Page 23 of Devil
Darius looked to Lily. “I hadn’t considered that,” she said, then she nodded, giving him the green light. He checked to make sure that Cyn still had the feed up on her computer, then he logged out of the security app and into the internal IT system.
Twenty minutes later, he was looking at a folder containing thousands of documents that had been printed in the lab in the past few days alone. Quickly assessing the list, he decided the best place to start was with the two printers in Pritchard’s lab. Even with just those two, there were hundreds of documents in the past week. But no one had ever accused him of being a whiner, and methodically he started working backward and through each document.
“Their names are Tina and Amy Lam. They are sisters,” Cyn said. He hadn’t bothered to watch the time as he clicked through document after document and was surprised to find that more than ninety minutes had passed.
“Anything else?” Six asked. She was sitting on the couch with a computer open on her lap and Gavin beside her. What she was looking into, Darius hadn’t a clue. Nora also had her laptop open, while Joe was sitting beside Cyn at the table.
Lily was pacing the living room with her phone glued to her ear. He wasn’t certain, but he thought she might be getting the play-by-play from the DeMarcos. No one had explained who the DeMarcos were, but Darius figured they were people Lily and the club trusted to help them out.
“Working on it. Where are they now?” Cyn asked.
“The airport,” Lily answered. “Getting on a flight to DC.”
Silence fell across the room. Darius caught Lily’s eye. “I know we’re all thinking it, but I’ll be the one to ask,” he said. “Do we need to stop them from getting on a plane?” They didn’t think the Lam sisters had picked up anything dangerous in Lab 14, but they weren’t certain.
Lily turned away from him and faced out the window. His heart thrummed a heavy beat at the weight of the decision she was now facing. The best thing he could do for her was give her the space to make it, so he, and everyone else, remained silent.
Finally, she turned around. “I don’t want them on a plane, but we’re not going to pick them up, either.”
“What are you going to do? And again, can I help?” Darius asked. He felt the eyes of everyone else in the room bouncing between him and Lily. They were watching, judging him. But he didn’t mind. His sole focus was on helping Lily make the next move.
“We’re going to ground the plane,” she said. He drew back at that. There were very few ways to ground a plane, and the most obvious was to call in a threat. But he didn’t think Lily was up for that kind of psychological terror.
“What’s the flight number?…Any other later flights?” she asked whoever she was talking to on the phone. After a beat, she nodded. “Stay in touch with Six. I need to make a few calls.” She ended the call and immediately began dialing another number.
“Franklin, you need to ground flight 7865 from Boston to DC tonight,” she said, taking a seat at the dining table. “It needs to be delayed at the gate by small increments until sometime after eleven tonight. After that, it needs to be canceled.” Lily listened for a moment, then nodded. “After eleven, there aren’t any more flights, and our targets will either rent a car or book a new flight. If they try to book a new flight, it would be good if those are all full at least until tomorrow afternoon.” She listened again. “I want them in a car, not a plane, so anything we can do to encourage that, we need to do,” she confirmed. Another beat passed, and she nodded again. “Thank you. I’ll send details tomorrow.”
She hung up and looked around the room. A collective exhale seemed to follow. “Franklin will see it’s done,” she said.
Darius stared at the woman sitting alone on the other side of the table and fought the urge to go to her. Undoubtedly, this wasn’t the hardest decision she’d ever made. But even so, the need to even just put a hand on her shoulder and let her know she wasn’t alone was strong.
“What now?” he asked, doing the next best thing he could think of, showing his support by deferring to her.
“Now we see if we can find a connection between the Lam sisters, Nadia and Sonia, and Dr. Pritchard.” She gestured to her friends scattered around the room. “And if you’re able to find the document, that’d be a good thing, too.”
He studied her, then gave her a smile and a wink. “On it.”
“So are we,” came a chorus of echoes from around the room.
CHAPTERTWELVE
Lily didn’t wantto admit it, but she was exhausted. It was close to three in the morning, and everyone except Darius had left long ago. She hadn’t been able to stop digging into the lives of the five people they were investigating, though. And poor Darius, he’d been diligently searching for the document Dr. Pritchard had printed but hadn’t found it yet. Rather than give up, though, he’d expanded his search to include all printers on the fourth floor. He’d narrowed down his search parameters by identifying the times Pritchard had been in the building, but the task was still an enormous one. And there was no guarantee he’d find anything at all.
Dragging her gaze from where it lingered on Darius, Devil refocused on the information in front of her. Cyn and Six had taken it upon themselves to do a deep background on Sonia and Nadia. So far, everything they’d found confirmed that they were “regular” women just living the lives they’d lived since they’d moved to Acton. Their social media accounts included a mix of memes, funny cat videos, and posts about their kids. Both women were Muslim, and there were a few spiritual posts as well, but none that raised any red flags. Cyn and Six had even checked out their families. Nothing pointed to any reason why they’d even know Dr. Pritchard, let alone why they would break into her lab.
Nora’s background on the Lam sisters wasn’t that different. They were both born, and still lived, in DC. Amy, the older sister, worked as a research assistant at one of the larger human rights organizations, and Tina worked for the Chinese Council. Their parents had immigrated thirty years earlier, and both were doctors. Nothing in the sisters’ lives gave the club any clue as to why they’d be in Boston collecting something from Dr. Pritchard. The only thing that sort of stood out with the Lam sisters was their lack of social media presence. They each only had one account on a platform that was almost exclusively used by those under thirty.
The long and short of it was, they had a lot of information now, but nothing that would actually help. They needed to know what was on that paper, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask Darius if he’d found anything. He’d been at his task for hours; if he’d found something, he would have let her know.
Raising her arms over her head, she stretched from side to side. Her movements caught Darius’s attention, and he looked up.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
She bobbed her head from side to side. “I don’t like not knowing what’s going on, but other than that, I’m fine. How are you?”
He smiled. “I don’t like not knowing what’s going on, but other than that, I’m fine,” he repeated. She smiled at his response, then lowered her arms.
“Do you need anything? Water? Coffee?” she offered.
