Elvis gave a curt nod. “Yeah. But she told me she wasn’t who I thought she was.”
“What does that mean?” Levi asked. “She’s not who she says she is? You were wrong, but pursued it anyway?”
Elvis glanced over at Hawk, letting out a slow breath. “I thought she was someone I knew in high school.” He paused, his stomach churning. “Someone I was supposed to marry.”
The room grew quiet as everyone stared at him. Blaze’s eyes went wide as Hawk slipped his hands into his pockets, lips pressed into a thin line. Levi simply shook his head, a snarl twisting his lips.
“And you didn’t think to tell the rest of us about this?” he asked. “Dammit, Bobby, I get that for you this was personal, but for us, it’s a job. What if this woman finds out that you’ve asked Corey to run a search on her? That could call all kinds of trouble down on us.”
“Well, that’s the funny thing,” Blaze said, moving over to where several plates sat atop a small circular table. “How come you all get room service?”
Elvis stared at the table for a moment, confused. Apparently, someone had thought to order breakfast for everyone in the midst of the chaos.
“Anyway.” Blaze snatched up a sausage link before turning back around. “For anyone to know that I ran a search on Delaney Rhodes or Julia Moretti?—”
“Wait,” Levi cut in. “Who’s Julia Moretti? And what does she have to do with this?” He bounced his gaze back and forth between the two of them.
Blaze just waited for Elvis to answer the man.
“She’s the woman I thought Delaney was. I just didn’t know why she would have changed her name.” He pointed to Blaze. “Yesterday morning, when I first saw her in the casino, I asked Blaze to do a web search on her.”
“But I came up empty,” Blaze said, shrugging. “Like nonexistent shortly after her sixteenth birthday.”
“Then last night,” Elvis continued, “I asked him to do another search for me, this one on Delaney Rhodes, because I was still sure they were the same person. I can’t forget her face. Or her voice.”
Levi glanced at them both once more. “So you’re thinking what? WIT-SEC? Her family simply decided to move on somewhere else? Wasn’t there anything in the news to explain what happened or point you in the right direction?”
“Wouldn’t explain the lack of a footprint after she left.” Blaze said. “The entire family just… POOFED.”
“If it’s WIT-SEC, she has a pretty high-profile career,” Taylor said. He sat in a chair at the table, scooping scrambled eggs into his mouth as the others talked, apparently not as troubledas Levi. “She would’ve wanted to keep a lower profile, I would think.”
Blaze turned toward the man. “She did as much as she could. Fake profile photos. Never in front of a camera or interview.”
Elvis scoffed. “Julia was always an obstinate, stubborn woman, even back then. She would have found a way to get what she wanted.”
“So,” Blaze said, drawing their attention back to him. “Turns out there were some alarms placed on those searches.”
Elvis felt his stomach sink. “I’m sorry? What?”
Blaze snatched up another sausage link and moved to the monitor. Taking Colin’s seat, he pulled up a screen and pointed. “When I searched Delaney’s current ID, it tripped a passive alarm. Nothing loud. Just a ping. Like someone was monitoring for her name to be queried.”
“Feds?” Elvis asked.
“Would make the most sense if our theory of WIT-SEC is correct,” Blaze told him. “But it made me curious, so I ran a second pass under the name Julia Moretti to see if the same thing happened. It did, but this time I noticed two pings.”
“Two?” Colin echoed, arms folded over his chest.
Blaze nodded. “First one matches the one on Delaney, so we can surmise those were the marshals. Standard for Witness Protection. But the second?” He shook his head. “It’s not federal. It’s not any known agency actually. And the encryption? Looks military grade, but from the private sector.”
Elvis’s gut twisted. “Someone else is watching for Julia Moretti to resurface, which can’t be anyone good.”
“My guess would be it’s the person her family is hiding from. And I’m sure our search made them curious.” Blaze pointed back to the screen. “I traced the second alert as far as I could, and it led back to some kind of shell corp based out of Nassau Countyin Florida, but the servers rerouted through six countries. Whoever set it up didn’t want to be found.”
“And?” Elvis pressed.
“And I didn’t want to keep digging until I cleared it with you. If our guess is right and she is in WIT-SEC, then our search could have just exposed her.” He shrugged. “I thought you’d want to talk to her first before we did that. I don’t want to put her in danger.”
A knock at the door silenced everyone, making Elvis jump slightly. Every man in the room reached for a weapon, instantly on alert.
