Page 75 of Philly
Rian shook his head. “No. He told me yesterday afternoon that he was heading to Seoul for a couple of meetings. But it’s possible he never left the country.”
“We’ll look into that,” Leo replied.
“Can you walk us through what you know?” Callie asked.
Rian met her gaze, the dark circles under his eyes making them appear an even brighter blue than they were.
He nodded. “It’s not as much as I should know. Christ, he’s bribing officials around the world, might even have been responsible for the bomb in Paris that Laura overheard him talking about, and I can’t findanythingthat’s concrete enough to nail him.”
“You sent us the emails,” Sabina pointed out, her matter-of-fact delivery probably doing more to assuage his frustration than any attempts at reassurance. “And the bank accounts have proven very helpful. We’re still pulling at the threads of the conversations you provided, but we’re hopeful there, too. When put together with the notes and information from Liza Lightfoot and our own work, it won’t be long before we have a case to drop in the FBI’s lap.”
“And the DOJ,” Leo added.
Rian looked to her, and she nodded.
He took a deep breath, then scraped his hands over his face and through his hair. “I do have one more thing.” He reachedinto his pocket and set a phone on the table. “I managed to clone his phone before he left yesterday. Joe sent both of us a picture of the three of you.” He nodded to her and Gabriel. “I knew it was only a matter of time before he did something drastic. And he’s a creature of habit when it comes to his trips. He has his assistant pack his bags, and a car picks him up at work. But before he leaves, he always showers and shaves in the bathroom attached to his office. I made a point to stick close to him, and when he got ready to leave yesterday, I cloned his phone.”
“We are monitoring his device already,” Leo said, almost apologetically.
“His primary device,” Rian said. “He has a second one. I didn’t mention it in the card I sent or the drop files I provided as I had no other information about it at the time—no number or carrier or anything. It’s the same make and model as his work phone, so I always assumed he just had the one. But I stopped by his house four months ago, he was on the phone, relaxing by his pool. When he finished the call, he set the device down, and before the screen went dark, I noticed the image. Although it’s the same as the one on his primary phone, the color was different. Both are calla lilies, but the one on his main phone is yellow, and the one I saw that day was orange.” He paused, then ran his hand through his hair again. “It seems like something I should have thought of earlier. That he’d have more than one phone.”
“Hindsight and all that,” Sabina said, dismissing his regret. “So, when he went to take his shower and shave, you cloned the secondary device?”
“When I figured out that he had two devices, I picked up an extra myself in case I had the chance?—”
“No one ever commented on you suddenly carrying two phones?” Callie asked.
He shrugged. “My assistant asked. I told her I needed to draw a line between personal and professional, so I’d picked up a personal phone. She didn’t seem to question it, and while she’s not a gossip, if anyone else mentioned it to her, she’d relay the story I gave her.” Callie nodded. “But when it came to actually cloning my dad’s second phone, the situation was never right,” he continued. “Not until yesterday. It wasn’t hard to figure out his code, his mother’s birthday. He hated her and using that date would be a perfect ‘fuck you’ every time he used it to do his dirty work. A childish one.” He ended the thought by lifting his hands in a “whatever” gesture.
“Have you looked through it?” Callie asked.
Rian shook his head. “I’m very good at business, but not tech. The cloning was as far as I got, thanks to YouTube. I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to tell if I logged on or opened files or if maybe he had one of those programs that would wipe the entire phone if I did something wrong.” His gaze lingered on the device. “I have no idea what you’ll find on there. Maybe nothing.”
“But maybe something,” Sabina said. “Ben will reach Vegas in about an hour,” Sabina said, referring to the operative Callie had seen her first time at HICC. The scary-looking one. “Callie and Philly, you can take his SUV and drive it back to Mystery Lake with the phone. We’d send the plane for you, but it’s doing another pickup today. And Ava can’t fly her helicopter for obvious reasons. The next commercial flight from Vegas isn’t until tonight. You’ll get here faster driving.”
She glanced at Gabriel, who shrugged. He didn’t seem to mind that she preferred driving, so a road trip was no hardship. Maybe he’d buy the snacks again.
“We’ll return our rental, then meet him back here,” Callie said. “But before we leave, what more can you tell us?” she asked Rian.
He spent the next thirty minutes recounting what Laura had overheard, how it confirmed his suspicions that something wasn’t right, then walked them through the information he’d sent them via the file drop link. Both she and Sabina asked the occasional question—mostly to clarify but also to get a sense of his thought process. By the time they wrapped up, Rian looked as if he’d aged a few years. Fatigue and disillusionment would do that to a person.
She and Gabriel said their goodbyes, then headed to the airport to drop the car off. An hour later, they returned to the hospital and grabbed the keys to the HICC SUV, a bag of snacks in hand. Ben didn’t say a word to either of them but did give them a nod before heading back inside to watch over Joe.
“Ready to head home?” she asked Gabriel. She paused, frowned, then smiled. She and Gabriel hadn’t talked about a future, but Mystery Lake was now home. She had a job she could do from there—one she liked. And Gabriel had set down his roots in the community.
“We have one more stop to make,” Gabriel replied as they walked toward the SUV.
“Where’s that?” she asked, hitting the Unlock button. Three cars up, a huge black Escalade with tinted windows beeped. The car seemed a bit of an overkill, but in Vegas, with the number of rich and famous who visited, it wasn’t even close to being the only one like it in the parking lot.
“Here,” Gabriel said, handing over his phone when they reached the car.
She took his device and glanced at the site on the screen—a local wedding chapel four miles away. Her heart climbed into her throat, and she froze.
“Calypso.”
She kept her eyes fixed on the screen.
“You have to look at me at some point, Callie,” Gabriel said. At the warm humor in his voice, breath flooded her lungs again. She hesitated before lifting her gaze to his. Their eyes held, a single suspended moment, then movement pulled her attention to his hands and the small box he held. Inside sat a diamond bezel set in platinum surrounded by several smaller ones in the shape of a kite. Next to it were two platinum bands, one shaped to fit around the point of the engagement ring and the other a simple thick band.
