That was true enough, Lennox thought. This time was different though. This time, the person in trouble was a woman whom he cared about. The thought that they might fail and she could be in danger because of it suddenly made it hard to breathe.
Before he could say anything, the doorbell rang. Probably Wes and Kyla. Lennox set his mug on the counter and went to let them in.
“Talia, this is Wes, another one of my Teammates, and his girlfriend, Kyla,” Lennox introduced. “She works for Naval Intelligence and is the one we’re hoping can help figure out what happened with Anna.”
Wes and Kyla shook hands with Talia, who seemed to be getting a little overwhelmed with all the help showing up at 0600 hours in the morning.
“I remember seeing the two of you at the party at the Rybak manor a few weeks ago, but we didn’t get a chance to talk,” Talia said.
Kyla smiled. “You looked like you had your hands full with Maria and all her friends. That many kids would terrify me.”
Talia laughed. “You get used to it.”
While Wes got himself and Kyla coffee, she pulled her laptop out of the messenger bag on her shoulder and set it on the counter.
“Colt already told me what happened last night as well as about the people talking to Anna’s employer and some of the others,” Kyla said, glancing at Talia as her computer booted up. “There’s definitely something fishy going on, especially whenyou consider the fact that Detective Green’s report—which I pulled off the SDPD database—didn’t include anything about your suspicions. He wrote it up as a simple attempted mugging.”
Talia made a face. “I knew he was giving me the brush-off last night, dammit.”
“I would have spent more time digging into Green, but I wanted to focus on your friend, Anna, instead,” Kyla said, pausing to thank Wes as he placed a mug of coffee on the counter beside her before taking a sip. “The first thing I did was see if someone had bought a plane ticket for your friend.” She started pulling up various documents and web pages on her laptop as she spoke. “It didn’t take long to find out that John Fredrickson had indeed purchased a ticket from San Diego to Santa Cruz, with a Delta flight connecting to a Columbian airline called Avianca in Bogota. It wasn’t difficult after that to confirm that Anna was on the flight.”
Talia’s beautiful eyes filled with disbelief as she let out a heavy sigh. “I can’t believe it. Anna did go back home without telling me.”
“Not necessarily,” Kyla said without looking up from her computer. “Just because someone was in Anna’s seat doesn’t mean it was her. That’s where you come in.”
As Lennox and the other guys crowded around Kyla with Talia, she started opening multiple video clips that looked like they were from various cameras in the San Diego International Airport.
“Does being in Naval Intelligence get you access to the airport cameras?” Talia asked curiously, leaning forward to look at the images arrayed in front of her.
“No, but I’ve never let something like that stop me before,” Kyla said casually. “So, this first clip correlates to the time frame Anna supposedly checked in for the flight, at least according toDelta Airlines’ computer system. I need you to look at the people at the counter and see if you recognize any of them.”
Talia leaned closer to the monitor, and Lennox heard her take a breath when a short woman with dark hair in a pony-tail stepped up to the counter.
“That could be her,” Talia murmured, tilting her head to the side as if that would help give her a better angle. “The hair is right. And the height too. Even the clothes look like something Anna owns. But I can’t see her face enough to know for sure.”
Lennox frowned. “Is it just me or is that woman purposely keeping her face down so the camera behind the counter can’t get a clear shot?”
“It sure seems that way,” Darwin agreed. “She’s being pretty blatant too. Kyla, do you have any other shots of this woman?”
Kyla didn’t answer, instead tapping on the laptop’s mouse pad. “This is a shot in the international concourse outside the bookstore where Anna’s credit card was used to buy a romance novel, a bottle of water, and a snack bar.”
“And you’re sure it’s Anna’s credit card?” Colt asked.
“It’s hers. No doubt about it,” Kyla said.
On the laptop, the video showed the same dark-haired woman walking out of the airport bookstore rolling a small carry-on bag. But once again, it was impossible to see her face.
Darwin folded his arms. “Either this woman is extremely lucky or she knows exactly where every camera in the airport is positioned.”
Lennox was thinking the same thing.
“This is the shot from the jetway as Anna’s ticket was scanned,” Kyla said, clicking to yet another video clip. “It’s the last shot I can connect directly to her.”
Lennox was about to declare the clip another failure until the woman leaned forward to tuck her ticket stub into the frontpocket of her roll-on bag. When she stood up, her face was partially obscured by her pony-tail, but then she brushed it back just a little, revealing her face to the jetway camera for a split second.
“Can you go back and freeze the image right there?” Lennox asked urgently. “Just as she brushed her hair back.”
Kyla played around with the footage for a few seconds until she froze it right where Lennox requested. Lennox stared at the image then looked at Talia. “Is it her?”
