“Lawrence was already working at a financial firm in London, trading bonds and buying up real estate, even dabbling in things like antiquities, artwork, jewelry, that sort of thing. He took over his step-sister’s education and made sure she knew everything he needed her to know.
“The problem is that little sister decided to betray her big brother. She had something, or knew of something, that he wanted and unfortunately for Priscilla, she hinted that her work partner was the one possessing it.
“We don’t have all the pieces or clues yet but my gut tells me that she was not only willing to trade her life for River’s, but also to give up Priscilla to him to be on even ground with step-brother again. She was completely prepared to turn him over but the brother was pissed that you weren’t there when she told him. Again, that’s just a guess.”
“It feels like a lot more than a guess,” frowned Priscilla. “How would you know all that?”
“Brains and beauty. That’s how we prefer the women in our family,” smiled Hiro. “Traffic cameras. We found Lawrence Morris on multiple traffic cameras leading straight to Natalia’s. As we’ve said, much of the furniture in the house was antique, specifically English antiques. The paintings were from famous British painters of the 17thand 18thcentury and the china was a well-known British pattern and manufacturer.”
“Well, that seems pretty damning, does it?” frowned Priscilla.
“It is damning but we have the problem of finding big brother now. If he was willing to kill his step-sister for something, and part of that ‘something’ was probably me, we need to find out why,” said River. “I have a strong suspicion that part of this will be to get even for his father’s death. Also, we have to find whatever it is she told him you have.”
“I don’t have anything of hers,” said Priscilla shaking her head.
“Wait a minute,” said Patrick. “Your father. Your father gave us information to track down Lincoln Morris. It was one of the cases he was working with the bureau when we met.”
“H-he did? He gave you that information? I didn’t know,” she whispered to herself.
“There wasn’t any reason for you to know but that means he would have had a file on Morris,” said Christopher.
“We contacted the interim deputy director at the bureau and he said the files have been stored in a warehouse somewhere in Virginia. They were going to send an agent out there today but I don’t think they’re going to find anything,” said Gator.
“Why not?” asked Priscilla.
“Because what we know of your father is that he was a smart man. Anything that important, he wouldn’t have stored in the bureaus storage units,” said Ham. “Did he give you any files? Maybe a drive or something?”
“I have a few boxes of items in my apartment but the man on the phone the other day, I assume Morris, said he searched my house,” said Priscilla.
“Which means your father would have put it somewhere not so obvious,” said River. “Maybe inside a jewelry box or a picture frame.”
“No, he wouldn’t…”
She paced the front of the room, fingering the locket around her neck. It had been a gift from her father on her sixteenth birthday. She tried to open it many times to put a photo inside but it was stuck.
“Priscilla?” called River. She looked down at the locket and then back up at Hiro and AJ.
“Just how small could a drive be?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “I’ve been wearing that necklace for fourteen years. I tried to get it open to put a photo of him inside it but it would never open.”
“He had it sealed shut,” said Hiro using the small tools of a jeweler to pry it open. “This could bend it but we’ll have it repaired for you.”
“It’s okay. If something is in there, I want to know what it is,” she said watching him.
“There,” whispered Hiro. He lifted a pair of tweezers with a tiny flat object between the pinschers. It wasn’t even a centimeter square.
“Is that a drive? Can you actually put information on that?” she asked.
“You can put a lot of information on that,” said AJ. “You’d be surprised. I think your father was sending you a message as well. The drive, when under the microscope, has our name on it. G.R.I.P.”
“My eyes aren’t that good,” smirked Patrick. AJ slid it beneath a magnifier and showed the image on the screen. “I’ll be damned.”
“What’s on it?” asked Priscilla. “What is so damn important that he risked my life putting it around my neck and that Natalia was willing to allow someone to kill me, and River for it.”
“It’s encoded,” said AJ. “Give us a little while to decode it and we’ll pull everything off it. For now, we sit tight.”
