“Hi,” Todd said and cleared his throat. “Um, the cell phone was off from nine oh-five P.M. until ten twenty-seven P.M., likely because Mr. Worthington was on the airplane. He turned it back on while at the airport.” He brought up a screen on his computer. It was a map of San Antonio with a yellow line cutting through. “I mapped his route based on cell tower pings—we have tracking software in all our phones.” It was clear from the map that Worthington had gone straight from the airport to the White Knight Motel just as the taxi driver had said.
“He made one call at ten fifty, to another company cell phone registered to Jolene Hayden. That’s Mr. Worthington’s daughter.”
Todd enlarged the screen. Lucy leaned over. There was a dot at the White Knight Motel, then a red line leaving the motel. “At twelve fifteen, the phone pinged here.” He had a dot at an intersection about three blocks from the motel. “I connected the motel with the location, and this is the most likely route by vehicle to get to that intersection. It would only take a minute.”
“What about on foot?” Lucy said. The driver had said the girl had left on foot. “What would it take, five to seven minutes or so?”
“Yeah, about that.” He tilted his head.
“And then the red line is thicker, why?” Lucy asked.
“Oh! Well, the phone was pinged at multiple locations between here”—he pointed—“and ended here, two point six miles away, at twelve twenty.”
“A car.”
“That’s most likely.”
“What’s at that location?” Lucy asked.
“A hotel—a real nice executive hotel.” He wrote down the name and address and handed the piece of paper to her. Barry took it out of her hand.
“Where is the phone now?” Barry asked.
“Still at the hotel,” Todd said.
Smith said, “I’ve already locked out the phone, in case anyone attempts to access any of Harper’s or HWI’s private files. We would need the phone to determine what might have been accessed on it, such as contact information, but Todd verified that the phone hasn’t been used to access company files or emails.”
“Do you have the phone backed up to a cloud server?”
“No,” Smith said. “That kind of security is marginal at best, and we have too much sensitive information. We have an intranet that employees can access from home with a login and password.”
Barry excused himself to take a call. Lucy complimented Todd on his program. “This is useful.”
“I hope you find out what happened to Mr. Worthington.”
“We will,” Lucy said with confidence. She had a modicum of guilt over what she’d first thought of Harper Worthington. With this additional information, she didn’t know if what appeared to have happened really did happen. But she trusted the evidence wherever it led them. Like Julie Peters said, the dead don’t lie.
“Agent Kincaid?” Smith said.
“Yes?”
“Your name is familiar,” he said. “You wouldn’t be related to the Kincaids at Rogan Caruso Kincaid, would you?”
“My brothers are those Kincaids,” she said, not surprised that HWI’s head of security knew of RCK. “Jack and Patrick.”
“Jack Kincaid. Hot damn.” He grinned. “God, I love that man. He saved my ass more times than I can remember. I did have to arrest him once—but that was long ago, and not my choice.”
“Arrest him?”
“I was an army MP for twelve years.” He snapped his fingers. “Of course, you’re Rogan’s girlfriend. I tried to hire that kid when I heard he was moving to San Antonio. Turned me down flat.”
“Sean only consults.”
“That’s what he said. He has high-security clearance—I might be able to use him on this forensic audit.” Lucy didn’t quite know what to say to that—would that be a conflict? She didn’t think so, but she didn’t give him any push in either direction.
“Didn’t I hear that Jack got married or something?”
“Yes—to an FBI agent in Sacramento.”
He smiled. “Good for him.” He shook his head. “Wow. Jack Kincaid’s sister.”
There was a bit of hero worship going on, but Lucy wasn’t surprised. Her brother had led an amazing life both in the army and then out of it as a mercenary. There was a nearly twenty-year age difference between them—he’d already enlisted in the army by the time she was born—but they’d become close over the last few years. He’d taught her everything she knew about self-defense and getting her life back together after she killed her rapist when she was eighteen. She loved everyone in her family, but there was a special bond between her and Jack and she never wanted to lose it. Maybe that was why she’d bonded so quickly with Sean’s oldest brother Kane when she met him two months ago. He reminded her of Jack.
Barry ended his call and gave her a quizzical look. He didn’t tell her what the conversation was about, but said instead, “Mr. Smith, thank you for your time. We’ll contact you if we need additional information. When you’re done with the internal security audit, please let me know.”
“Of course,” Smith said. “And keep me apprised of your investigation.”
“As much as we can.” Barry was already walking away.
Lucy thanked Gregor and Todd and quickly followed Barry out of the building. “What happened?” she asked. “Where are we going?”
“Julie Peters called. She wants us at the morgue.”
“She has cause of death?”