Kiley lifted her chin. “I won’t risk the D.C. forensics staff blowing the image they take. I want to be sure we have an unaltered copy for when we find Firuzeh’s killer, and he goes to trial.”
Mack raised his eyebrows. “A bit excessive, don’t you think?”
“I get it. Totally.” Evan gave her a tight smile, but unease lingered beneath the surface. “You can never be too careful.”
Clearly Olin’s death or another incident had impacted Evan in ways she hadn’t yet seen, as this man—this careful, take things slow, take copious notes in case guy—wasn’t anything like the spontaneous agent she’d once known.
Thankfully Mack let it go and went back to work on reviewing the ship manifest. Kiley heard the pages whisper in the book Evan was looking through while she emptied the rest of the backpack to feel every inch of the fabric for hidden items. The well-worn canvas revealed nothing else, so she stowed the evidence and grabbed a notebook to begin wading through page after page of class notes. As time ticked down, she kept her ears tuned for the ding of her computer, and the moment it sounded, she charged across the room.
“In a hurry much?” Cam laughed.
“Phone’s done at last.” She eagerly opened the files and navigated to Firuzeh’s recent texts, finding messages to her family members and a friend named Alicia. Kiley browsed the files looking for email, but Firuzeh didn’t have an email app on her phone. She did have a Twitter account, and Kiley reviewed it to discover several D.C. political groups Firuzeh followed.
Kiley jotted the group names down on a legal pad for further follow-up and moved on to recent pictures. Several candid shots of her smiling family made Kiley’s heart ache even more for their loss, yet she forced herself to search the images for any leads. The final photo was of her dance class, though the picture didn’t hold identifying information on the studio.
The hard drive image completed too, and she quickly dug into the data, starting where she always started—with deleted files. People erroneously believed they could trash a file and empty the trash making the information disappear—hiding secrets or things they didn’t want others to see. But the only way to completely eliminate information on a hard drive was to overwrite the files with new data. Few people knew to take this extra precaution, allowing forensic techs to recover many of the deleted files.
She set the program to restore the emails, and as the computer churned, she read through Firuzeh’s Inbox. Most of the messages related to her schooling. Her teachers praised her papers, and she received top grades. Except for one professor.
“I found a dispute here between Firuzeh and her professor,” Kiley said. “He didn’t like her dissident take on the subject of immigration and downgraded her paper. There are several heated emails between them, and Firuzeh ended things with threatening to go above his head.”
Sean looked over his shoulder. “But is that enough of a reason for murder?”
“Threatened people can often feel cornered and do rash and unthinkable things,” Evan said.
“I agree, and we should at least talk to this guy.” Kiley added Yancy Flagel, the testy professor’s name, to her notepad.
She finished reviewing the Inbox and moved to the restored emails. The first message referenced a dance class at a studio called Dance Jewel.
Kiley quickly looked the place up on the internet. “Dance place in Firuzeh’s email is called Dance Jewel. They offer classes in authentic ancient Persian dance. The owner’s name is Alicia, and Firuzeh texted someone by that name.”
Evan looked at his watch. “Too bad it’s almost three or you could call her. Would be good to know if Firuzeh has a locker there.”
“Exactly.” Kiley continued down the recovered email list, and her eyes locked on a message referencing a group called The Righteous—a known terrorist group and one of the organizations Firuzeh followed on Twitter.
Stunned at the connection, Kiley sat back to think. She’d heard of The Righteous in passing, but the RED team never encountered them in their work. She read the email in which Firuzeh vehemently disagreed with Nasim Waleed, leader of The Righteous, and his plan to protest an incident between the police and an immigrant from Iraq. Waleed threatened retaliation if she interfered with his plans.
She noted his name next to the group on her legal pad and swiveled to look at Cam. “I have a D.C. political organization I need you to watch for in your search. Firuzeh opposed a protest they had planned on Saturday and traded heated emails with the group’s leader. It’s unclear if she’s a member of the group, but they’re called The Righteous.”
“The Righteous.” Evan’s head popped up. “I’ve been tracking them for years. They’re not just D.C.-based. They’re international and have strong ties to ISIS. Nasim Waleed is their leader.”
“Yeah, he’s the guy she was emailing with,” Kiley said.
Evan frowned. “Then she was in bad company. Waleed’s suspected of masterminding several suicide bombings around the world, and two assassinations here in the U.S. He’s also a former Iraqi sniper. If Firuzeh opposed him, he could very well be the one behind her murder.”
Memories of the shooting flashed back in vivid color, and Kiley’s stomach knotted.
Mack turned to look at her. “A sniper is a good possibility given the way Firuzeh was taken down.”
“We also think the shooter was monitoring her communications or he wouldn’t have known where she’d be last night,” Kiley added, as she hadn’t shared this information with Evan.“Her car was clean, but I haven’t been able to check her phone for a tracker until now.”
Evan’s eyes narrowed. “You should know. Waleed’s in information technology. A network administrator in his day job, and a recruiter of other IT professionals in his role with The Righteous. He could easily use Wi-Fi to detonate a bomb.”
That knot in Kiley’s stomach cinched tighter. “If this goes beyond Firuzeh’s death, and he’s involved in the terrorist plot, we could be looking at some sort of computer-generated attack.”
“Like what?” Evan asked.
Thoughts pinged around in Kiley’s brain, and she struggled to organize them. “Computers control so many things these days, like critical infrastructure control systems to energy pipelines, hydroelectric projects, drinking water systems. Even nuclear power plants.”
