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Rachel returned and, pulling a chair up beside him, sat down with a notepad. When he looked at it she shrugged. “Writing things down helps my brain to process more readily than typing it. I’ll dispose of it appropriately.”
He pointed at one of the entries. “I’m trying to backtrack this entry. Notice the words? Meet, product, dispose. While not important in some situations, together, they make some sort of sense.”
She jotted the words down and looked at the string of commands. “Where did they originate?”
“In the men’s bathroom on our floor,” Gavin said grimly.
“Great. Now we only have to narrow down the dozens of men who’d visited those facilities on what day?”
“Wednesday.”
“Do we have a time stamp?” She jotted down the date and then the time Gavin gave her, frowning at her pad. “If only we had a visual record of the entry and exit.”
He grinned, "We do. Remember? I tapped into the cameras for the building." He gestured toward the paper. "If you're willing to give up on your old-fashioned materials, I can set you up with a computer and get you started reviewing the tapes."
She made an adorable face at him and ripped out several pages of the notebook and closed it. “Get the computer.”
"After breakfast." Mrs. Finch interrupted and set down two plates with omelets, toast, and fruit piled high. Gavin started to reject the offer then took in Rachel's avid expression. Fifteen minutes of her company, free of their problems wouldn't hurt. He closed the laptop and put it on the floor, giving the housekeeper room to serve him.
They ate and talked, bringing back the ease that each of them had experienced at the restaurant only days before. Bear and the others joined them and fifteen minutes drifted into thirty before they could excuse themselves to a small room off the study. There, Gavin set up the two laptops and even found a spare printer in the office to use. Rachel settled in to watch videos and he continued to backtrack the message.
Senator Mitchell joined them an hour later, his casual outfit of slacks and a light sweater belying his serious expression. “The office will be cleared by tomorrow.”
Gavin took in his stance and mood. “You’re not happy?”
Mitchell rubbed his neck, a sure tell of his discomfort. “I’m tempted to keep the house as our base for a week or so. It’s easier to secure, less collateral damage if something else happens.”
Rachel tapped her pen on the table, looking up from her monitor. "That's true, but can your staff control the conjectures? The strychnine story has been on the news, even with some filtering. If you don't make an appearance, it might be assumed you were affected, as well."
After staring at her the Senator nodded. “I’ve got the day to think about it. Misdirection might give us an advantage.” He drifted off, leaving Rachel staring at the door. “Misdirection?”
“If the drug ring thinks they spooked him, it might give us a little more time. Or it might cause them to go farther underground,” Gavin didn’t look up from his screen and his fingers continued their quick tapping. “He’s just trying to figure out which scenario is more likely to happen and what advantage we could manufacture from this.”
Rachel nodded, her brow scrunched in concentration as she tried to make out the figure entering the bathroom on the video. “These recordings could be clearer.”
“Only on television. You got somebody?”
“Yes, but the camera is just out of focus enough that he isn’t identifiable, at least by me.”
After tapping a few more keys, Gavin stood and bent over her shoulder, staring at the man entering the bathroom. He leaned in farther and Rachel smelled the fresh scent of soap and Gavin as he typed in some commands. When he straightened, the tape looped several seconds, the figure entering the bathroom over and over again. “I need a refining program,” he murmured and returned to his computer.
“Can you do that quickly?” Rachel used a computer for correspondence and keeping track of her macros when training, but not for much else. Internet shopping and searches didn’t compare.
"Not well enough for what we need, no." Gavin picked up his phone and dialed. A few minutes later he spoke. "Hey, I need a secure video refining program. No, not editing, enhancing video. Yeah? Okay, can you hook me up? No trace, right. Thanks," he disconnected and smiled at Rachel. "It'll be in my mailbox in a couple of hours. Can you save the clip?"
She nodded and did so before minimizing that clip and moving on. "Wait, a guy is coming out of the bathroom at the same time. Do I keep that one too?"
Gavin waggled his head then shook it. "I don't think the time is going to jive. You're looking at a couple of minutes before and after the time stamp, right?" When she nodded, he continued. "That should work."
“What about the possibility there’s nonverbal communication?” she said as she stared at her screen. One of the men had tapped the other on the shoulder as they passed. “Look at this. It’s nothing, I’m sure, but it got me thinking.” She pointed the gesture out to him when he joined her. “A simple gesture or bumping into each other or something like that could convey a message, right? A prearranged message, an exchange. Or am I being influenced by too much TV drama?”
He narrowed his eyes at the screen then looked at Rachel with approval. She felt her face flush with pleasure at the sight. "You could be onto something. We'll make an operative of you, yet."
She waited until he reseated himself before answering him. “Like you?”
“Like me, what?”
"I've known you're more than a friend of the Senator since the day he was shot at. You do things differently. Then, when you handled Rankin's killing and managed to slip the phone back into the car with the police officer right there? That's not normal. So, who do you work for? Not CIA, since you're in-country. FBI? DEA?"
