“How long?” I ask.
“Two minutes,” the supervisor says. He has the street feed up already. We watch the van glide into traffic, then disappear between a bus and a delivery truck before the camera loses it.
“Another angle,” Alex says.
We shuffle through more feeds. The van doesn’t show again. Whoever did this knows where the other cameras are.
The supervisor rewinds on his own, unprompted. “You’ll want to see this.”
It’s a new angle, a different lane of the garage. A pearl-colored coupe eases out after the van with a vanity plate I’ve seen more than once.
Raquel.
The frame is grainy, but the flare of a familiar hood ornament and the custom rims are enough to confirm it’s her. She idles, lets the van clear the ramp, then slides out. The time stamp shows it all happened within three minutes.
Alex exhales through his teeth. “That’s her car.”
“Yes, it is.”
We watch the coupe merge onto the street, signal properly, and vanish in the same direction as the van. A sharp tension noses in around the edges of the room
“Full pull on that garage,” I say to the supervisor. “Every camera. Copy to this drive.” I drop a flash drive on the table. “We’ll have a subpoena within the hour if you need one.”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t see anything.” He plugs the drive in and starts copying.
Alex looks at me. We don’t need to say out loud what this means. It’s personal. It’s not just Ivan. It’s Raquel’s vanity and ugly appetite. It is betrayal with fresh lipstick.
“Raquel and Ivan,” Alex mutters. “We had an inkling. Now we have proof.”
“We have enough,” I say. “And if this tie goes where I think it goes, your bloodline is in it.”
“That’s why I’m here,” he replies. “Keep me in the loop. Don’t let me stand alone with anything tied to him.”
I nod. “You know I won’t.”
The drive finishes copying and I take it. We step out into the hall again, where the fluorescent bleaches the color out of passing faces. No one here knows that a price was just put on the wrong woman.
“Where do you want me?” Alex asks.
“Back on the van,” I say. “Street cams within a mile. Construction sites. Any private buildings that point east. Run plate readers for the next hour on all the edges. It won’t be legit, but a shadow will show.”
He is calling it in before I finish speaking.
“I’ll check the hospital garage exit in person,” he says. “If they staged a second car, a foot soldier may have seen something and didn’t know it mattered.”
“Do it.”
As we pass the lobby, I pause. I promised Clara I would bring Cassandra home. I mean to keep that promise.
“Damien.” Alex holds up his phone, screen toward me. It’s a text from one of our street crews. An image of a van the right color and model crossing an intersection two neighborhoods away.
“Breadcrumbs,” he says.
“Let’s follow them.”
He peels off, already in motion. He knows which line to walk and how to stay under the radar. For now, I trust him, though I will verify every step as we go.
I call Mina. She answers on the second ring. “Tell me something useful,” she says.
