read books .txt) 📗

Naya stood and flipped out her badge, “Hello, I’m Detective Naya Largusa from the Denver Police Department. I’m here to find out the names of the adults living in this apartment.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why?” Of course, he was one of the apprehensive ones.

She kept the smile on her face. “We are looking for someone who lives in this building who has information about a crime.”

“Well, it’s just me and my wife here. She’s at work but will be home any minute.” He listed their first and last names for Naya, which she quickly jotted down.

“Thank you, that’s all. Have a good night.” Naya waved at the little girl as the man closed the door. She double checked her paper to make sure she had knocked on every door on the floor, then jogged down the stairs to floor twenty-three.

After the next apartment her phone buzzed in her pocket. She picked it up without looking at the screen. “Largusa.”

“Hey, I’m on floor ten, and I’m beat. Where are you?”

“Twenty-three. I’m tired too. Should we take a dinner break and pick this back up in an hour? We can eat in the car and change with the patrol guys if they want a break from monitoring the door to knock on doors.”

“Good idea. Meet you in the lobby in five.” Naya slid her phone back in her pocket and looked down at her paper. How had Atlas finished nine floors while she had only done seven and one apartment? Oh well, she would ask him when she saw him.

They had picked up roast beef sandwiches from down the street and were sitting in the car watching as people went in and out of the building. It was dinner time now, so there were lots of delivery men and couples going out to the restaurants nearby. But so far no one tried to enter or leave with a bag which seemed larger than normal.

“Any emails from the apartment company yet?” Naya asked when she was halfway through her sandwich.

Atlas shook his head. “Course not. I bet they’ll respond tomorrow morning.”

“Are we staking out tonight?” In La Junta they had such a skeleton crew that she would definitely personally be doing a stake out, if there was a stake out to do, which was rare. Here, she wasn’t sure what the protocol was.

“Nah, someone will come relieve us at midnight. They’ll need us fresh for tomorrow. I doubt we will get to all of these doors tonight before a decent hour, and I had so many on the lower floors that didn’t answer. At least we will be able to eliminate some when the tenant list comes in.”

Naya was glad she wouldn’t be out there all night. Then at least she wouldn’t feel as guilty. She checked her phone to see if Kevin had replied, but he hadn’t. She really hoped he had called someone, she wished she had Trevor or Sebastian’s numbers, but she had never needed them before.

“The techs called while I was knocking on doors.” Naya looked over at Atlas, pausing between bites to give him her full attention. “Turns out RunTracker was ridiculously easy to hack. They said all it took was the user turning on their Bluetooth connection while using the app, and I guess if you knew basic hacking you could get in while it was running. They weren’t sure if the connection would still be accessible after the run stopped, but they think there’s a chance if you were good enough at programming that you could set something up so you could re-enter the app at any time.”

Naya turned back to her sandwich and took another bite. “I guess that makes sense, but how is he finding these girls initially?”

“I was thinking about that.” Atlas took a bite of his sandwich as well and the car was quiet while he chewed. “And when you showed me the app the other day, I saw that you could connect it to your Facebook. So, I think there’s a possibility that all three of these girls posted their runs on Facebook. Then he was able to use their profile to get enough information to get close enough to them during a run to hack into their Bluetooth connection.”

“Jesus. That is why I don’t have social media.” Naya shook her head. Most people had no idea the amount of information that could be discovered about them from a simple glance at their profile.

“My sentiments exactly. But I was thinking we should give the families a call and see if what I said was true; if they posted their runs on Facebook. Because think about it, most of the runs start and end at their homes. Even though you can’t zoom in, if this guy knew the area well enough, he could just hang out in that area and watch for the Bluetooth connection. And most people just label their headphones with their name.”

Naya felt her eyes widening. That was definitely the name of her earphones. “But wait, none of the girls had wireless earphones in when we found them.”

“Bingo. I bet whatever hacking he is doing on these Bluetooth connections would show up if we found the devices.”

She finished the last bite of her sandwich and crumpled the wrapper. “This brings up the fact that the man we are chasing is probably highly intelligent. When we get the apartment building tenants lets have your tech guys or someone comb them for prominent people in technology. Even if this guy isn’t famous, sometimes these people can be in scientific papers or magazines for their discoveries or designs.”

“True. Alright, you ready to go back in?” Atlas glanced at her empty hands and she noticed he had also finished his sandwich.

“Yep. Let’s do this.”

CHAPTER 27

MARK

It was done. He had