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“Did you catch any of their conversations while you were in the car?” asked Edis.
“Sorry, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I’m pretty sure that Campbell guy wasn’t in the car either. He was already at Ella’s place when I got there.”
“Makes sense,” said Mia. “Tobias wouldn’t risk being out in the open like that. He hides in the shadows until it’s time to show up.”
“Did you guys manage to find my phone?” Ben asked.
“That’s not important right now,” the chief said.
“Yes it is,” Ben said. “I was recording something when those guys ambushed me. Audio, anyway. It’ll have picked up everything those guys said. One of them stole it from me to text Ella, but I don’t know who.”
Ella clenched her fist in excitement. “Your phone was recording?” she asked.
“Yeah. Half of my job is talking. I practice my delivery every night. I’ll tell you later,” he said.
Mia jumped in, ‘We need to find that. It must still be in Ella’s apartment.”
“I’ll get my guys on it ASAP. So, we need to find this guy, and you three seem to know him best. Where should we start our search?”
“We don’t want to go full throttle just yet,” Edis said. “If Tobias knows we’ve authorized a large-scale manhunt, he’ll disappear.”
“Ben, go for it,” Ella said.
Ben scratched his jaw, seeming reluctant to share his thoughts. “Well, I don’t know for sure, but when those guys shoved me into their car, something really stood out to me.”
“What was it? Everything is useful,” the chief said.
“That car smelled like sewer water. When I met Tobias, he smelled the same.”
Chief Foster considered the information for a moment. “The sewers?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Ben nodded. “I used to work in waste management. I’ve been down to those sewers more times than I can count. You never forget that smell, and that stuff clings to you for days.”
The chief regarded Edis. Ella watched their facial expressions. It looked like they both approved of the idea.
“Ripley, Dark?” Edis asked. “Could it be possible?”
Ripley went first. “I don’t see why not. Lots of space. No one ever goes down there. Easy escape routes should someone intrude. I don’t think Tobias would run an operation out of there, but it could easily be one of his hiding places. He could have convened his team down there before they struck last night.”
“It would also let Tobias move through the city undetected. He could go down in Arlington and come up in Silver Springs without having to worry about CCTV,” Ella said.
“Like the tunnels underneath Disneyland,” Ben added.
Everyone went quiet. Ella pinched Ben’s hand as if to say not now.
“Right. Any other places he might be?” Edis asked.
“A few specific places around D.C. I’ll text you a list,” Ella said.
The chief scrawled in his notebook. “Please do. Director, we want this man alive, correct?”
The director regarded the agents. “I want to mention something to you all. Ella, Mia, you too. As of this morning, Tobias Campbell has been officially assigned outlaw status. He’s beyond protection of the law. This is the first outlaw designation in twenty-one years. I’m sure you all understand what this means.”
It meant Tobias could be killed without any legal consequence, Ella thought.
“Understood,” the chief said.
Ripley jumped in. “No. We want him alive.”
