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Darby
“You’re gonna want to see this,” Nettie Lamar said in her Irish brogue when we arrived at the lab forty minutes later. She’d called us while we were headed back west, requesting our presence.
Dutifully, we followed her and Xander to a small, amply lit room, lined with tables on one side.
Xander shut and locked the door, then proceeded to flip a series of manual switches.
Mark leaned against the far corner, about as far from me as he could get. “What’s this room?”
Nettie wrung her hands. “It’s a secure room. I hope you’re not expecting any calls.”
Secure rooms were totally soundproofed, impervious to any monitoring equipment from the outside, and typically even on their own power source. No internet, no outside lines for communication. As soon as a lock was thrown, nothing could get in or out until the lock was unlocked. Even a listening device, if it came into the room, would not be able to broadcast.
I sat on the edge of one of the tables, crossing my legs at my ankles. “Why are we here?”
She exchanged a look with Xander.
“Go ahead, Nettie. You’re the one who found it,” Xander said. “No one can hear us.”
She nodded.
“You wouldn’t have brought us here if it wasn’t important,” Mark said. “We’ve got a murderer on the loose. It sure would help if we could go find them.”
“Right, Detective. It’s just what I have to say is big.” She took a deep breath, then looked to her boss again.
He nodded.
She took another deep breath, “We’re pretty confident we’ve found evidence that the DSHA removed files from Prairie’s work computer.”