“This afternoon, it’s worse.” She dropped her backpack to the floor. “I forgot just how strenuous that crap is. But I gritted my teeth and tried to make it look like a smile so everyone would think I was Miss Mary Sunshine and wouldn’t bitch when I told them I was going on the Fast Reaction Roster to head out with the next team.” She reached behind her head and started pulling bobby pins from her bun. “So that’s me, what happened here?”
Rylee listened carefully as Neesa walked her through her meeting with Jasper, Dakota, and Tank. “Gorgeous dog.”
“Accurate, though?”
“They had a machine, and when Tank alerted, they tested the notes. So I don’t know if he found them all, but I do know that every alert was accurate.”
“We need everything in the safe to go through a machine to be tested, though, don’t we? To be extra sure?”
“We do. Since the Secret Service found evidence, they’re sending someone over tomorrow with a faster machine. Their special agent will be in the vault with Erica. We have the video recording anyway, but she’ll monitor everything. After that’s done, Erica will make sure we have all the serial numbers properly documented, counted, and banded. Theywere surprised that we kept that much cash in our vault and wondered why we had so much cash on hand.”
“You explained the number of our teams, that we serve all over the world, and the length of time they’re often on site without a banking system, with major expenses?”
“I did.”
“All right. I’m going back to my office to look over our cash protocols and see if I can’t find some glaring hole that this bugger is sneaking into. I mean, we video-record every aspect of our missions. Did you mention to them that we have storage tent surveillance and body cam from all the missions on file?”
“It didn’t occur to me since I’m the numbers side of things.” Neesa scooped up her phone. “Can you sit for a second while I try to get Jasper on the line before he leaves for the day?”
Rylee slid down in the seat until the back cradled her neck, pressing into the space that was starting to feel like a headache.
“Jasper? Neesa Meesang here. I’d like to put you on speaker phone. I have my co-director with me, and she mentioned a resource that I hadn’t considered.”
After a moment of silence, with permission, Neesa tapped the speaker feature and laid her phone on the desk.
“Rylee Jones, Jasper Lee.” Neesa introduced the two.
“Glad to meet you,” Jasper said. “So what have you got?”
“Rylee here. On missions, we use videotapes for security surveillance, and our responders wear bodycams. We maintain a library of the footage for ten years.”
“Interesting.” Jasper’s cogs were obviously whirring. “This is for security reasons?”
“Rylee. For many reasons, including the risk of being sued. We need to be good stewards of the money people donate and not hand out millions in legal battles. Equally importantly, responders are hard-driven men and women. They will run themselves into the ground trying to save lives unless we, bydirective, tell them to stand down for eight hours of sleep and two hours of rest during the day. So movement is clocked. It seems a bit ‘big brother,’ but it has turned out to be necessary.”
“Neesa here. We have footage of everyone who would have contacted our teams and all movement in our storage area, which is usually on site.”
“A tent of some sort?” Jasper asked.
“Neesa. Yes, a refugee tent.”
“The tape is interesting,” Jasper said, “but we simply don’t have the manpower to go through that volume of data. By telling me about this, I’m assuming you believe there might be a common face that needs to be identified?”
“Rylee here. In my mind, it would have to be a known person. Someone that one of our people would say, ‘Hey, can you sit here with the packs for ten minutes so I can go find the latrine. Or even take over a stint. So, for example, if they set up their area next to ours, they could say, ‘I’ll watch both if you want to get going.’ It’s the only thing I can think of.”
“Hailey Sterling and Iniquus,” Rylee whispered toward Neesa.
Neesa stilled and then nodded. “Neesa here. I can’t offer this as a solution, but I can reach out and ask.” She tapped the desk in thought. “I don’t know how big of an ask this is.” She looked out the window, obviously processing her thoughts. “It would mean widening the circle of your investigation. Surely, you know of the security company called Iniquus?”
“I do,” Jasper said.
“They have a supercomputer that isn’t connected to outside sources. This means that all the data was entered into their system purposefully, therefore it is trustworthy and uncorrupted.”
“Interesting.” Jasper’s voice told Rylee he wasn’t sure where Neesa was going with this.
“Neesa here. The WorldCares family and the Iniquus family have, since Iniquus’s inception, worked at many of the same mission sites. Two of those events led to marriages between our specialists and Iniquus operatives. We’re a family of sorts. So, with your okay, I thought I might reach out to one of our alums who now works over there and see if Iniquus would be willing to process the footage.”
“I don’t see that as a problem. We’d appreciate any data that narrows the playing field.”
