Page 67 of Devil
“Then I don’t need to see it. They all look the same. Yours, on the other, I very much want to see, but not until tonight. A man has to have something to look forward to.”
“We stop the attack on the president, you’ll have more than a little something to look forward to,” she shot back.
“And that is exactly why I didn’t stay last night,” Chad said, walking into the kitchen from the mudroom. He paused and eyed the bags Lily still held. “You need a hand with those?” She shook her head, then jogged upstairs, presumably to hang them in the closet.
“Coffee?” Darius asked.
Chad nodded and took a seat at the table. “Sorry this took a while. Sabina, my tech resource, started the search last night but discovered it was a little more complex than just hacking into emails.” He tossed a file on the table, though Darius had risen to get him some coffee.
“Cream or sugar?”
“Both, please,” Chad answered.
Darius mixed the brew, then set it on the table as he took a seat. Pulling the file in front of him as Lily came down the stairs, he opened it.
“Is this what your IT girlfriend found?” Lily asked.
Chad glared at her but said nothing as he took a sip of coffee. Darius bumped her with his shoulder. “Be nice,” he said.
“I’m always nice,” she shot back. He couldn’t help it, an eyebrow winged up. She held his gaze, then after a beat snorted. Well, not quite snorted, since that wasn’t really her style, but it was close. “Okay, okay, I’m not always nice, but I can be. What do we have here?”
There were at least a hundred pages of documents, and he started to thumb through them, handing each to Lily as he finished. After about twelve pages, he paused. “Is there a summary somewhere in here?”
Chad was staring out the front window, drinking his coffee. It was almost one in the afternoon, and they had six hours to figure out how, or if, the president was going to be targeted at the dinner.
A lot of information had come in since the night before. Chad had confirmed that the withdrawal dates from Highborn’s accounts could line up to the dates Pritchard had visited the post office. Cyn had tracked down the man with the fedora that Darius had spotted with Highborn. It turned out the man was none other than the agent’s father. And Six and Nora had also confirmed that Highborn’s withdrawals had been in person, although they hadn’t once gotten a good look at his face on any of the CCTV. He’d likely known the cameras were there—it certainly wasn’t a secret. But all they’d been able to make out was him in jeans and either a button-down or, as the weather got colder, a boxy black jacket and a baseball cap.
“Here’s the summary,” Chad said, his voice flat with fatigue, and Darius wondered if the man had slept. “Tina Lam and Sonia Trimble met at a conference last year in Cambridge. The topic of the symposium was ‘Current Events in China’ and it had speakers from all the big-name universities you’d expect. They struck up a conversation via email but that seemed to stop earlier this year.”
“Did they stop talking altogether or move to a different forum?” Lily asked.
Chad gave her a look that told her to be patient. “Buried in an email from Tina to Sonia was a phone number. When Sabina traced that number, she discovered it was a burner and that it had only received calls from two numbers—both of which are also burners. Using that data, she triangulated the numbers and, although she doesn’t have 100 percent proof, there’s evidence that Sonia is the owner of one of those numbers.”
A zing of adrenaline shot through Darius. They were finally onto something. “Okay, so we have a connection between Sonia and Nadia and the Lam sisters. What about with Pritchard?”
Chad shook his head. “Let’s finish with Tina before moving on to Pritchard,” he said. “Remember I mentioned two numbers on Tina’s phone?” he asked, and they nodded. “Sabina was also able to triangulate locations for the second number, but she can’t tie it to a person the way she could with Sonia. With Tina and Sonia, she knew who she was looking for, so could compare the triangulation data with their movements to make the connection.”
“But because she doesn’t know who might own the second phone, she has no movement data to link it to,” Lily said.
Chad nodded.
“What location did she narrow it down to?” Darius asked.
Chad smiled. “DC.”
“Interesting,” Lily said.
“I thought so,” Chad replied.
“But since it’s here in DC, it’s probably not Pritchard,” Darius said. “Maybe Highborn or Crawford?”
Chad shrugged. “Maybe, but unless the phone gets turned on and we can trace it, we won’t know who in the city has been using it. Although, back to Pritchard, the phone with the unknown DC ownerwasused to call her home number in upstate New York, but only three times.”
Lily’s eyes narrowed. “Do we have any idea if Pritchard was connected to Sonia, Nadia, the Lam sisters or, for that matter, Highborn or Crawford?” she asked.
Chad took a sip of his drink, then set the mug down. “Funny you should ask. Have a look at this.” He reached over and thumbed through the papers until he found what he wanted, then pulling it out, he set it in front of them. He and Lily scanned the document.
Almost at the same time, they each jolted back. “Highborn and Pritchard were classmates at Yale,” Lily said. “Why didn’t we know that?”
