I paced restlessly outside the interrogation room, one part of me listening to the ongoing questioning while the other half of me worried about Paul being in the front line of battle. I was ninety-nine percent sure he was immortal, but so was Zeus, and the latter was an Olympian to boot. The chance of an immortal beating an Olympian god was one in a million, and Cronos knew how much I hated such odds.
Think, Blair. Think!
Sirens were already being questioned. Amanda was still missing. Her room and belongings had been thoroughly swept for evidence, and our agents had been unable to produce a single new lead from them.
So what else? What else can I do? What else was missing? What could Amanda have used that wouldn’t be affected by both the retroactive camouflage spell and the potion?
It was unlikely something Amanda owned herself so maybe –
Oh.
I fumbled for my phone and quickly scrolled down until I found the transcript Lana had sent me of the Facebook chat she had hacked into. Someone had mentioned about Amanda using another siren’s phone...
Bingo!
It was Sonja, Amanda’s roommate.
I hurried to tech support, heart beating madly as I thought of what I could find. People rounded up for questioning weren’t allowed to bring inside any electronic device or sharp object inside the interrogation room, and any prohibited items were immediately handed over to tech support for temporary custody.
Please let this be it, Holy One. Please!
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw a familiar face behind the counter. “Hey Greg.”
The nineteen-year-old intern beamed. “Blair, hi.”
“You know about the sirens we brought over for questioning?”
“Ah, yes. Do you need anything for evidence?”
“Umm, yes.” I couldn’t quite meet the younger boy’s gaze as I uttered the lie, but I reminded myself that desperate straits called for desperate measures. “I need the mobile phone of Sonja Patel.”
“Sure thing. Be back in a sec.”
I tried not to bite my nails as I watched Greg disappear into the storage room. Behind me, I heard the doors open, and a familiar voice ask in surprise, “Blair? What are you doing here?”
It was Lana.
Greg came back with Sonja’s phone in an evidence bag just as Lana reached my side. I saw her eyes widen, and I shot her a warning look when she started to speak. Turning back to Greg, I said quickly, “You’re a huge help. Thanks.” I swiped the bag out of his hand and dragged Lana with me towards her cubicle.
“What are you doing?” Lana asked under her breath.
“It’s my turn to have a hunch.”
Lana’s eyes widened when she saw me take the phone out of the evidence bag with my bare hands. “Blair! You don’t have any gloves!”
“We don’t have any time for that,” I muttered even I flinched inside. Mishandling evidence went against every work principle I had, but I had no choice. “Remember the Facebook chat you hacked into? This is the phone mentioned in it, the one Amanda liked to borrow.”
Lana’s face cleared, and I knew right away she understood what I was asking her to do. “On it.” She gave me a phone cable. “I need you to plug it in first. Fingerprints on that phone’s already one too many.”
Lana’s monitor lit up the moment I plugged Sonja’s phone in, and the other girl’s fingers flew over the keyboard as she ran a search on the phone’s contents, waiting for something – anything – to stand out. Ten minutes later, we found ourselves staring at a Craigslist ad.
$50,000 for a beautiful, adventurous woman who wants to turn her life around!
EVEN THE TIMELINE MATCHED, with the ad posting taken down just two days before Zeus was poisoned.
“Let me use reverse lookup for this,” Lana muttered.
“English please?”
