Page 124 of Valor

“You can use my computer,” he says, logging in and opening the hospital’s email folder. “Just lock it when you’re done.”

“Thanks,” Riley says.

“No problem. I’m praying for her,” he says, stopping right before leaving the room. “She’s my friend, and I want her home safely.”

“We all do,” I tell him.

He offers me a tight smile before leaving the room.

Riley gestures to the computer. “All yours, Sheriff. I’m no Tucker, and I’m just as likely to accidentally delete something.”

With a slight smile at his candid admission, I take a seat in the chair. “Can you give Tucker a call and see if he can come down? He might be able to find something we can’t.”

“Definitely.” Riley withdraws his cell, so I start combing through emails, looking for anything that might be a red flag.

* * *

By the timeTucker has arrived, I’ve pretty much given up hope that there’s anything here. Other than the fact that the emails are all nearly carbon copies of each other, they appear to come directly from the email addresses the candidates submitted on their applications.

Which means either I’m missing something, or the doctor is lying. Since I can’t see what he would get out of the latter, I’m guessing it’s the former.

“Help has arrived,” Tucker announces as he replaces me in front of the computer. Reaching into the messenger bag he’s carrying with him, he withdraws a black box with a cable and a small computer.

He attaches the black box to the computer, then another cable to Dr. Pierce’s desktop.

“Let’s see what’s here.”

Riley’s phone dings. “Dylan got nothing from the neighbors. No one recalls seeing anyone strange hanging around the building or hearing anything the night Lani went missing.”

Another dead end.

We’re running out of time. I can feel it. It’s been nearly forty-eight hours. Two full days of Lani missing.

“Interesting.” Tucker leans in closer to the screen, so both Riley and I flank him.

“What’s interesting?” I ask.

“Sheriff, are you sure you want to be this close to me when I’m doing undesirable things that may or may not stretch and/or break multiple laws?”

“If it helps to find Lani, I don’t care if you break all the laws. Just find something.”

Tucker looks from me to his brother. “We’re a bad influence on him. Remember when he got mad that I left something in his mailbox that wasn’t actual posted mail? I thought he was going to turn me into the postmaster general himself.”

“Time, Tucker. We’re running out of it,” I remind him.

“Just trying to keep my head level,” he replies smoothly, then taps something on the keyboard of his monitor. “So, the emails that supposedly came from the potential hires were sent from this hospital.”

“Which means?—”

“Which means whoever sent them broke into at least a dozen different email accounts and sent the hospital those cancellations. Likely after they’d called and told the candidates they were no longer needed.” He pulls up half a dozen windows onto the screen, each of them showing a different send address with a candid cancellation.

“How did no one pick up on the fact that this is virtually the same message?” Riley demands as he leans in to read them.

“I don’t know, but it’s a copy-and-paste job for sure. A few changes, just enough to keep whoever was reading them off the trail, but I’d bet my lovely acre of Hunt Ranch that it was the same person.” He leans back, brow arched. “It’s strange though.”

“What’s strange?”

“Whoever took Lani has been really careful to cover their tracks. So much so that we’ve found virtually nothing in two days. This is sloppy. So, makes me think that they either didn’t have a lot of time, or they didn’t think we’d ever draw a link.”

---