Every Second Counts by A. Vatanen

by Matt Cole

Police are getting worried that the suspect is becoming more violent. They fear that more children will be killed while they try to make headway into the case, so they request that a team from the FBI, the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team (CARD), be sent in to help them. The FBI's Southeastern CARD team, from Atlanta, is made up of experienced personnel to provide on-the-ground investigative, technical, and resource assistance to state and local law enforcement and each member has their own area of expertise. Leading the team is Supervisory Special Agent Joy Toth, a former New York City police homicide detective who was one of the best–until a madman terrorized her family, killed her husband and daughter, and left her emotionally scarred and her soul brutalized. Turning the tables on the killer, Joy shot him dead–but her life was shattered forever. When her colleagues in the NYPD helped cover this incident up, she went on to an FBI career. Now eleven years after that incident the CARD team—in which she has just been put in charge of—arrives and another kidnapping occurs but many details of this latest kidnapping differ from the first two. Now a young woman from an upper middle class family has been taken. She is older than the first two and a high school senior and also unusual, a ransom is asked for. The peculiar amount of $73,000 dollars and a deadline to deliver the ransom is declared. Though many things are different in this crime, the CARD team is certain that the kidnappings are all related because they feel the town is too small to have two different kidnappers. These changes in the crime and how the killer’s MO is changing brings the CARD team into a tizzy of activity as they delve deeper and question people involved in detail. In all her years at the Bureau, Joy Toth has never encountered anyone like this suspect–a new and fascinating kind of monster, a twisted genius who defies profilers’ attempts to understand him. She is forced to face her demons of her past and try not to see her dead daughter’s face every time she looks at a young victim.

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