“Enough to know she used it. Not enough to know for what. The account went dark roughly two weeks before her death.”
Gina stopped pretending not to pace. She took two steps, turned, then took two steps back. Fleur tracked her movement but stayed down.
“Either she walked away from it,” Gina said, “or someone found it and shut it down for her.”
“That gives us a tighter window,” Lachlan said around the pen casing. “Two weeks before Mira died.”
“Exactly,” Flint said. “Whatever scared her enough to stop using that account probably happened then. Or whoever killed her started closing in then.”
Kyle looked toward the phone on his desk. “Elissa. What about our mysterious caller?”
“Some progress, no name yet,” Elissa said. “But I’ve got more than I had yesterday. The call came from a burner. Cash purchase, no registration, no useful customer trail. However, there’s no completely escaping the eye in the sky. The phone pinged a tower in the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego when the message deployed. I’ve got the timestamp, routing, cell sector, and approximate radius.”
“But no face,” Kyle said.
“Not yet. I’m pulling footage from everything I can get near that radius. Traffic cameras, private lots, ATMs, storefronts. It’s slow. Some of it’s garbage quality. Some of it’s gone. Some of it’s locked behind systems I don’t want to kick too hard unless we’re ready for someone to kick back.”
“Good,” Gina said. “Slow is right.”
“I hate slow,” Elissa muttered. “But yeah, go low and go slow is right. The bigger point is that this confirms the dead man’s switch wasn’t theory. He set it up in advance and knew he might not be there to make the call himself.”
“That’s not civilian behavior,” Colin said.
“Nope,” Elissa said. “He knew how to cover his tracks. Knew how to set the timer. Knew enough to warn Maren to run instead of going to law enforcement. Whoever he was, he was trained.”
“NCIS,” Kyle said.
“Probably,” Gina said. “Or tied close enough to know their procedures.”
Colin heard the caution in her voice. Gina didn’t like closing doors too early. He understood why, even if it made him want to put his fist through one.
Elissa continued. “I’ve also got eyes on the San Diego County ME’s office, police reports of unidentified bodies, missing persons, NamUs, and hospitals.”
Kyle raised an eyebrow. “Hospitals?”
“I know, I know.” Elissa’s voice turned defensive. “I’m wired for optimism. I hate to think the guy’s dead. He sounded so concerned about Maren and Juni in that message.” She paused. “I’ll keep looking.”
Colin stared at the grain of the table.
He sounded so concerned.
Yeah. He had. Was he feeling guilty because he’d sent Maren and Juni running into the unknown? Or because Mira was dead?
Or both?
“What changed?” Gina said quietly. Everyone looked at her. She had stopped pacing entirely now, her focus turned inward and sharp. “Maren and Juni lived in San Diego for years after Mira died. No contact. No threat they knew about. No one tried to take Juni. No one came after Maren. Then suddenly our mystery man sets up a dead man’s switch, Maren’s house gets ransacked, and she’s driving through the night with a little girl to meet up with total strangers who may or may not help her.”
Colin’s chest tightened.
“Could be the caller did something that exposed them,” Lachlan said.
“Could be,” Gina agreed. “Or it could be that LRH is under new scrutiny. Maybe a new contract. New audit. New leadership. Something that makes old loose ends dangerous again.”
“Voss,” Flint said.
Everyone looked at him.
He tapped a key and brought up a file photo of a man in an expensive suit. “Warren Voss. Current CEO of LRH Defense Systems. At the time Mira worked there, he wasn’t CEO yet, but he was already high in the defense-contracts chain. The program Mira moved into eventually rolled up under his authority.”
