It wasn’t too late to save a life—but if she didn’t hurry, it would be.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I’ve got it,” Laura said, tapping impatiently on her phone screen to open the email. “Hold on—here we go.”
“What does it say?” Nate asked, dragging his wheeled office chair across to her. Laura pulled back quickly before their heads could bump, shifting in her seat to provide an excuse for the sudden movement.
“There’s a number that called her right before she called nine-one-one,” Laura said, swiping across the file to zoom in. “It looks as though it connected. That’s a shame, I guess. No answering machine message.”
“It’s still a lead, though. Let me see,” Nate said, reaching to take the phone out of her hands.
Laura didn’t have time to react. His hand brushed against hers before she could stop it, and the veil of death fell over her again, dampening everything for a moment. She shivered and tried to remember how to breathe. As quickly as it happened, it was gone, Nate holding the phone up as he typed out the number into a search bar on the computer.
Laura swallowed on her dry throat, watching him work. He was focused on the screen, frowning as he pulled up the results. He was so—big. So full of life. So vibrant. How could he be under the shadow of death?
“No listed results online,” Nate said, shrugging. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“Try and give it a trace,” Laura said. “I’m just going to call back to HQ. I can’t help but wonder whether the first victim had a call as well, you know?”
“It’s worth a look.” Nate nodded. “Hey, if we don’t do it now, we’ll only have to do it in a few days when we’re trying to trace every single person either of them ever talked to.”
Laura groaned as the line began to ring. “Don’t say that,” she said. “I don’t want to still be at a dead end with this in a few days.”
Nate only chuckled, returning his attention to his computer. He brought up an FBI portal and logged in, his fingers running easily over the familiar keys of his password, and began inputting the data.
Laura’s attention was taken away when the call was answered, and she spoke directly to the team back in DC who would be able to request the phone records.
“Did you find anything?” Laura asked as she ended the call, looking back over at Nate.
He nodded, tapping his fingers against the desk. “Sort of. It’s not good news. As far as we can trace, the number belongs to a burner phone.”
Laura sighed. She wished burner phones weren’t a thing. Cheap, no-contract handsets you could buy at any convenience store and load with a calling card instead of having to sign your name to something. Virtually untraceable, unless you got really lucky. “I’ve got the other phone records coming shortly. The phone company didn’t put up a fight, for once.”
Nate smirked. “Well, there’s one silver lining. Let me think about this phone thing. Maybe there’s a way…”
Laura didn’t press him as he trailed off into silence, his head cocked to one side. Nate was good with technology. Just like he didn’t question her so-called intuition, she knew better than to interfere when it came to tech.
A buzz in her hand drew her attention to her phone, and the incoming email. She opened it hurriedly, checking the attachment. It was a report from the same phone company—given that the two victims lived in the same area, that wasn’t a surprise.
Laura spun around to look at their investigation board, to what Nate had written about the estimated time of death of the first victim. Then she checked the report again. And she checked it a third time, just because it was almost too good to be true.
“Nate,” she said. “There’s another call. To Laura Carlisle, right around the time of her death.”
Nate’s head snapped up. “Tell me the number.”
She rattled it off as he typed, leaning forward over his keyboard as the details came up.
“Same deal,” he said. “Burner phone. Same model, different phone. Both of them were activated on the day of the killing and have now been marked as inactive.”
“So, they were bought just for this one call,” Laura said. “That together with them being untraceable—it’s got to be the killer, right?”
“Yeah,” Nate said, though he still sounded thoughtful. Like he had something else on his mind.
“What?” Laura prompted, seeing that he didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
“Well, this type of phone,” he said, slowly. “I’ve come across it before. I’m sure I saw it in a case before you and I partnered up. This model needs to be activated with a unique serial number before it can make calls out.”
“So… does that mean it’s traceable?” Laura asked, hope springing to life.