Page 106 of Hidden

Lincoln stands up and smiles. “Lileah has class, this should be fun.”

“Have fun,” I joke with him.

Cain and I sit in the quiet for a moment. "The warning to stay away," I say. "I'm not staying away."

"I know," Cain says. "I didn't expect you to."

***

I'm back at the rig by one in the afternoon; this is where I spend most of my time at the moment. I know I should be in class, but I have more important things to work on, plus I only go to college for appearances. I don’t need my degree for the family business, as I’m the hacker of the family.

The upper tier decryption is running, I set it going before I left for Cain's and it's made progress, the algorithm is working through the custom architecture layer by layer. I pull up the current status, sixty-three percent. It’s going to be another few hours at this rate.

I leave it running and pull up the location data instead. I might as well do as many things as I can at one time.

The stolen phone's movement history covers forty-seven days. I've been working through the early days: the arrival in the city, and the surveillance of the house. But I haven't fully mapped the middle period yet, the two weeks before the ambush when whoever owned this phone was moving around freely.

I start building the map.

The first week is mostly residential, the areas around our house, the university campus perimeter, and two locations I identify as Crawford family properties they've been watching. It’s expected that's the surveillance pattern I'd already assumed.

The second week is different.

The phone moves onto campus: the athletics center, the library, and the main quad. There were repeated visits. They were the same locations, multiple times, it’s a pattern of someone who’s learning a space rather than just passing through it.

I sit forward and look at the location clusters against the campus map. They were at the athletics center six times over four days. They were at the library three times. Then the path between the residential buildings and the main academic block, twice daily, their timing is consistent.

My attention pulls away from the screen when my burner phone vibrates on the desk.

Sadie.

Thank you for the flowers.

Will you be here tonight?

Ghost

You deserve all the flowers in the world.

Do you want me there tonight?

Sadie

Yes.

She’s starting to fall for Ghost, but should I be worried she’s not going to think about Miles.

I pull up the campus population data I built access to six weeks ago. I cross-reference the athletics center visits against the schedule.

Gymnastics. The athletics center visits all fall within the gymnastics team's scheduled practice windows. My hand stops moving. This can’t be right.

I run it again, using different filters, and get the same result. There were six visits to the athletics center, all during gymnastics practice hours, all in the two weeks before the ambush.

They weren't just watching me, they were watching the same person who I watched, or is it just coincidence that they’re watching the gymnastics team?

The thought arrives with a coldness that is distinct from any other feeling I've had so far in this investigation. Fear. Is Sadie next on the list for abduction?

I pull up the profile parameters from the eight cases. The selection criteria I identified weeks ago, the young women, the academic environments, and full of independence.