Page 78 of An Unending Claim
After my dad left, I checked on Nathan’s parents. Beth was puttering around in the kitchen and Michael was pretending to watch a volleyball game, though it was obvious his mind was somewhere else. They assured me they didn’t need anything, so I went back to Nathan’s office and shut the door.
I’d fortified the security on Nathan’s home laptop, but it obviously didn’t keep me out. I tapped into the KBO system and found the security camera feeds. The only eyes on the first floor were in the hallway, so I wasn’t able to see what happened inside the rooms, but I was curious anyway, so I combed the footage available. I went back to around the time that Tanner left the cabin and scanned until I saw him walking Lisa off of the elevator in cuffs and taking her into one of the interrogation rooms. After Nathan joined him, they exited about an hour later, but didn’t have Lisa with them. I assumed they were holding her there for now.
Bitch.
She was the reason several missions had almost failed. If I hadn’t been there to swoop in and fix things, we could have lost operatives. I wanted to kill her, but since I couldn’t, I hoped whatever Nathan decided to do with her would cause her lasting pain.
Sensing my homicidal emotions, my panther went on the offense, ready to pounce on any threat. I tried to reassure her so she wouldn’t be so on edge, but I couldn’t calm myself, so it was a pointless endeavor.
With nothing better to do, and not knowing how to help, I went digging into Lisa. I was beyond horrified that I hadn’t figured it out sooner. How had I missed it when I’d done the legwork on each of those operations to find out where things went wrong? The answer explained, but didn’t excuse it. I’d never suspected Lisa, so I hadn’t paid attention to her work. Without anyone watching her activities, other than the ones she brought to our attention, she’d slipped under the radar. She’d covered her tracks by causing problems that would look so much like accidents that we didn’t question whether they were sabotage. And when we did, the trail always led back to the hack. She’d managed to mask her work so thoroughly that even knowing what I was looking for, it took some fancy footwork to uncover it. It turned out she was much more talented than she pretended to be. Almost as skilled as me.
Eventually, I found the highly secure, very well hidden bank where she’d had consistent deposits that aligned with Bane’s activities, and others that were surely for jobs we weren’t aware of. The payments were untraceable from her end, but she wasn’t as smart as she thought because she’d forgotten to clean things up on Xavier’s end. The withdrawals from his accounts matched the time and amounts. It wasn’t one hundred percent solid as evidence because there was a gap in the chain between the two of them, but it was enough to convince the Councils. We’d need it when the bodies began to pile up.
It would also be helpful when trying to have the charges against me dropped. That whole situation was almost laughable. I’d spent years cleaning up after myself, which meant there was no record of my DNA or fingerprints in any system. Until the day before the warrant was issued. Amazingly, my information had appeared. Lisa’s work, no doubt. I also came to the realization that they had to have acquired my prints from her. They were all over the KBO offices.
The thing I’d been struggling with since we’d discovered Lisa’s betrayal was why. Why had she done it? Money was a strong motivator, but with her skills, she could have robbed a few key places and been set up with an even bigger fortune than she’d made from Xavier. Unfortunately, Nathan didn’t have access to Lisa’s mind because she wasn’t a member of the Silver Lake pack—she’d come to KBO as a lone wolf and had stayed that way. Obviously, KBO had checked into her. They’d even gone leaps and bounds above the security checks done by the NSA and CIA. Nothing had sent up a red flag, not from interviews with shifters in the pack she’d been part of until she was fourteen and left, not from her past teachers, her doctors, her previous jobs, landlords, nothing. Which would have been suspicious alone if she hadn’t gained Nathan’s attention by attempting to hack into a business protected by KBO. Instead of handing her over to the authorities, he’d hired her.
In all of my digging, I couldn’t find anything that gave me a clue as to why she would sell out to a mediocre bidder.
Frustrated, I typed her name into a simple web search and hit enter. There were millions of hits with her name and I rolled my eyes at myself for being such an idiot and hovered over the button to close out the window. Then something caught my eye.
It was an ancestry website and her name had several hits, but I clicked on the link with a picture of a headstone with the same name anyway. The update to the page had happened only hours before. Apparently someone had uploaded pictures and names from an entire cemetery in northern Washington. It was part of a larger effort by a group of kids, taking pictures and recording the names for all of the cemeteries within one hundred miles of them. It was an activity that people were doing more and more, helping to further genealogical research.
I still didn’t understand what had drawn my attention to this particular headstone, perhaps because there was a photograph on it. When I navigated to the person’s family tree, I was unsurprised to see that the picture of the seventeen-year-old girl looked pretty nondescript and while there were some similarities, she didn’t look much like the one we knew. Then I realized there were multiple records for this girl, which happened often when more than one person created a page for the same individual. The site then attached them as possible duplicates until someone provided information to separate them.
The second record had been imported by someone, rather than being found through official records. This one… it was almost exactly the same, with two exceptions. One, this woman’s picture was a grainy shot from far away, but she was clearly several years older than the girl on the headstone, and there was no doubt that the woman in the photo was the one currently locked in a room at KBO. Two, none of the life event dates listed had a year, only month and day. There was also an obscure note that mentioned they weren’t sure if this person was dead or not. Neither woman had fingerprints or any official public—or private—records. The picture of the headstone was the only reason the new page for this girl had been created, and the only dates listed were those on the headstone.
My mind started spinning as I poured over both records, looking for every similarity and difference. Finally, I found it.
There was a small link on the record with KBO’s Lisa—Lisa One, I dubbed her—on it, suggesting a possible relative–a mother. It led to a woman named Kit, who was from upstate New York. Again, no official paperwork, and it was another page created by a user. However, the picture of Kit reminded me of the one on the headstone—Lisa Two—that had been uploaded this morning. Users could also enter more information such as stories about their lives, other important events, etc. Someone had listed a date and place for a car accident on Kit’s bio page. The location was a town not far from the cemetery.
When I couldn’t find any information on the accident, I navigated back to Kit’s page and stared at it in frustration. Then an idea struck. I searched for her name and found another record with a headstone from that same cemetery, this one with a picture of the same woman, the records just hadn’t been linked yet. A theory began to take shape and I returned to the page with the note about the accident. When I clicked on the user, they were still living, so the available information was limited. Rather than freak them out by hacking their account for all of their info, I sent them a message asking about the accident and giving them my phone number.
To my surprise, they answered within ten minutes and we were on the phone two minutes after that.
An hour later, I hung up, completely flabbergasted by what I’d learned.
I needed to tell Nathan. As angry as I was with him, the information could make a big difference to their plans.
He answered faster than I expected.
“Peyton? What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. But I dug up information on Lisa, and it could be just what you need.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“Nope,” I said, letting the P pop and shaking my head even though he couldn’t see it.
“Pardon?”
“Did you find out anything about who Lisa is, or why she did this?”
“No.” Nathan’s tone turned impatient and my panther hissed, in the mood to take a swipe at him. I was with her on that. “I’m assuming you did?”
“Some, but I need her to fill in the blanks.”
“Peyton, tell me and I’ll take it to her.”