There was no time to waste. Jane rose from the seat, her stiff legs immediately screaming out in pain. She did her best to ignore it as she kneeled next to Joss’s unconscious body, her hands searching his pockets.

Her instincts had been right, and after a few dead ends, she discovered his cell-phone in his pants. It seemed that Joss was as unintelligent as his eloquence suggested, and his password only further reinforced that idea. Jane had guessed it on the first try, a simple one-two-three-four.

Even with her breath still heaving from the shock and surrealness of the moment, she felt a small spark go off in her chest. She wasn’t beaten yet.

They had made a mistake when they forced Jane into the basement. They’d brought the bags inside, one of which was sitting on the floor in front of Jane. This meant that the bag with Watson’s cell tower was somewhere in the house. With any luck, it was still intercepting and recording information from all the cell phones in the area.

In her hand, Joss’s phone was as standard as they came, with the usual plethora of social media applications and a background featuring its owner and a winking girl, presumably his girlfriend.

Jane found herself glancing guiltily down at the unconscious boy, wondering if his girlfriend was worrying about him. The blow to his face had reopened the various scratches on his face, and tiny beads of blood welled up from them.

She shook her head. Feeling pity for a guy that had hurt Victoria and essentially kidnapped them was ridiculous.

Keeping one eye on the stairwell in-case a surprise visitor decided to enter, Jane pulled up the contact list of Joss’s phone.

She sighed. Much like before, she would have to comb through an extensive list of information just to glean what she was looking for. Joss was, apparently, well connected, and had nearly two-hundred individual phone numbers saved. Finding the correct one was going to take forever.

Most of the names were nonsensical, simply strings of emoticons and what Jane could only imagine were street names. Very few of them were accompanied by photographs, but a single one stood out.

It was a listing named “R&R”, as of yet uncontacted by Joss’s phone. A simple cell-phone number with a circular image of two middle aged people standing together. The woman had a shock of beautiful dark hair that spread over her shoulders, while the man’s face was adorned with the same cheshire-cat smile Beatrice often had.

Jane’s heart skipped a beat. Somehow, she’d found them in time. Beatrice’s parents.

She scooted across the rough stone floor, her cramping legs protesting. Her laptop was, thankfully, undamaged by the rough treatment it had endured. The screen awakened with a showing of light, and prompted her for a password.

Jane could hardly believe it. Everything was going perfectly. Though faint, her computer had somehow still retained a connection to the tower. It was hardly strong enough to decipher any of the data it had collected, but the connection confirmed the IMSI catcher was still working and within the same house. All she had to do was find it.

A groan beneath her startled her, and she nearly jumped backwards. Joss had stirred, though his eyes remained shut. Ryder had done a very effective job of keeping him unconscious.

Wasting no time, she stepped over him, and, with the laptop balanced on one arm, began her trek up the stairs.

While the house had been in poor shape upon first entering, Jane found that it had devolved into an entirely different sort of mess as she emerged from her subterranean prison cell. The trash which had so far been placed in piles on the tables and furniture was now spread across the room, crunching and squishing underfoot. The television across from the couch had been shattered, Beatrice’s bat hanging loosely from the broken screen.

Amongst the absolute chaos that filled the room, Jane spotted the IMSI catcher. Evidently, Beatrice or Joss had removed it from its bag and placed it on the couch, unsure of what it was. It now lay half-wedged between the cushions, the dials still set to the correct frequency.

Stepping gingerly over shattered glass and what must have once been a roast chicken, Jane lowered herself onto the couch and tried once more to read the data on the tower. Her laptop gave an approving beep as it displayed a trio of green bars, indicating that the tower’s signal was as clear as it could possibly be.

While they had left her tied up in the basement, shivering and crying, Jane had plenty of time to think. The conversation between Beatrice and Jackson, the things Beatrice’s parents had done, the fact that Beatrice had deduced Jane was some sort of spy. It all added up to one possible outcome.

When the things we care about are threatened, it is human instinct to try our best to protect them, to throw caution to the wind and fling ourselves in front of the danger. It was this particular instinct that made Jane absolutely sure of Beatrice’s first move, the moment she had knocked out Jane.

It was this instinct that drove Beatrice to call her parents, essentially signing their demise.

Beatrice’s one moment of emotional weakness had thrust her straight into Jane’s trap.

And, now that she had confirmed that the tower had intercepted the call, she knew exactly where they were.

She’d done what nobody else could do. She’d found the elusive Ruths.