Ryder had never seen Tony so angry or worried. Tony and Matt had been friends longer than Tony had been his supervisor.
Ryder glanced at his phone, then said, “Our ride to the airport is here.”
“Zack will be back tonight, he’ll work from here unless you need him in Florida,” Tony said. “You also have full access to my staff—they will get you anything you need.” He looked at Catherine. “Does he have a partner?”
Catherine blanched. “I—I don’t think so. Nothing has suggested that two people were involved in the abductions or murders. It would be unusual, but not impossible.”
“It’s one thing to help a friend out of a jam,” Tony said, “it’s another to kidnap a federal agent to get a friend out of a jam. Unless you’ve been involved from the beginning.”
Catherine looked like she hadn’t even considered the idea. “I’ll review all of the files again on the plane.”
“You’re going?” Tony was as surprised as Ryder. Catherine rarely joined them in the field, preferring to work out of the office.
“It’s my profile that gave Flagler County the idea for the undercover operation, and my profile that netted us Garrett Reid. If I’m wrong, or partly wrong, then I need to be there to watch and assess him.”
“Keep me informed every step of the way,” Tony said. “I’ve already talked to the SAC in Jacksonville, and he’ll have agents at our disposal when and if we need them. I’ll contact them now to send an evidence response team to process the room. If there is any trace evidence, they’ll find it.” He looked from Ryder to Michael to Catherine. “Find them, whatever it takes.”
He turned and walked out.
Partner. Garrett Reid has a partner, Ryder thought.
“There are no signs that Reid worked with anyone,” Catherine said as if reading Ryder’s mind.
“Meet out front in ten minutes,” Ryder said. He left the conference room and went to his office, closed his door.
A partner. That made sense. Matt and Kara were caught off guard. Hard to do, but not impossible.
Guilt ate at him. He’d convinced Matt to stay for the weekend. Maybe he hadn’t needed a lot of convincing, but it had been Ryder’s idea and Matt ran with it. Otherwise, they would have flown back Saturday after meeting with Detective Fuentes and the DA in the morning.
Ryder called Brian Valdez. “My team is coming down. We’ll be there in three and a half hours. The Jacksonville FBI office may arrive before us—please allow them to search the room.”
“I’ll get a couple rooms ready for your team. I haven’t even cleared out the conference room you were using because the deputies were here all weekend.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I may have found something,” Brian said. “At 11:57 a.m., an individual we can’t identify wearing a maintenance uniform with a baseball cap is seen pushing a laundry bin down a path near Agent Costa’s room. The cottages don’t have cameras nearby, but the path leading from the main hotel to the outlying cottages has some coverage. He is spotted on two of them, then disappears. I’m checking parking lots for additional footage, but haven’t found anything yet.”
“Email me what you have,” Ryder said. “Thank you.”
Ryder hung up. Catherine was standing in his doorway.
“Learn something?” Catherine asked.
Ryder told her what Valdez discovered.
“We need that footage,” Catherine said. “We can enhance it, run it through facial recognition—maybe we’ll recognize the individual.”
“He’s sending it to me and looking for more,” Ryder said, “but there are no frontal shots.”
“I still want to see it,” she said. “There’s a chance that someone Matt investigated is behind this, and it has nothing to do with Garrett Reid.”
“That seems unlikely,” Ryder said, then regretted it. He was an analyst, not an FBI agent.
Catherine said, “Perhaps, but I’m not ready to change my profile, not yet. I haven’t been this wrong before, at least since...” She stopped herself.
Ryder raised an eyebrow. Though he had never discussed Catherine’s background with her or anyone else, he knew the big picture. Two years ago her sister had been killed by a man obsessed with Catherine, and Catherine’s profile about her stalker had been off. She had determined that he wasn’t violent. She blamed herself, and then Matt. After a sabbatical, she seemed to be doing better, but Ryder knew how old traumas could return to wreak havoc in your life when you least expected it. Hewondered if it was wise to have Catherine join them in Florida, but it wasn’t his call to make.
Ryder glanced at his computer when a message popped up, reminding him that their driver had been waiting for ten minutes. He forwarded it to the team, then said to Catherine, “Our driver is here. We’ll meet at the portico.”
