“Pretty close.” She nodded.
I laid out the other sketches beside the first. “Which one of these is the most accurate?”
“It was only the one time I saw him, but his eyes were more like that one.” She pointed at the third sketch. “The rest of his face is like the first.”
“And these marks?” Shooter pointed at a dark area on the sketch.
“I dunno,” Amber said. “A cut, maybe?”
“You said Mavreen met him when she worked at a medical clinic?” I looked to Shooter. “We have her sister’s work history, right?”
Shooter pulled out her laptop. “Was this at Alantay Medical Group?”
“Yeah, exactly.” Amber nodded.
“That’s 2019, Gardner,” Shooter said to me. “She stops working there in December. Between then and that call is four months.”
My mind populated the dates we knew onto a timeline. If what Amber was saying was accurate, it meant that the phone call and Mavreen’s death happened around April 2020.
Shooter squinted at me, her mind clocking something on my face.
“What else did your sister tell you?” I asked. “They go anywhere? Do things together?”
“Yeah,” Amber said, picking out a new cigarette and tapping the end against her leg. “Mavreen got her passport. They were going somewhere.”
“Good,” I said, knowing we could check where Mavreen had traveled if she had left the country. “And the number your sister called you from? You could see it on your phone?”
She nodded. “But like I said, she called me from different numbers. All the time.”
“You ever see the same one twice?”
“Couple times. That’s how I called it back—that last time when he threatened me.”
“What about after you got here?” Shooter asked.
“I never turned on that phone again. I called the neighbor from my old apartment from the office phone here. She said some guy came around, looking for me, the same afternoon I applied for this job. Girl at my old place of work told me the same thing. Same day.”
“You still have that phone?” I asked.
She nodded, looking wary. “I’ve got it. You want me to call the number?”
“We want you to give it to us,” I said. “And, Amber, have you told anyone else this story? About Mavreen?”
“No.” She shook her head.
“No one at all?” Shooter asked again.
“No one.”
“Good,” I said. “You’re going to continue being Mavreen. For your own safety. The only people who know you’re not are Agent Harris and me. Now please bring us that phone.”
Amber locked up the office, placing a sign in the window that said she’d be back soon. Then she punched in a code at the gate and walked toward the back of the property, presumably to the tiny house she’d mentioned staying in.
“What was I missing back there?” Shooter asked once she was gone.
“What do you mean?”
She motioned at my head. “I saw the supercomputer going. When she said those dates.”
