“I know I said I wouldn’t mention Olin again, but I wondered if you’ve had a chance to think about our conversation.”
She looked at him for a long tension-filled moment before raising the binoculars again. “I’m too focused on this lead right now.”
Nice one, Bowers.They’d been communicating pretty well today, and now he’d blown it. Even had a moment between them last night, and then he’d had to bring up the past. But what good did communicating or even sharing a moment do when underneath it all, the issue of how Olin died remained?
None in his mind.
He kept trying to think of what to say but couldn’t come up with a thing.
She handed the binoculars back to him. “Would be great if Sean comes through with the body-cam footage before Yasdi comes home. That way we could show her pictures of the guys Pilcher stopped.”
Evan looked at her. “What do you think the odds are of that happening?”
“Honestly, not good.” She rubbed her eyes and rolled her head. “I have to think if the hacker was smart enough to delete the body-cam video, he was smart enough to find and delete a backup. It all depends on where the department backs up their files and if those servers are accessible through the same vulnerability the hacker exploited.”
Her phone dinged. “It’s from Philips. The sketches from the DNA.” She tapped on the screen. “Wow, look at this. These are great.” She held out her phone. “Know these guys?”
He studied the men’s faces. Both had dark skin, ebony hair, and full beards. The typical features for ISIS suspects, yet he’d never seen them before. “Definitely not the Amaris.”
“Yeah, they don’t look at all like them.”
Her phone dinged again.
“Sean?” Evan asked hopefully.
“Yasdi’s background info from Cam.” Kiley tapped her screen. “She’s a U.S. citizen. Born here to Iranian immigrant parents. Thirty-five. Never married. No children. No criminal history. Not overtly a member of any extremist groups. Works as a social worker for the state.”
Evan glanced at Kiley. “Doesn’t sound like the kind of person who would host known ISIS terrorists, especially being of Iranian descent. But then I’ve run across people in the past who on the surface seem like the boy or girl next door, but a little digging proved they were radical terrorists.”
“True. I’ll have Cam dive deeper.” She texted Cam, set her phone on the dash, and leaned her head back. “You mind watching the building? I’m getting a headache and need to rest my eyes.”
“Go ahead. I’ve got it.” In all honesty, Evan would rather be watching Kiley than staring at an apartment building hoping Yasdi came straight home from work today. As a social worker, she should be getting off work anytime, and the social services building was about a thirty-minute commute. Problem was, he never met a social worker who kept office hours. Most of them worked late into the night and on weekends. Especially the dedicated ones.
Kiley moved, and Evan glanced at her. She was rubbing her temples. Her headache was likely tension-driven. Or due to a lack of food, as they had skipped lunch again. He could massage her temples for her. Maybe her shoulders. And then what? Declare his feelings for her? Yeah, that would go over well.
Her phone dinged, and she shot up in her seat to grab it from the console. “No way! Sean retrieved the video.”
“Yes!”
“Ready to watch it?” Her voice was nearly breathless with excitement.
“Are you kidding? Of course I am.”
She fired off a text thanking Sean, then leaned across the console and held out her phone. Evan was wildly aware of her presence but worked hard to ignore it and focus.
“Okay, here we go.” She hit play, and exactly like Pilcher said, he’d rolled up to the curb and told the two men to stop. Their faces were downcast.
“Caps off. Heads up,” Pilcher demanded, his directive not optional, and the men removed their caps.
“Zoom in,” Evan said. He could barely contain his excitement over seeing their suspects’ faces for the first time.
Kiley did so, revealing the men’s faces. They were dark-skinned with slicked-back black hair and dark eyes. Both men were clean-shaven.
“They look like any Arab American might look,” Kiley said. “Likely so they won’t draw attention.”
“Agreed.” Evan glanced up at the apartment building. He was glad to see the video, but they couldn’t lose sight of Yasdi coming home.
“IDs,” Pilcher demanded on the video.
