Chapter 4 - THE FALSE WARNING
Captain Torres did not flinch.
That frightened Mike.
An innocent person might have protested. A guilty person might have reached for the phone.
Torres simply watched him.
Wade leaned toward the speaker.
“Sheriff Kane, identify your location.”
Bill’s breathing remained uneven.
“I can’t.”
“Are you under duress?”
“I don’t know.”
Mike’s eyes stayed on Torres.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’ve got deputies I’ve known twenty years, and tonight I don’t recognize the way they look at me.”
“Why did you say not to trust Torres?”
A pause.
Then Bill said, “Because her name was in Sarah’s house.”
Torres’s face changed for the first time.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Mike saw it.
“Where?”
“Written on the back of a grocery receipt. Lena Torres. Under it, a time. Four-thirty.”
Torres drew a slow breath.
Mike’s hands curled at his sides.
“Were you in my sister’s house?”
“No.”
“Did you know Sarah?”
“No.”
“Did you contact her?”
“No.”
Each answer arrived cleanly.
Too cleanly.
Wade stepped between them.
“Captain, surrender your tablet.”
Torres looked at him.
“Sir, if I give you this device, we lose the only isolated copy of the access log.”
“That is an order.”
She held his gaze, then placed the tablet on the desk.
Mike noticed she did not remove her hand immediately.
Wade reached for it.
The screen changed.
A countdown appeared.
00:30.
Mike looked at Torres.
“What did you activate?”
“I didn’t.”
The countdown dropped to twenty-eight seconds.
Bill’s voice cracked through the speaker.
“Mike, get out of that office.”
The door lock engaged again.
Torres grabbed the tablet.
“It’s initiating a remote purge.”
“Stop it,” Wade said.
“I’m locked out.”
Mike moved toward the old field terminal.
The same countdown appeared there.
00:21.
“What happens at zero?” he asked.
Torres tapped through security menus.
“Every connected device wipes.”
“Connected to what?”
She stopped.
Her eyes lifted.
“To the evidence drive.”
Mike looked at the small sealed device plugged into the terminal.
He reached for it.
“Don’t,” Torres said sharply.
His hand froze.
“If it has a physical tamper trigger, pulling it may complete the wipe.”
Wade opened a drawer and removed a shielded evidence container.
“Can we isolate it?”
“Not in time.”
00:13.
Mike stared at the warehouse frame.
The swinging work light.
The plastic curtain.
The reflection of the military credential.
Then he noticed something beneath the timestamp.
A series of numbers flickered in and out.
Not coordinates.
Measurements.
“Mark’s construction plans,” he said.
Torres looked at him.
“What?”
“The numbers. He used to read dimensions like that. Feet, inches, load values.”
00:08.
Mike grabbed the family photograph from his vest and used its glossy edge to cover part of the screen, isolating the numbers.
12-6.
08-4.
03-0.
Torres understood.
“Structural grid references.”
00:04.
Wade looked between them.
“For what building?”
The screens went black.
The evidence drive emitted a faint click.
Silence.
Torres pulled the drive free and dropped it into the shielded container.
“All data is gone,” Wade said.
“No,” Mike replied.
He turned the photograph over and wrote the three number groups on the back with Wade’s desk pen.
“Mark left us a location.”
Bill’s voice returned through the command line.
“Mike?”
“I’m here.”
“I found the receipt.”
“Read everything on it.”
Paper rustled.
“Lena Torres. Four-thirty. South loading dock. And there’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“Your sister wrote a sentence underneath.”
Bill’s voice broke.
“She wrote, ‘The woman with Mike’s face will know what to do.’”
Mike slowly turned toward Torres.
For the first time, her control slipped.
Her lips parted.
Her eyes fixed on the photograph in his hand.
“That isn’t possible,” she whispered.
“Why?”
May you like
Torres looked at Mike as if she were seeing someone else standing in his place.
“Because I met your sister twenty-two years ago.”
