Ties That Bind (Steel Dragon Book 10) by Kevin McLaughlin & Michael Anderle

Author:Kevin McLaughlin & Michael Anderle [Mclaughlin, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798885413114
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2022-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

When Kristen came inside from the roof she was almost run over by her brother. At any other time in their lives, this would have qualified as the first blow of a wrestling match. Now, however, in the middle of a dragon stronghold with deadly mages in the city, she controlled her impulse to try to perform a body slam on him.

“Kristen! I have big news! Come on.” Brian strode away from her with as much as speed as he’d plowed into her with.

“What is this about?”

“I have a suspect!”

“What? How? I thought you said there were hundreds of hours to go through?”

“It’ll be easier to show you.” He didn’t slow so she followed.

They reached the lab where a bank of computers was hooked up to multiple monitors. He sat in the middle of it all like this was the job he was created for and for the first time, she was pleased with her decision to allow him to come. Even though he’d gotten the data after the firefight, it hadn’t felt like a success. It had felt like he might have died if they weren’t careful. Him being inside a lab was a much better option as far as his sister was concerned.

“There are over two hundred hours of total footage of the several-hour concert, thanks to all the different views from various cameras placed around the venue. I was able to cut that down somewhat since I didn’t watch the opening band or any of the footage between shows, but that still left me with close to a hundred hours to go through. Vert really likes his angles.”

“It still doesn’t explain how you did this in less than a day.”

“I cheated.” Brian grinned wickedly. “I wrote a search protocol that looked for facial expressions. Since most of the people at the concert were smiling, enjoying themselves, and dancing, I thought maybe someone contemplating the murder of the star of the show might look a little glum.”

“And that worked?”

“Sure. Facial recognition has become quite good, and…well, you said Vert used his aura on the crowds and it showed. Almost everyone was smiling and moving, which narrowed it down to a few hundred hits. Out of tens of thousands of people, I think that’s good. And that’s our guy right there.”

He played a few seconds of footage. Sure enough, smack dab in the middle of the crowd and fairly close to the stage was a man with a shaved head and a handlebar mustache. While everyone else danced, grinned, or bobbed their heads, this man stood completely motionless and glared at the performer.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it's him, though,” Kristen pointed out. “He might have simply not liked Vert using his aura on his girlfriend or whatever.”

“Oh, it's him,” her brother insisted and his grin shifted to a grim expression. “Watch this.” He scrolled through a few clips until the suspect reached into his jacket.

Brian pressed play and they watched in stunned silence as he drew a gun, aimed it at Vert, and opened fire.

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