“You sent him the video footage as well?”Vic asked.
“Sure did.You guys want to look through it to see if there’s anything there?Or should you head to that lot where Anderson was launched from first?”
Miles weighed the option, again rather surprised that they hadso manydifferent approaches to choose from.“How long is the footage?”Miles asked.
“Thirty-two minutes,” Kim said, opening up her laptop.“But I have all of the important bits flagged.We can—”
She was interrupted by the ringing of Vic’s phone.She grabbed it and looked to the caller display.“It’s Detective Morales,” she said.
As she answered it and placed the call on speaker mode, Miles struggled to recall Morales at all.He wasthattired; the past two days were just a blur of faces, conversations, and smashed bodies.
“This is Agent Stone,” Vic said.
"Agent Stone, it’s Detective Morales.I think I've got something here you need to know about."Morales's voice carried a tense urgency but there was doubt there, too.She was afraid of building up their hope only for it to turn out to be nothing.“About ten minutes ago, dispatch took a call from a man named Donald Lawson.He reported that his girlfriend didn't come home last night, and he's worried something happened to her."
"Okay…and why are you calling us about a missing person?"Vic asked.
"Because the girlfriend is a trapeze artist with Cirque du Soleil, name of Vivian Bennett.I thought being a trapeze artist might lump her in with folks involved with heights.I thought it was a fit for your case."
Miles agreed and had no issue assuming it was connected."When did she go missing?"he asked.
"Lawson says she was at the Cirque training facility last night for a late practice session.She usually gets home around one in the morning or so, but she never showed up.He tried calling her multiple times with no answer."
"That doesn't necessarily mean she was taken by our killer," Vic said, though her expression suggested she did not believe that.
"There's more,” Morales said.“At some point in the early morning hours, Lawson used the Find my Phone feature to see if he could find out where she was.He tracked her phone to the desert outside Los Angeles, roughly fifteen miles away where Michael Thompson's body was found."
Miles and Vic exchanged a look.The connection was too obvious to ignore…and all of a sudden, this call from Morales seemed more important than anything else.
"And listen,” Morales said.“Lawson made it very clear that he's not waiting for us to investigate.He's driving out to that location right now to look for her himself.”
“That means we need to do everything we can to get there before he does."Miles was already standing up, grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair." If our killerisinvolved in this, there’s no way to know what sort of danger Lawson could be walking into.What's the exact location?"
"I'll shoot Agent Stone the link.You're looking at about a forty-minute drive, from what I can tell."
"We're leaving now," Vic said into the phone."Detective Morales, can you try to reach Lawson and tell him to stay away from that location?If his girlfriend is there and she's still alive, we don't want him making things worse or putting himself in danger.”
"I'll try, but he was pretty adamant about going out there immediately.The guy was borderline hysterical when he called it in."
"Do your best.We'll call you when we get there."Vic ended the call and looked at Miles."If this is our killer's work, Bennett might not even be in the air.We could get there in time to save her.It may not hurt to have some units head out to the location right away.Can you make that call?"
“Yeah, I’ll get it done.”
Miles headed for the door, his thoughts already running through scenarios.If Bennett had been taken last night around midnight or one, that gave the killer roughly eight hours to transport her to a launch site, sedate her, and send her into the air.Depending on when the sedative wore off and how high she was when she woke up, she might have already fallen.He thought this was a promising lead, but he wasn’t expecting to be able to save Bennett.
Kim spoke up almost obediently from her chair."I'll stay here and coordinate from this end.If you need me to run searches or pull up any data, I can do that faster from the office than from the field.I'll also help with the tech team just in case we still need to rely on a backup…like the facial recognition."
"Thanks,” Miles said.“We’ll keep you posted.”
Miles and Vic moved quickly through the office corridors toward the parking garage.Miles could feel the familiar adrenaline building in his system, the heightened awareness that came with knowing a victim's life might very well depend on how fast they moved.
"If Bennett is actively in the air, we'll need to spot her somehow," Miles said as they reached the car."The desert is huge.She could be drifting anywhere depending on wind patterns."
"You drive, and I’ll coordinate with local police and search and rescue when we get closer,” Vic said."Maybe we'll get lucky and Lawson will have found her by the time we arrive.I hate that he’s rushing in like he is, but itcouldactually buy us some time in a perfect world."
"And if she's already gone?"Miles asked quietly.
"Then we work the scene and find evidence that leads us to the killer."Vic started the engine and pulled out of the parking space."Either way, we're not stopping until we catch this bastard."
