I glanced between Ben and the screen. “Hi, Mai. And, um, Pasco.”
“Call me Jack,” a man said. “You’ll be able to put my pretty face to the voice soon enough, but for now, Ms. Lindstrom, I have some good news for you.”
These people got straight to the point. I followed their lead. “Please, call me Savannah. I’m ready for good news.”
“We aim to please,” Mai said.
I pressed my lips together and avoided so much as a glance in Ben’s direction, but in my peripheral vision, I could see he hadn’t so much as flinched. Stoic bastard.
“First things first,” Mai continued. “Our surveillance of your condo building and offices hasn’t turned up anything suspicious.”
“So I’m not—or wasn’t—being watched?”
“We can’t be sure of that,” Jack answered. “But since Mai put me on the case twenty-four hours ago, the feeds have been clean. Twelve hours before that was a different story, though.”
The screen jumped to life and a blurry, black-and-white video played across it.
“What are we looking at, Pasco?” Ben asked.
The screen split into three feeds, all with the same grainy quality. But the same person, a thin, smallish man or maybe a boy, was in all three. He wore dark clothes and a black beanie and seemed to be aware of the cameras and how to avoid showing his face.
“Unidentified male spotted at three different locations within a five-block radius of Savannah’s building,” Jack answered.
In two of the feeds, he stood at the counter, paying for a pile of something. I squinted and leaned closer. “Is he buying burner phones?”
“All the burner phones in the stores,” Mai answered. “But pay attention to the feed on the right.”
The man-boy slid two of three plastic-packaged phones off a metal hook and laid them aside, then removed the third. He pried open the package, took out the phone, and punched on the keyboard. Although I still wasn’t sure what I was watching, a chill ran down my spine.
“He’s getting the phone number,” Ben said, answering my unasked question.
“From one specific phone,” Mai added. “And leaving with all the other burner phones for sale in the vicinity.”
A few puzzle pieces shifted into place, but the full picture wasn’t clear to me. “The first place I went was sold out ofthem. The guy mentioned they’d just sold the last ones earlier that evening.”
“Now look at the date-time stamp on the feed to the right,” Jack said.
“Friday night, 8:40 p.m.,” I said out loud.
“Ten minutes before your first text from Devlin Masters,” Mai said. “Thirteen minutes before he suggested you get a burner phone and get the hell out of town.”
“Son of a bitch,” Ben said.
I looked at him. “Why son of a bitch? What does all this mean?”
Ben met my gaze. “It means you were set up to buy that specific phone because Devlin already had the number.”
I pointed to the screen. “No way in hell that’s Devlin.” My business partner could be an asshole, but he couldn’t possibly be this big of one.
“It’s not your business partner in the video,” Jack agreed, “but we can’t rule out this person working with him. My best guess is this is a random kid he hired to do his leg work. After he bought all the phones, this guy entered a CCTV blind spot, then we lost track of him. Probably got into a car after going dark.”
“What kind of skill set would the kid need to have knowledge of the blind spots?” Ben asked.
“Minimal IT skills,” Jack said.
“He could even have relied on observation,” Mai added. “Public CCTV and private security cameras are there to discourage bad behavior as much as record it. They’re usually pretty obvious.”
I clasped my hands in my lap and stared down at them.
