Laurel pulled her gun from her bag. “We start at the school. I want to talk to every coach, every player, every janitor who’s clocked in this week. Someone had to have seen a strange face.”
“I’ve got uniforms securing the scene and a mobile command post setting up in the parking lot,” Huck added. “Drone support’s airborne by now. K9 en route, and Aeneas and I will also search.”
“Good. We’ll run parallel,” Laurel said, moving fast now. “You coordinate field ops. I’ll start with staff interviews. Pull class rosters, visitor logs, lunch vendors, field maintenance. Anyone who had reason to be near that locker room today.”
Huck turned. “Traffic cameras?”
“I’m calling cyber on the way. I want every plate that passed the lot in the last two hours.” Laurel paused at the door and glanced back at Kate, who sat frozen in the chair, face pale, fingers gripping the armrests like they were the only thing keeping her upright. “I’ll bring her back.”
Kate leaped up. “I’m coming with you. I have to.”
“Understood,” Laurel said. “Huck, have Ena get the other two girls and bring them here. Just in case.” She pulled her phone out and called the Seattle field office.
Norrs instantly answered, and she gave him the information. “I need you to get Bertra Yannish and John Fitz from Oakridge Solutions and bring them here. They might’ve figured out Viv was investigating them earlier. This is too much of a coincidence. Take them from their homes. Fast.”
The office smelled like burned coffee.
Laurel chugged up the stairs at six a.m., her clothes stiff from dried sweat and mud, her brain thick with exhaustion that had long since turned into something brittle. She hadn’t slept. None of them had. She tossed her jacket over the back of Kate’s empty chair and took several deep breaths before heading back to the conference room.
They’d been out all night.
Interviews. Field checks. Surveillance footage. They’d talked to every coach, every teammate, two janitors, the vending machine guy, and a substitute teacher who claimed he didn’t know practice had been happening at all. Laurel had chased leads through parking lots, crawled under bleachers, and reviewed hours of low-res surveillance from four different school-facing businesses.
One camera, angled badly over a loading dock behind a used bookstore, had caught a man walking past the back of the field around 4:53 p.m.
Hood up. Ball cap low. Face turned from the lens every time.
She’d watched it seven times and still couldn’t identify him.
The Seattle FBI Field Office was currently searching Oakridge Solutions, and she trusted that Agent Norrs had sent the right agents to do the job.
She pressed her face with both hands, hard enough to see stars. Her head pounded behind her eyes. Her mouth tasted like metal, and fear made her skin tingle. Where was Viv? They needed to find a lab that might not exist.
Kate was home, locked in with her two remaining girls and a rotating pair of deputies outside the door. Huck had taken over command for the morning, splitting personnel into new search zones. Still nothing. No calls. No demands. No Viv.
Just a sixteen-year-old girl somewhere out there in the dark with a possible attack coming.
Gathering herself, Laurel strode down the hallway and stopped at the conference room, where two broad male Seattle FBI agents with buzz cuts and sharp eyes took point with Dr. Bertra Yannish sitting across the table, scrolling on her phone. Apparently they’d allowed her to get dressed because she wore jeans and a light purple sweater with her blond hair up in a ponytail.
She looked up. “This is an outrage. I was interviewed by a bulldog of an FBI agent for two hours. I shouldn’t still be here.”
Norrs had questioned her and then headed out to help with the search after hitting a stone wall, as he’d put it over the phone. Laurel pulled out a chair and sat. “Where is your other lab? Speak now, or you’ll go to prison for the rest of your life.”
Bertra’s eyes narrowed. “What lab?”
“Don’t lie to me. You know Viv heard you talk about it, and now you’ve orchestrated her kidnapping. Where is John Fitz, anyway?” Apparently he hadn’t been at home or the office, and he lived alone. His phone hadn’t pinged a location either. So it must be off.
“I have no idea.” Bertra tapped her nails on the glass. Nervousness? Maybe.
“Excuse me.” Henry Vexler strode inside, rubbing his hands together as if he’d just washed them. Had he been in the bathroom? “You can’t interview my client without me.” He didn’t sit.
Bertra smiled, her lipstick flawless, her eyes sharp enough to cut through wire. “I called my attorney, of course. I’m not happy I’m paying him nine hundred dollars an hour to sit here.” She leaned slightly toward Laurel, voice low and full of weaponized calm. “I have no idea where Viv is, and I’d tell you if I did.”
Laurel didn’t blink. “Where’s Fitz?”
Bertra gave a casual shrug, like she was bored already. “How in the hell would I know? It’s after hours and I don’t expect to see him until later today. In the office. Where we work.”
Beside her, Vexler in his expensive suit, polished shoes, and the constant air of courtroom smugness, sighed with exaggerated patience. “Agent Snow, we’re very sorry there’s a missing girl, but my client doesn’t know anything about the situation. You have zero reason to hold her. She’s not a suspect or a witness. So either stop this right now or I’ll file a motion, and it’ll be public. Very.”
