It figured, Donovan thought. It was some kind of poetic perversion of the universe. Finally, as he'd gotten himself back together and walked into the room, GJ had hopped up from her chair and practically thrown herself at him.
“Look what I found, Donovan. You're not going to believe this.”
Excited for break in the case, he moved around to the other side of the conference table and watched as she tapped on keys.
“I found it in Missy Maisel’s ‘drafts’ folder.” GJ looked up at him, but he understood. The folders were a great way to park email that the sender didn’t want found, or maybe just wanted backed up somewhere. The message would be saved online, but because it never got sent, it didn’t ping any systems. No one would receive it, or even find it, unless they got into this account and specifically looked through the messages.
“Good catch,” he told her as the video popped up. It appeared to be an underwater shot of various fish. “What's on it?”
“I don’t know yet. I only forwarded through it quickly one time once I got it loaded. There’s an individual diver in the video. I think it might be Allison, but I don’t know how to I.D. her in that dive gear.”
“Let’s check our records.” He was already moving to see if he could pull anything up. When the research team had called it a day and filed the report that Allison had gone missing, they’d filled in the standard “what she was wearing when last seen” info. He hoped it was more than just “a wetsuit and dive tank.”
GJ was talking again. “It’s in Missy’s email, so it could be video that Missy had from one of her dives. She was a diver, too, so this could be nothing.”
“But why would you load a video to yourself and never send it?” Donovan stopped sorting through the missing person report for a moment and worked through the implications of that. It was possible that Neriah had logged into her friend's email and left it for her. “They might be using Missy’s email to stay in contact. This way, Neriah’s email doesn’t ping us—or anyone else—that she logged in.” It also could be nothing, he reminded himself. “You'll need to contact Missy and ask if she did this.”
“Already on it,” GJ said. She was enlarging the video, getting ready to let both of them watch through when their phones rang simultaneously.
It figured, Donovan thought. Everything always breaks at once. He assumed it was Westerfield, but when he picked up the phone, it was Eleri.
Eleri and Noah had two adult males in handcuffs and they needed GJ and Donovan to fetch one for transport to the Bureau branch office. Donovan hung up and looked to GJ. “They need us so the suspects can’t chat on the way or trade info.”
GJ was already hopping up, the video abandoned for now. Scrambling for speed, they quickly locked down the conference room, but left everything behind as they bolted out the door. It wasn’t unusual to see agents running down the halls, and they passed right out of the building and into the lot.
GJ had slid smoothly into the driver's side seat, but then popped right back out, swearing a blue streak. “Oh, man, what the fuck made me think I should drive? Who the fuck bought black cars in Miami?”
Donovan would have laughed, but he was far too scrambled to process the humor. This day had tossed him like a rag doll. He’d barely gotten his brains back in his head after seeing his mother's death certificate. Even now, the thought flitted through his mind and he pushed it hard to the side. There was too much going on. He had a job to do here, and it didn’t seem wise to stop and process the information about his mother yet.
Even if nothing was going on with the job, and if he was able to take a sick day—or five—to step aside and deal with what he’d found, he wouldn’t. He was growing more convinced that he needed to let the information settle before he turned it over and looked underneath. He needed to ready himself for whatever crap he might find. He wasn’t ready now.
So he slid into the car, his legs burning through the fabric of his slacks as he hit the seat. He tried not to let GJ know. Tossing her the keys, he said, “Get in.”
“I know, I know.” She was quickly sliding back into place, trying not to waste time or react to the burn of the seat. He blasted the air conditioning for her and GJ peeled the car out of the FBI lot like her ass was on fire. According to her swearing, it was.
By the time they reached the dive shop, Donovan had formed a handful of opinions. This section of town was not the richest part of Miami. Even so, the property values were probably sky high. The dive shop was in a strip mall with a huge plastic sign over the top that read “Smith Family Dive.” He hadn't yet made up his mind about the shop yet. Either it was a cute, but not thriving, family business full of knowledgeable, friendly, helpful divers—or it was merely a bottom-of-the-barrel shop. They might not even be related.
Inside, dive tanks with the paint partially rubbed off lined the edges of the front room. Letters and number combinations marked the gases that were stored in them, and Donovan was surprised to see more than just O2. Equipment resembling what he'd seen in Neriah’s apartment pictures hung from pegs on the wall. Black vests with tubes protruding hung on a hanger rack smashed thick, and on the other side of the room, various wet suits were available for rent. Everything appeared to be for sale.
The two men sat on the floor facing away from each other. Eleri looked up as they entered, but she seemed most grateful to see him. Though she had Noah Kimball here as backup, Eleri still looked like something was bothering her. But it wasn’t the time or place to figure out what it was. Instead, he asked, “Which one do we get?”
Since Eleri had already communicated that their job was to drive the man back to the branch office, she merely pointed. Donovan leaned over and grabbed the man by his shoulders. “You'll be coming with me.”
Awkwardly, the man rose to his feet. It was not an easy task for non-agile people without their hands to push off of the floor. Donovan offered what help he could, but that didn't extend to any kid-glove treatment.
Luckily, though the man wasn't happy to see either him or GJ and muttered his way through the whole process, he didn't fight them about getting into the back of the hot car. He was curt, but not belligerent as they clicked his cuffs to the car seat’s security hook. This was not a cruiser. It was not designed for hauling prisoners. So they made do.
At the branch, they began processing him. It always took far longer than Donovan liked to go through security, getting their “guest” patted down and checked for weapons, or worse. He didn’t see Eleri or Noah at all, but that was the point.
Purposefully, they walked the men in at separate times and put them into two separate rooms connected by a central observation area. The rooms were windowless, dreary, and designed to inspire despair. Only a tiny, wired piece of glass set into the door allowed any light in, and the mirror obviously let other FBI agents watch the interrogation.
The two men probably wouldn't know they were right next-door to each other.
Standing in the middle for a few moments to form a battle plan, the four agents looked through the two-way mirrors, watching as the suspects sat cuffed to the bar on the table and beginning to sweat.
“This one first,” Eleri said, pointing to the man she’d found behind the counter. “I think he’s the boss. Yes?”
Noah nodded his agreement, though Donovan withheld judgment—he hadn’t been there. Something in Eleri’s manner still seemed agitated. She'd made a motion to Donovan with only her eyes, and he'd picked it up to mean she would tell him later. He wasn't sure he could handle any more new information. But he would have to, so he merely nodded in response.
Walking out the door, Eleri motioned for Noah to follow her into the room while Donovan and GJ hung behind. He crossed his arms, still needing something to do with his hands.
Eleri and Noah sat abruptly across from the man and Donovan watched as his nerves ratcheted up just a little more.
“You do realize you're now in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?” Eleri offered it like a statement, but said it with a question mark. The man nodded in response.
She'd not yet asked his name or information or begun a recording. Donovan wondered what was going on. She asked one question next. “What did Neriah Jones do to convince you to lie about her presence in the dive shop?”
This time, when the man raised his eyes, he looked more like a cornered rabbit than a belligerent suspect. He looked down at the table, his lips pressed together.
He looked between Eleri and Noah to buy time, but eventually, he answered. “It wasn't her. I mean, she asked that I tell no one she’d been there, but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t have remembered her anyway. . . I didn’t lie because of her. It was the people who came in after her.”